Woo sleep deprivation.

Haha. Well, I'm screwed.

I could have told you most of the stuff that's in this article already, though. The memory/attention/reaction stuff. The sleep "micro-lapses." The eating thing. The mood swings. Now I just feel worse about failing to fix this stuff. Haha.

Poet, not a fool

"...The remote source of [the Prefect's] defeat lies in the supposition that the Minister is a fool, because he has acquired renown as a poet. All fools are poets; this the Prefect feels; and he is merely guilty of a non distributio medii in thence inferring that all poets are fools."

"But is this really the poet?" I asked. "There are two brothers, I know; and both have attained reputation in letters. The Minister I believe has written learnedly on the Differential Calculus. He is a mathematician, and no poet."

"You are mistaken; I know him well; he is both. As poet and mathematician, he would reason well; as mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all, and thus would have been at the mercy of the Prefect."

"You surprise me," I said, "by these opinions, which have been contradicted by the voice of the world. You do not mean to set at naught the well-digested idea of centuries. The mathematical reason has long been regarded as the reason par excellence.

"...The mathematicians, I grant you, have done their best to promulgate the popular error to which you allude, and which is none the less an error for its promulgation as truth. With an art worthy a better cause, for example, they have insinuated the term 'analysis' into application to algebra...The great error lies in supposing that even the truths of what is called pure algebra, are abstract or general truths. And this error is so egregious that I am confounded at the universality with which it has been received. Mathematical axioms are not axioms of general truth. What is true of relation --of form and quantity --is often grossly false in regard to morals, for example.

...I mean to say," continued Dupin, while I merely laughed at his last observations, "that if the Minister had been no more than a mathematician, the Prefect would have been under no necessity of giving me this check. I knew him, however, as both mathematician and poet, and my measures were adapted to his capacity, with reference to the circumstances by which he was surrounded. I knew him as a courtier, too, and as a bold intriguant. Such a man, I considered, could not fall to be aware of the ordinary policial modes of action..."

-- Edgar Allan Poe, The Purloined Letter

So. Sorry for the wicked long intro. I read this for the first time in years (Wishbone!) for Crime: Fiction and Film a few weeks ago, and I enjoyed the outrageous nature of C. Auguste Dupin's suppositions and "rational logic" nearly as much as I liked the hardboiled Sam Spade, though not as much as the great Philip Marlowe. This was my favorite observation of Dupin's, though: that the greatest geniuses are masters of both mathematical reasoning and the poet's creativity and human understanding.

And I gotta run. Will finish later.

Random quotes floating through my mind.

Barbara: Fuck love, what a crock of shit. People can convince themselves they love a painted rock.
(August: Osage County)

Karen: I'm not defending him. He's not perfect. Just like all the rest of us, down here in the muck. I'm no angel myself. I've done some things that I'm not proud of. Things you'll never know about. Know what? I may even have to do some things I'm not proud of again. 'Cause sometimes life puts you in a corner that way. And I am a human being, after all.
(August: Osage County)

Astrov: A human being should be entirely beautiful: the face, the clothes, the mind, the thoughts. Your step-mother is, of course, beautiful to look at, but don't you see? she does nothing but sleep and eat and walk and bewitch us, and that is all. She has no responsibilities, everything is done for her--am I not right? And an idle life can never be a pure one.
(Uncle Vanya)

Yelena: The truth, no matter how bad, is better than an uncertainty.
Sonya: Not knowing is better, because then there is still hope.
(Uncle Vanya)

"If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
(A Farewell to Arms)

Yum. Stewart's Orange n Cream soda. A bit o' heaven in a glass bottle.

I was just randomly wondering about something:

I feel like I know a lot of people who consider themselves to be relatively selfless. As in, they give a lot to others, put their loved ones before themselves, and always take on everyone else's problems with their own. And these people, not unlike myself, generally feel like they're the ones who always are catching everyone else when everyone else is falling, but then there's no one there to catch them.

If this is the case, then why don't we all catch each other?

Might be misguided late-night logic, but I'm failing to see how this doesn't work.

Oh wait. Unless some of those "selfless" people aren't as generous with themselves as they think. Mmm.

That's all.

Barbara: You're never coming back to me, are you Bill?

Bill: Never say never, but . . .
Barbara: But no.
Bill: But no.
Barbara: Even if things don't work out with you and Marsha.
Bill: Cindy.
Barbara: Cindy.
Bill: Right. Even if things don't work out.
Barbara: And I'm never really going to understand why, am I?
(Bill struggles . . . it seems as if he might say something more, but then:)
Bill: Probably not.
(Silence. Bill heads for the door. Barbara watches him go and sobs.)
Barbara: I love you . . . I love you . . .
(He stands for a moment, his back to her. He exits. Barbara stands, alone.)

I guess it's about time I really accept that there are certain things that have happened that I will never understand. Questions that, no matter how much I deserve ["deserve"?] answers, will never get answered. I feel like that's admitting defeat, but I guess I'm just going to have to get over it.

Sylvia: Look, I adore Jocelyn, but . . . ah ha, if, "Loving is letting go," then whoever wants Jocelyn is going to have to pry her fingers loose, one by one.