From a dream I can’t escape, more like nightmare, or visions nightmarish.  I’m up.  3:39AM.  And it was quite a chore putting this laptop and myself in writing position.  Can’t type as fast, don’t want to wake my queen or the little Artist.  Laptop was in bag and bag was in kitchen so I more than tiptoed in, grabbing the heavy bag off the chair with only two fingers, lightly pushing aside whatever clothing piece shared chair with it — I then walked down the short hall past the bathroom like a catburglar, sat on couch.  Remembering that this monster needed power, I reached far left a gently pulled at the cord, bringing it higher and higher toward the arm of the sofa.  And now I’m here, now, typing in total nightly roominess with only the fading drips of the thin metal gutter on that wall’s other side to accompany me.  So the dream, can’t remember all specifics but– well I can, I just don’t want to write them here, but I’m startled, so much so I’m here writing as I always wish I would.  Just not like this.  I feel ashamed and spooked and analytical, going over every part of the dream I can bounce back into and out of memory.

I’ve always written about and toyed with the idea of halting wine consumption (this includes beer, too) with finalized reason, and instantly.  Used to say it was to see how my character would change, but now it’s control I’m after, more control over ME and my character and I’m resolute in believing this would forward the writing in some electrical and storming way.  So in this day of my magically diarist hundred, I drop such gavel…  I guess what frustrates me would be the pressure around wine, like I HAVE to drink it since I’m ‘industry’.  How is this delineation sound?  It’s not, and this is much of my separatist point.

Quite enjoy this compositional hour, just wish the fridge would hum so I could have some noise shield or cover, buffer.  Need to keep a dream journal like Kerouac, so when I have visions like this I can capture them candidly and richly when they’re still more or less fresh.  Would love a cup of that medium roast right now, the only other scenic ingredient which would have this all in perfection’s palm.  I hate typing with one finger at a time like I’m now doing (except when I need a capital letter or some punctuation like that opening parenthesis mark, just above, and left, then I use two fingers, risking more noise and more indication that I’m up).  If I don’t go back into sleep I’ll be drained today, completely, and with the lingering visibility of this cough or cold, scratchy throat and some light congestion–  Just went up to put Jackie in our bed, he breaking my session, calling “daddy… my daddy!” Love how he depends on me, his mother for comfort and protection, the transport to our bed, me carrying him this time.  I try most times but he insists on his own sovereign march.  It’s been some weeks I think since the little Beat has come to our bed, Alice just saying to me “I miss this.” Jack has become quite independent and insistent with his sleeping consistencies, completely abandoning his “training bed”, part of the crib, and stationing in his mature mattress-grounded bed, on ground.  I envy his little cove, so comfortable with all his blankets and stuffed animals and fluffy characters, like a whirlwind of soft invite that promises sleep, and maybe that’s what I should do (I realize with the fridge coming on..and my typing a bit more diligent, loud): go sleep in his bed, which I’ve done before.  But I can’t.  That bloody dream and the horror of are still a swarm of stinging millipedes around my concentrating cortexes.  I’m doomed to be awake, that’s it, so I must make a manuscript from it.  No wine.. easy, and it’s about fucking time.  I’ve said I’d do this for reels of time, now, and I’m finally here, forced, by the dream and this early hour and the rattling annoyance in me toward the industry, how you can’t be too honest and ‘watch what you say, it’s a small industry’…  That’s fear, in that statement, looming, tactical ‘boo’s!’.  But I won’t get started with that empty swing of sensibility, I look right and see nothing, where I know the kitchen is, that fridge that lets me type quicker now, and the hall (hard right), down which I barely touched the ground like I was some soldier that infiltrated some enemy something.  4:12 now, and I can’t tell if little Madigan and Queen Alice are asleep.  Think they may be, as I don’t hear any turning up there, but who knows with this hour and with Jack’s little in-the-moment character developments.  Now I want sleep, yes, I need it, known, but this never happens and if I go back to sleep what if I’m brought back to that dream?  Goddamnit I can’t win in this session.  “You’re at over 800 words at not even 5 in the morning, no one else you know in the world has done that,” you’ll say, trying to calm and comfort me but I don’t want to hear it.  I want more money, more from this writing, and more from everything I do–  And that’s another aim in this wine sabbatical leave: moving faster, more control which I already said but also a consistency with my writing that I’ve never known.  This, this dark room and my types which have to slow and be much more stealth audibly once that fridge silences, is the first meditation of a new me, the New Mike I’ve wanted in this hundred day hunt.  Hunt.. for what?  Just that: a new me, one who writes and does nothing else — Just remembered, I have to back up all this work on this unreliable monster laptop to one of those easily misplace-able sticks, the memory nuggets that promise a similar comfort and safety and invitation to little Kerouac’s bed.  Do I feel completely comfortable having all my work, basically my Life’s work, rest on one of those ‘things’?  No.  The only area that would give me true comfort would be ink on a paper sheetset.