Fingering the Rough and Scrunching the Eyeballs

It's pretty much 3 in the morning and I can't seem to get down to sleeping. :((((((((((
My night after dinner was spent painting my nails while listening to a drama CD (#12 of the Fushigi Koubou series with Takahashi HIroki, which wasn't tooo impressive), and then going through my wardrobe and being dismayed and dully depressed by the amount of under-worn clothes and foolish buys. I then stumbled upon my old notebook in which I copied out bits of books as I read them, and entertained myself with that for a bit. Following which, I did some fresh copying in my current notebook as I continued to make my way through my collection of W. Somerset Maugham short stories, Far Eastern Tales. I chanced upon the book in that lovely bookshop on Marylebone High Street, was taken to it, but set my heart on buying it after seeing mention of Tanah Merah (an area in S'pore) on the very first page. Got it off Amazon, though, as I was already clutching three other volumes coaxed off the quaint wooden shelves that day. But yes, I finished the third story in the collection, "P. & O." just now, and it impressed me a lot more than the first two did, and Maugham has shot up in my esteem. The first story was nice enough, but a little on the predictable side, perhaps. The colonial coating made it more enjoyable than it might have been in another setting, perhaps. The second was more a ditty than a short story, and was amusing in its own way. But the third, however, was filled with lyricism and tinged with mysticism. Perhaps ending on a minisculely trite note, but you could put that reaction down to my once not so latent cynicism that still loiters. A selection of some of the bits I copied out:

She was occupied with her own thoughts. They crowded upon her when she was sewing; they came between her and the novel with which she sought to cheat their insistence.

-

'And at that age you feel that you can't afford to throw away the chance of happiness which a freakish destiny has given you. In five years it will certainly be over, and perhaps in six months. Life is rather drab and grey, and happiness is so rare. We shall be dead so long.'

-

With the suddenness with which after tropical rain in the spring you seem to see the herbage grow before your very eyes, she saw him go to pieces.

-

A late star twinkled palely close to the horizon. There was a shimmer on the sea as though a loitering breeze passed playful fingers over its surface.


I continued flipping through my quote books while listening to anime soundtracks, and then tried to fall asleep. Failing which, I did the worst thing I could possibly do in such a state - turned on the computer. Hah. And here I am.

And here I shall present a number of bits from books that I copied out with the theme of "Sleep".

* Travels with A Donkey in the Cevennes - R.L. Stevenson *

I questioned at first if I were sleepy, for I felt my heart beating faster than usual, as if with an agreeable excitement to which my mind remained a stranger. But as soon as my eyelids touched, that subtle glue leaped between them, and they would no more come separate. The wind among the trees was my lullaby.

~

What seems a kind of temporal death to people choked between walls and curtains, is only a light and living slumber to the man who sleeps afield.

~

* Thank You, Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse *

I counted about five more medium-sized flocks, but it was no good.

~

* Stamboul Train - Graham Greene *

If I could sleep, he though with longing, I could remember more clearly all the things that have to be remembered.

~

His face fora a moment disappeared from view as the lights of a station turned the walls of the coach from mirrors to windows, through which became visible a throng of country passengers waiting with children and packages and string bags for some slow cross-country train. With the darkness the face returned, nodding into sleep.

-

And I really should leave it at that and have another stab at invading dreamland. Right ho!