Hydroplaning, at 80 mph, in a lightning storm, brings on a certain clarity of vision – mini vision quests in tiny, heart-in-the-throat bites. And so I reviewed…

Recently, a friend of a friend who became my friend, because she enjoyed my poetry reading, showed concern for my nocturnal ways. She told me of her own bouts of insomnia shared the statistical wisdom of studies saying you don’t get good rest when the sun is up, that you don’t get the full functioning use of your brain upon rising.

I want my brain! I thought. So I tried. I’ve been slipping back into a standard sleep cycle. It started to work. Join the world!

But then, careening precariously off the road…it hit me. Joining the day crew was making me feel like Sampson with a crew cut.

NOOOOOOO!

What do I want with conventional thought? Where has it ever gotten me? Even it it’s correct…admitting defeat to it only gives it power. I changed my mind. I don’t want a diurnal life. Screw all those studies that say I won’t get all of my brain unless I sleep the night away. They can’t hold my thoughts hostage, with letters behind their names like loaded guns to the back of my head.

I defy them!

I don’t want ideas to come from neatly stacked, lined up, fully rested brain cells. I’m more interested in the stuff between the brain cells, in the cracks – the shadow thoughts that swim in red lines in the eye. I want my addled synapses bumping into bats when ideas drip, thick and syrupy, off the branches of the world tree, post midnight.

Have you ever cackled, fuck laughing, CaCkLeD, by yourself, at 4:30 in the morning, to amuse no one but you (the mark of comic genius is not mastering the art of entertaining others, but rather learning to stop worrying about entertaining anyone but yourself)? It’s liberating.

Cackle kids. Cackle!

PAX!