PARIS, FRANCE -

Emerging from the Metro station in Montmartre, Paris, the sun plays through a haze that makes all the edges of the city drip with dew. I think back to the maps that got me here.

I came from Germany — a trip in a couchette as resilient as birch wood, to the Metro sub-station in France. Then a quick and jarring ride on the Metro to Montmartre. Paris was going to be a different experience than Germany. The Metro map told me so.

(more…)

BOULDER, CO-

It’s not so much insomnia as it is hypomania.

Anyway, the bottom line is that I can’t sleep. My brain does not stop.

It’s like texting with my best friend. I want to stop, but alas, I can not. (After all, we have things to do — kids to bring to soccer games and tacos to make.) So, we try to stop, we really try. But within fifteen minutes, one or the other of us types, “Hey, guess what I just thought of?” This is how my brain works. I try to stop thinking, then this little voice pipes up, “Hey, have you thought about the implications of cold fusion?”

Who the fuck cares?

But, there it is, I can’t stop thinking about an issue that I have no authority to think about. Sometimes it goes on like this for hours, or days.

I watch the TV to try to turn my mind off. Watching television at four in the morning has a side effect. Infomercial inundation. That’s a problem for me. I am hopelessly naive, and these commercials prey on people like me.

Every night I tell myself not to give in, but resistance is futile. (more…)