Nychtophilia, or Phoebe

This is my first attempt at stream of consciousness. Not great by any means, but I really enjoyed working on it.

I take out another cigarette, cradle it between my teeth, close my lips around it and brought it to life with a flick of my lighter. It tastes just like the sky tonight looks: blacker than midnight on a moonless night. Why am I at a loss for words? Literally. Christ, this used to come easier to me than breathing did. For someone so obsessed with the English language, you would think this would be second nature to me, and for a while it was, in fact, his used to be such an integral part of my essence, my very being, that for a period of time at twelve or thirteen years I could see myself as an author similar to the likes of Stephen King or Terry Pratchett or some other geeky f**k who it seemed like could never run out of ideas even if every so often an idea was more of a bunt than it was a home-run.

In the scheme of things who has it better, the person with nothing to offer in the idea department or the person whose ideas are mostly s**t? Since s**t is subjective, how can you really determine what it is, and since there isn’t really a possible way to judge everything under the sun how can you REALLY accurately form an opinion on the nature of s**t? Since written works have, over a relatively short period of time, become an artform so irrelevant that The Great Gatsby is considered to be the greatest American novel by the vast majority of the general public who thinks that Cormac McCarthy’s crowning achievement was being a classmate of Harry Potter’s rather than writing Blood Meridian, how can people decide what makes something decent or s**t: can you really criticize something that you have no understanding of, and can you understand something that you have little to no knowledge of? That sounds about as effective as fixing a leaky faucet by taking an electric drill and boring holes into the pipes. What’s even more important than that question however, is the question of how to differentiate between the two, which am I?

I lean back in my chair as I exhale and stare out at the front yard. It’s two in the morning. Really I should be asleep for the sake of my own mental health, but sometimes it’s nice to just enjoy the silence for a while and be alone with your own thoughts, after all solitude is bliss, but Phoebe seems to think that I’m kidding myself and that it’s something else besides solitude and I know in my heart of hearts that she’s probably right because she seems to have a better understanding of me than I do. Maybe it’s because she senses this in me at the moment or maybe it’s because she can’t get to sleep either, the cause isn’t important though so much as the fact that she walks over to me to try and get my attention. She’s got to be the only other living thing awake, and even though I’m deep in thought I finally my head around to acknowledge her, and regardless of the dark I can see her teeth formed into that smile that I’ve become so fond of over the past several years and a gleam in her eyes that it seems like she’s always had and seems like it should belong to someone much younger. I smile at her for a brief moment and she decides I’m taking too long to make a move and figures she’ll start pawing at me for attention since she knows that no matter what annoyed facade I might put on I’ll actually find it endearing. Jesus she really does have me down to a T doesn’t she, or maybe I’m just too predictable, who knows? Either way it works: she sits next to me and I run my hand across her head from front to back and for a minute a wave of calm washes over me, which is ironic because not only is that term a contradiction of itself, but it also didn’t exactly seem to be necessarily fitting for the situation since usually that expression implies that excitement or whatever terminology is the most linguistically pleasing dies down but in this particular case Phoebe’s approaching me was a break in the calm albeit a welcome one so does the term wave of calm REALLY fit this particular situation?

You’re goddamn right it does

Whatever Aristotle was smoking when he said that humans are social animals is something that I would love to get my hands on and use to take me straight into bat country, since it’s so far from my reality since although I can really work a room when I need to and I seem to win people over with a relative ease the whole experience is like I’m watching it happen in a movie rather than actually being there which isn’t to say I’m antisocial or socially retarded as much as it is that I’m overwhelmed easily and don’t really find the idea of going out to the bar and getting drunk and trying to slip your way into the pants of some pretty graduate student to be all that fun anymore. Regardless of my thoughts though Phoebe is the one dramatic exception to this, she’s been living with me for six years now after having been beat up a few times by the b*****d she used to live with and spending some time in a home for the abused, and in those six years that she’s been living with me I’ve been trying to generally be the opposite of what she’s typically experienced but for whose sake is up for interpretation

I continue to brush my hand through her long, reddish gold hair and turn my attention back to the yard, the street and the sky, still deep in thought even though my attention is partially diverted towards my companion. What’s on your mind, Phoebe, I ask her, to which I get no reply. She’s too busy taking in her surroundings to really truly overthink anything, she doesn’t reflect or ponder or dread but rather she focuses her attention on the still of the night, how absolutely naked their cul-de-sac seemed now that the everybody had gone to sleep, how alien and lifeless it had appeared now that the rattling of metal on metal and the noxious smell of exhaust coming from Henry Dailmer’s garage had died down, how completely foreign it seemed now that Helen Eberhart from across the street, who was secretly fed up with her Neat Little Domestic Life and whose husband Robert had yet to find out that the extra money that was coming in from the pies and cookies she was selling from what he understood to be a home business, was actually the just the rent she was collecting from the other neighborhood husbands who were occupying space inside her while her husband was at work, had put her kids to bed, how the air was a silent shroud enveloping everything and only cut by the songs of the crickets singing alongside the owls albeit different melodies, how despite the familiarity of these surroundings they all looked so different with the nocturnal hours caking the face of the street with a layer of foundation. This is where Phoebe’s attention was directed, not inwards. She accepts no explanations and takes no time with introspection. God, maybe that’s why she’s so goddamn happy all the time.

We sit together for a few more minutes, my hand still moving back and forth through her hair until she falls asleep, and as I finally decide I’ll show myself a little bit of mercy and go to bed around the same time the clock strikes 4 o’clock, I can’t help but think to myself, I should be more like Phoebe.

Author's Note

*Ignore grammatical errors
*Can you catch all the references? I've included at least one in almost every sentence.
*What is this actually about?

Reviews

[Flower]

Is it about the struggles of an aspiring author, who is too self critical, has a fear of failure and rejection, and thinks too much? I would need to re-read to extract more, and I think those are the best stories. The type that stir a bit of connection but still, leave you with a bit of doubt. I really enjoyed this; very, very well written.