Dark Before Dawn

It is so dark before dawn here.  It feels like I wrote something last night to publish this morning, but I didn't.  I didn't do anything.  I don't know how it happened.  Suddenly it was late.  I'd gone to the gym and hadn't eaten, but I needed to go to a store in some working class mall to look for some things for a coming shoot.  I poured a rum and coke and headed out.  Then things being what they are and time being what it is and the stores being so spread out. . . .  They were locking the doors when I left.

I hadn't eaten much all day and had nothing since ten this morning.  Maybe I'm becoming anorexic or an alcoholic, but I wasn't really hungry.  My head told me, though, that after working out, a Cuba Libra was not the complete food group that I needed.  Driving home, I didn't pass any take out restaurants that had food I could stomach. It was nine.  I had another drink and began going through the refrigerator, the cabinets.  I had some salad in a bag that I'd opened a few days before, an open jar of beets, some kind of Asian noodle soup.  Eggs!  I had eggs.  And in the freezer was a frozen pizza for one.

I was looking for the right wine to accompany this repast, and I opened a bottle I'd bought at Whole Foods.  White.  I forget which flavor.  $4.99.

As I ate, I started watching the first installment of the second season of "Boss" which I was recording.  I was about twenty minutes behind.

Dinner done, I needed a drink.

And then I was out.

I should have slept, and I did. . . until four o'clock.  I stayed in bed 'til five.  It is too terrible to stay in bed in the dark and not be able to think of pleasure.  Haunted by too much of the other, I turned on the light and put my feet to the floor.  "Not again," I said.  I thought I had this beaten, this waking in the dark with the horrors.  But here it was creeping up on cat's feet and there was nothing I could do.

An empty house in the dark.  The routine.  Love the cat and give her food.  Clean the coffee maker from the day before, pour the water, get the beans.  Mix up the vitamins, take some pills, drink the elixir while the coffee brews.  Turn on the computer, read the mail.  Look at the news, cat bumping my leg.  Reach down and give more love then stop.  Coffee ready.  Read.  Teen oral sex is on the wane.  Reactions to Pussy Riot sentence.  Rich Kids of Instagram.  Gay student body president from Michigan State awarded 4.5 million dollars in damages for blog attacks.  Mars rover.  Two new films about Picasso.  More coffee.

What happened to all the plans I'd made on vacation?  My life was going to be simple.  I would read, write, make new pictures, redecorate the house.  I still haven't repaired the broken sprinklers.  The Jeep tire has gone flat and off the rim again.

Work, gym, dinner. . . repeat.

There is life all around me.  A young woman asked me to go to a play tonight.  "It is about two teenagers having a sexual relationship.  There's nudity."  She knows me.  But I have a shoot tonight with a woman who is driving two hours each way so that she can make pictures with me.  Oh.  Maybe drinks afterwards, she says.  It scares me.  Things could get out of hand.  I would be up past midnight.  I don't know.  I have a shoot Sunday morning early.

I shall write a book.  "The Factory and the Fantasy: So Much Fear, So Little Art."

But the sun is up now, the coffee drunk, the cat curled up on my left foot.  I may go back to bed and try to get another hour's rest while normal people begin their morning run.