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sleeping in your car (quiet piano) / / cigar-tin stories one hundred three



It's 6:02 in the morning. Lately I've been getting up at 5. I used to get up at 5:30, but then I thought, Well, I'm getting up this early anyway, why don't I push it a bit to get more done? It's not like I'm here for my looks. 
 


In how many ways do you flinch when someone starts telling you how tired they are? Or how busy? At this point I think most people avoid even saying it.

I think distracted or disjointed or slightly unraveled would be more accurate.

I am most tired when I wake up. Yawning and yawning. There's two other points in the day –– early afternoon and just after supper –– which might as well be filled with smoke bombs for all the seeing and thinking that gets done.
 


I used to work with a guy who would go out to his car to have a nap in the backseat over lunch. This worked not only because he was very tired but also because he was a small guy. Could just curl up. I think he packed a blanket. Sometimes he would go to the gym instead but only to sit in the hot tub. He blamed his sleepiness on his wife's cats.

Of course, that kind of sleepy thinking came from an earlier place of tight shirts and flared jeans, young men in vans with tinted windows and shag carpet, Polaroids with laughing girls. All a lot cosier than a backseat in a parking lot.
 


The tortoiseshell took a shit on the newspaper the other day. Right in the middle of the living room. I was surprised. She might as well have rented a neon sign that read, Please euthanize me the next time mommy leaves town. I made a note of it. At least it was only the The Globe and Mail.
 


We're ending our weekend subscription to The New York Times soon (The Globe came bundled with it, which is an indictment right there), or as soon as some box gets ticked on some warehouse manager's clipboard. It's become too expensive and besides, I'm growing tired of the two-headed hydra called Inequality Is Terrible and Here's an Ad for a Luxury Condo, otherwise known as Trump Is Awful but We Have Nothing Better to Offer Except Badges.

I will miss the fashion magazine part, the crazy estates for the crazy rich who build private art galleries into the sides of mountains. The wasted spectacle of that. Like Barthes said, we all have our own rhythm of suffering.
 


The tortoiseshell follows me around and around every morning, purring and purring, throwing herself at my feet, praying that I'll go back to bed so she can go back to walking on my face. I let her out so C can let her back in when she gets up later.
 


Oona had a camping excursion with her Girl Guide unit (troop? outfit?) last weekend. It was only to Verona, to the backyard of a community centre, but still it was sleeping in tents. Her mom spent the entire 24 hours worry over the quality of her sleeping bag. I slept in 'til seven, then worked away in my sketchy downstairs office for a few hours. This made C very nervous. At one point she came down to remind me that grocery shopping needed to be done. Oh yes, you're right, I said. Just like the previous one thousand weekends in a row that I've done it. Good reminder! 

So groceries were got, and one last lawn-mowing done, and we still had time to go for lunch, and when we picked up Oona she was still alive, and easily distracted with a Green Aero Bar.

Well, I have to go to work. Have a good week, everyone.
djb

Draw things, paint things, write things, make things.​


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