Notes from the insomniac night

It's become apparent to me that I need to write more. There are so many beginnings of novels and stories in my library--so many wonders to discover. I'm living at night now. It doesn't seem that long ago that 1am was early for me. How I've become so old. My mornings are sleepy, exhausted, sore. I can't move, let alone think. But at night, my mind races, my body wants to jump. I feel the urge to burst out the front door and run screaming into the night. I could do this. naked. I could face the chill of the spring night air, flapping around, free and adventurous, a bird on the hunt for some evening prey. I could just run out there, freezing as it may be. What would happen, I wonder. What would I find. Enough of this; a ninja wonders on nothing that can be realized in a breath. Here I go.

Writing & Rives

Sometimes, I just want to write what comes to mind but I find that no language could express it. I just want to garble and blurb, pound my hands against the keys so you can hear it. I long for the future that promises a decanter for mental imagery. Is that cheating? Just to pour out your thoughts through some electrical wiring and onto a hard drive, or maybe let it float up into the ether so it can dance and meld with other people's thoughts? An open mental space... that's what I want, someday.

Today, I just want you to take a minute to listen to my favorite contemporary stand-up poet, Rives, as he tells you what it would be like if he controlled the internet:

Ninja as Child - #1 - Typewriter of Destiny

My love for writing begins in the second grade. The idea of becoming a writer has already appeared to me in a dream involving cross-bred animals, sea-life, a world filled with water and an itch to type on the only typewriter left on the planet. It is my typewriter, a supposedly portable Underwood, which is absurdly heavy for a seven-year-old boy, whose ninja powers have not yet bloomed. I lug its whopping 12lb bulk to and from school every day for several weeks.



At the back of the class, I clack and clang the metal levers with finger-pointing prowess befitting a future ninja, beginning story after story, never getting further than the 3rd fragmented sentence before starting on a new idea. My teacher allows me to type only during active work time and during recess. She thinks my pounding keys while she speaks is a distraction, but her speaking while I'm typing is the real culprit of lower education. Bitch. I'm a sponge and I've absorbed all I can for the day, now I need to drip and pour the filtered waters of information in which I have been drowning. Give me a break. Allow me this single interest before my mind evolves into that of a bitter, cynical, apathetic, nihilist.

I've been doing this for weeks: following rules, being quiet, malleable to authority. Today is different. I awaken with a new sense of purpose, destiny, power.

I walk into the classroom and instead of putting my heavy typewriter in the back of the class, I walk into the center of the classroom, setting my typewriter right on my desk. It looks magnificent. I feel the surge of a writer within me, some ethereal relic of an author from centuries ago, who has gone forward and backward through time-space and discovered the ultimate meaning of life.

I begin to type.

Mrs. Funky Face (not her real name): "Ok, class, let's get settled... um... the typing needs to stop."
Sleep Deprivation Ninja (as child): *...clack-clack-clackclackclack-click-clack-clack-clack...chrrrrr-ding! clack-click-clack...*
MFF: "...hellooooo.... typing must stop!"
SDN (ac): *click-click-clack-clackclackclickclackclackclack-clickityclickclackclackzipdingclickclack...*

I'm on a roll. I'm feeling the souls of dead poets moving my hands, the scrolls of Alexandria unfolding in my mind, the dark history of Atlantis bubbling from within and gushing out in a tide of metallic clicks. The whirring and banging gets louder as my speed increases. Soon, I find myself filling pages as fast as I can rip them out and shove in fresh sheets. The keys are getting hot. The machine begins to smoke but I can't stop. The letters turn red, scalding my fingertips but I just push the keys faster.

In a thunderous clang, all of the keys bang together in unison, hitting the page and mashing into each other as the typewriter refuses to accept them against its unwilling harness, shooting the typebars away from the page with explosive force and fiery suicide. The keys go in all directions, bouncing from wall to person to desk to chalkboard, books to backpacks, foreheads to forearms, imprinting living poetry wherever they hit. Now the whole room stares at me, silently decorated with alphabetic tattoos. I am sitting behind a metal inferno as I read their faces, arms and desks.

Poetry. Pure, uncensored poetry. Upside-down, sideways, letters spaced beyond normal perception of word formation but I see it. My eyes swell with tears from this marvelous beauty, which the teacher mistakes for a cry of pain.

MFF: *stunned*
SDN (ac): "I'm out", pushing hands away as if finished with a meal.

Walking out of the classroom, the sky seems a deeper blue. The trees sound a little crisper in the wind. The smell of smoldering typewriter is a little sweet and savory. I head out into the field and into the future.