I keep thinking about terror. I’m exhausted today. I woke up too early and went to sleep too late. And yet here I am, ready to write something that’s probably not worth writing. I do that a lot, this writing without knowing about what and not knowing its worth. Who needs worth when caffeine struggles against exhaustion? I have three hours of battery time left and I will use almost none of it.

Righteousness rises over the horizon. I like important-sounding words to rise places. Is it rise or raise? Word seems to think it is raise, but I’m not so sure. Where’s Garner when you need him? Answer: he’s at work on my desk with a folded-over sticky note stuck into a page in the A section. I’m working methodically through his Modern English Usage as part of NEQID. On second thought, righteousness isn’t a terribly important word, and it doesn’t sound important, it looks important. I’m waiting for it to hit, for me to brush past these useless thoughts and move on to a too-short piece on nothing.

I feel it.

It’s gone now. It was there for a moment, but now it’s not. A lady sat in the bucks of stars wearing a pair of pink low-heeled shoes, and I thought, this is it, inspiration at its finest. This lady will spark the deluge. And then not. It does that, disappearing when I think I have it, the inspiration. It makes it worse when, as now, I sit here thinking it’s just beyond reach, if I could just lean that extra bit, when, in reality, it’s not only out of reach, it’s out of mind.

Bowlers rise and unite for there are times when even bowlers consider bowlers athletes.

The chocolate is good but I don’t know if it’s going to keep me going today. Life has zipped past me this week. Oh, wait, it’s only Tuesday. Dagonit. (Wow, where did that sound come from?)

I left the bucks, and I’m now sitting on my couch. I edited the above in the spirit of good-humored-crazy talk, and now I have to edit the rest of the stuff that I belted out sometime between arriving home and sitting here in the dark fueled by an apple. Is there a more perfect fruit than the apple? Yeah, I know something can’t be more perfect, just like someone can’t be more pregnant. What’s your point?

Darkness clouds the Castle. Well, almost darkness. The sky is still blue, so I guess we’re still a few moments away from real darkness. Well, almost-real darkness since I live in Seattle where it never gets country dark. I’m babbling now. Let me get back to editing my other babbles before I find myself in that senseless circular editing, where I comment on my edits and edit those comments, only to comment on those edits. You see where that could lead me. (To think what I could have done with this prolific evening if I only applied myself to non-musing babbles.)

I lied about not commenting on the comment. It’s now dark-dark, the sky is black except for the horizon, which is grayish because of the city lights. Everything is quiet. That’s not true. Cars drive by down the Castle’s hill, and my Xbox, which is holds “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” on pause after I finished watching it (the movie provided part of my inspiration for Beautiful yesterday). I should probably turn it off. Oh, and the hard drive on my laptop is clicking. It doesn’t usually click. I wonder what it’s doing. Okay, enough not commenting on the comment, I have to get back to editing the not writing.

“And so the article discussed Bush’s bulldozing of social security in such a way that literal tears came to my face.” “Not figurative tears?” “Oh no, these were real tears, tears of laughter and ridicule.”

Tangents are the lifeblood of the short-attention spanned. Seymour was a tangent.

Flattened. People left my neighbor’s house. He must have had an event or something. I never have events. It’d be nice to have an event because then people would visit me.

When did you get home? Awhile ago. You were busy, so I didn’t want to disturb you. You never disturb me. Then why do you get all pissy when I interrupt your tv watching? I don’t get pissy. Try saying that when you are pissy, and you’ll have a change in your tune. I don’t even play tunes.

My mind won’t focus on anything tonight. I can’t find the hook. I started another essay about shaving. I figured, with all that research out there on this internet thing, I didn’t actually have to learn to shave; instead, I could just write an essay about what I planned to do when I got off my lazy ass and read all the internet articles and tried to shave all traditional-like. The funny part (in the essay) would be that I would have tried none of it. It would all be hypothetical. You get it? Hypothetical! Clearly, I haven’t made much progress, or I would have splattered it against this thing to show off my brilliance. I’m okay with that—the not progressing thing. I’ll get to it or not.

Today was an early morning, which might explain some of these random thoughts. Not that my normal thoughts aren’t random, but today’s are particular out there, otherworldly, wishing I could say something meaningful but accepting that although the caffeine can give me energy, the focus has to be pulled from deep within my guts and yanked up through my throat to be spritzed onto the page. I didn’t realize “spritz” wasn’t a word. I wonder where I learned that from.

I’m leaning more toward this research thing. It hasn’t actually helped me in any of my writing, but I feel that if I could incorporate it into my thinking, I might actually have something to say. Now, if only I could find the time to research and write. I barely have the time to put these silly words on the page before I have to sleep, work, and drink coffee, which are, of course, all very complicated and important activities.

I felt it was time to start a new paragraph. I read this somewhere, but it did ring true: like sentence length, a writer is supposed to vary paragraph length.

I made that last one short to demonstrate the principal. I guess the fear is that the reader will become bored if all the paragraphs are of a normal length. You could take it too an extreme and write really long paragraphs like DFW or not even use paragraphs like that last author I read, W. G. Sebald, an award-winning author that I didn’t get (I notice I don’t get many great authors—I think it has something to do with my public education).

This has degenerated even beyond my measly powers to edit it into writing that makes a bit of sense. More monkey writing—I’m trying to coin that phrase, for those who wonder what the fuck I’m talking about. Think back to those million monkeys on typewriters, and you’ll get the picture.

It’s sometimes nice to write like this. I know I’m not saying anything, but not to worry about saying anything, it’s a relief, you know. It’s a whole bunch of nothing with extra whipped cream. I think whipped cream might be one of my favorite food groups. I like mochas, but what I love about them is sucking the whipped cream off the top. I hate when I’m too late and the whipped cream melts into the mocha. What a waste! I try to arrange my coffee buying so I can immediately take the top off and suck off the whipped cream. So yummy.

Okay, that’s enough. I could go on like this for hours, but I know nobody made it down this far. Hell, I’m not even going to make it this far in the editing process. It’s too painful.

I’m really going to post it. Right now. Stop trying to distract me. My problem is that I’m enjoying the freedom in just writing and knowing I’m going to say nothing. Just typing whatever comes to my mind. You know, using the word just a lot, and the words a lot a lot. You get the picture?