Smegmatic Feelings
Insomnia, Bitches
I just fed the cats.
Sure, it’s 4 am, and those furry bastards looked at me as if to say:
‘What the fuck is your problem?’
I also made myself tea to be clear that I wasn’t just awake feeding the cats. But, they’ve seen this kind of odd behaviour before.
I can hear their thoughts:
Frank’s feeding us at 4 am cos he’s got writer’s block again, that fucker.
It started because I got paranoid that one of the cats was dead.
He usually sleeps upstairs, and he wasn’t there. And, you can’t rest until you check. So I checked. He was alive, but I still couldn’t sleep.
And now Im writing like I’m fucking Charles Dickens dipping my quill into the ink pot by candlelight.
I’m staring at the luminous hum of digital expression. Sure, that’s gonna help.
I take a snip of my tea. It’s Tumeric with some other shite like black pepper and a hit of spearmint or some crap. Someone should invent a tea called ‘Writer’s Block Tea’ — tea that clears the black brain sewerage whose real identity is doubt. A man called Samuel got me thinking about that.
It’s not like I have to think about where the next meal is coming from
For fuck’s sake, there are fourteen cans of chilli tuna in the cupboard. Failing that, there’s always cat food which costs twice as much as tuna these days.
It’s not like I have to walk five hundred miles to gather water for the kids or go hunt and cook the hind legs of a sabre-toothed mammoth.
All I have to do is not fail the subjects I am studying, keep up my spiritual and conventional commitments, make my wife pregnant, lose another ten kilos, eat more vegetables, minimise my time on social media, take fish oil, Tongkat Ali and seventeen other supplements, pay the road toll bill, the TV bills, the gym membership fee and the rent, get the car fixed, skype my parents, visit my niece, go to the gym, learn touch-typing and Spanish and finish the corporate copywriting scat projects and write every day on Medium without turning my blog into some laboratory for the study of compulsory literary shitting.
Oh yeah, and I must remember to buy a headband for the gym since I’m ashamed of my bald skull, and a beanie is too hot. And yes, I know you are thinking, ‘Headbands belong back in 1066.’
You’re mistaken. I’m bringing them back.
And I must remember the imperfect journey of writing on Medium, which is like taking an orgasmic shit in a patch of stinging nettles while your sister watches and rates your performance out of ten.
It’s not a linear thing, right?
One minute you are sliding along like a highly motivated wet beaver in a space helmet, and the next, you are getting reamed by the janitor with the blue hair who listens to Megadeth while cleaning the encrusted turd off the porcelain bowl of your own self-loathing.
And if you pay too much heed to the ins and outs of Janitor John’s sandpaper sausage machine, you might just extend this rough ride longer than it needs extending.
Anyway, It’s 4.54 am now. It’s too early for this kind of talk. Let’s talk about something nice like the birds and the bees, the diamonds in the trees, and the goose that lays golden eggs with a soft centre of shmuck and marshmallow.
I just wrote a poem. Gluten Morgan.
Sheep
It’s hard to look at sheep
And see that there is a being
Experiencing life, as you are
As the absolute centre
Of its very own universe.
