tossed and turned

Attempts at sleep foiled by staring at the ceiling thinking. It was one of those nights where the breezes were blissful and I missed having roommates to sit on the half-finished front porch with or drive around all night listening to music and talking or taking a long walk along the dark beach a few blocks over.

I don't know why I love the nights so much, and why they bring these kinds of things out in me, maybe all those great memories of sitting on the back porch with my sister and our friends melting candles together into a huge pile of swirling wax or all those nights of driving of aimless driving to good music, singing classic rock songs in stupid voices, chilled out cruising to Massive Attack through the rain. I'm a nostalgic sap I guess.


The writer's block is unrelenting, attempts to break on through to the other side meet with mixed results. I'm envious of those who capture the world they see in crystal clear detail and vivid story, even more envious of those who can conjure entire worlds and make them convincing like Tolkien did. Randal got it right when he said that no one else could really do the swords and quests thing afterwards in a way that's really any good.

That being said, being a geek of the first degree, mad props to Tolkien for giving me swank stuff to read in my formative years, for being way smarter than me, for starting a book club for the drinking of beer and reading of epic poetry (which I'd love to start, if I had homies who were into that stuff), for writing about hobbits and Middle Earth and inspiring generation after generation of The Kids. My sister and I had maps of Middle Earth and she had the old 70's stoner poster below on our door. I never made any pretensions to coolness, because this stuff is great. We still are such geeks.

and of course, the Zeppelin.