Pending, Staring, Thinking

A bit low ebb today; one can only maintain determined optimism for so long--especially an introvert like me--seeing as how it almost demands the complete surrender of any HOPE of a normal sleep pattern...and so the end is built in, see? The trick, I know, is taking a breath, enforcing bedtime like a police state, and getting back up there. It's all in the head.

So, what is an introvert to do in a slightly blue mode--one that we can't indulge for more than, say, ten hours?

Prose, baby.

Borges:

"Through the years, a man peoples a space with images of provinces,
kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, tools, stars,
horses, and people.

Shortly before his death, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines
traces the image of his own face."

God, I love him--that broody, marvelous writer.

Or Rumi, polymorphic monist supreme:

"Do you think I know what I'm doing?
That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself?
As much as a pen knows what it's writing,
or the ball can guess where it's going next."

Or that mad, mad Austrian, Thomas Bernhard, who writes his novels in one long, comma-filled sentence:

"We all live at least three different lives, a real one, an imaginary one, and one we're not even aware of..."

"Suddenly everything shrivels down into a single childhood memory: up to what point to be silent?, from what point on to be silent?, when to be silent?, when to not always be silent?, when to suddenly interrupt, to stop being silent, when to stop taking anything at all into account?: formulas, proceedings, temptations: everything is suddenly inappropriate: truth, lie, misunderstanding, all become garbled when you utter them yourself..."

"no one knows my situation: this thought keeps me above water..."

Madman. I love him. Feeling better now.