Did you know that "a.m." stands for
ante meridiem. Before the middle, or noon, more specifically. I know this because I looked it up once when no other more obvious meaning presented itself.
Actually the real reason I'm doing this is because I lost my pencil (and also because I'm awake past three in the morning, despite all of my efforts of the last three hours to be otherwise).
I suspect my pencil is buried in the chair in the living room, biding its time and working its way to the position where it's carefully carved, inch-long lead can do the most damage to some innocent, unsuspecting posterior.
I discovered this treachery while not sleeping. I was drafting clever drawings I could do about insomnia, neat little cartoons about wasted time and frustration and boredom, and I thought Aha! Instead of wasting time, I could actually execute said drawings with cleverness and wit and charm. Instead of merely thinking about wasting time, I could make jokes about it and be productive, causing a delicious paradox (and hopefully also a rip in the space-time continuum).
It was at this point I turned on my bedside lamp (again) and collected my magic drawing bag from its ignoble place under the desk, alongside my sewing machine box and a calendar from the previous year. My determination was so great that I dragged my carcass out of my bed, across the room, and to the desk.
But it did not take long to discover the pencil's absence. It was rather conspicuous, since I had just been using it hours before, and since it was literally the only tool I lacked to facilitate my artistic genius.
I checked the supply bag. I checked the little makeup bag I use for critical supplies--eraser, black pen, black marker, two pencils. I checked my colored pencil bag. I checked my marker bag. I even when so far as to return to the desk and listlessly sift through the discarded drawings and papers to see if my vagrant pencil was camped out among them.
My valiant search--conducted chiefly from my bed, with maybe two whole seconds standing upright from bed to desk and back--yielded nothing.
It was here that I began to suspect my pencil of something more devious than idle wandering. If it had simply gogten lost, it would have shown up in one of the other pouches I carry in my magic supply bag. No, it was time to face the truth: my pencil had tired of being an instrument of great artistic endeavors, and had decided to become an instrument of torture instead.
So here I am, writing, not drawing. I even used my nice drawing pen with the fine tip and the waterproof, maximum-lightfastness Indian ink (I know these things because it says so, right on the shaft of the pen, in about fifteen hundred languages. And also because, as has been previously mentioned, I had nothing else to do). I would have
liked to be drawing, but now I must write instead. Shameful pencil, betrayer of all that is noble and good! Abandoning me in my time of need!
It's taunting me from the living room, daring me to get off my duff and come find it, to save some innocent rear end from an unexpected jab. I know it's out there, in the dark, waiting for me, sturdy chiselled graphite gleaming dully in a poetically placed moonbeam. I feel the malevolent intent.
It's so not worth leaving my bed and walking all twenty-five feet across the house.
Pencil, you mayu think you have won, but I will sleep soundly tonight, regardless of your dark wishes. (At least, I will when I finally get to sleep.) I will come for you by the light of day, and you will regret this decision to go rogue. This, I promise you.
In the meantime, I'm going to play Solitaire on my phone in the dark until I'm cross-eyed and finally yield to unconsciousness.
--Taken from the white notebook, 5/22/12 at 3:57 a.m.
