Insomnia

The night was cold and silent. Inside a little house an unknown writer of short stories sat before dozens of papers each with another idea, but none of the ideas seemed to fit together to one great story. “Nothing but words”, the writer said to himself. He couldn't sleep he had to finish that story. Although he began to hallucinate the papers began to dance a part of “The WestSide Story” he couldn't stop thinking. Not yet. One voice said to him: “Give up, sleep!” and another voice told him: “Nope, sleep can wait a good story can't.”. The voices began to argue like they were rivals for the job of President Clinton. “Shut up!” the author cried and there was silence. He drank another cup of strong European coffee. The doc once told him not to drink so much coffee but the author knew that he was a passionate tea drinker. The old fight between coffee and tea perhaps I should change the doctor, he thought.

“I feel so pretty, oh so pretty...”, a female voice said.
He turned his head and noticed that he should not drink so much coffee. He felt good but the bed looked to him like an attractive woman. What a strange phantasy, he thought, but it was an absolutely wonderful interpretation of Leonard Bernstein's famous musical. Why shouldn't he write about dancing papers and singing beds? Maybe a bit provocative but new. He took his pen and wrote the words fluently on his paper. Although the words seemed to move because of his heavy coffein consumption, the sentences were connected to each other. There was not much sense in his story so he wrote 'modern literature' at the top of the first page. The advantage of modern literature is that even a totally bizarre and unintelligible story is called 'shocking' or 'provocative, but interesting'.
In the background the bed was still singing and the papers in the trash bin performed a new dance. The autor was writing so fast that his hand was bleeding but he didn't notice that. If he would stop his work now he would probably never have the same idea again. He tried to imagine the thoughts of his bed and wrote down the result. The story was absoultely nonsense but much better than thousands of different ideas buzzing around.

As he wrote the last word he suddenly fell into sleep. There were no more singing beds or dancing papers, just a dream about writing a story. But there was still noise in the room a conversation between the bed and the papers.

“Crazy fool!”, the bed said. “I did my best to perform like Maria and he didn't want to sleep on me!”
“Right you are”, the papers said. “Perhaps it is normal for an author of literature.”
“Maybe I just hope he did not mention this terrible bed cover.”
“Good night, bed.”
“Have nice dreams, papers. Until the next writing session...”
“Oh, please don't talk about that!”, the papers sighed.

written by Matthias Jaap (1997/04/02 22:18)