Insomnia & The Familiar

That's another Shakespeare quote, I recognised it immediately. It's from his poem 'The Rape of Lucrece', I read it a while ago and those lines always struck me particularly.

Insomnia's a bitch. When you feel like dying every day, you begin to look forward to those hours each night you get to spend in complete oblivion (provided there's no nightmares. Although, at least with nightmares, the fear you have is never really localised. That might be the same with the panic attacks awake, actually, but in the dream you're only so lucid, and if you suffer the suffering rolls over you like a wave. It throws you to your feet, but at least you're too dazed to get properly scared. And maybe fear is the most painful part of pain.).

So when you're up at five and the terribly thin curtains are breached, and things start to move, that's the worst part. Or maybe it's when you realise you won't fall asleep. I don't know. The whole thing is awful. And then in the day you're practically delerious. I guess that might feel like a reprieve, but it's not. It's like an ache all through your skull, and how I was back then, I didn't want to be in too much of a stupor to read, to continue my work.

Not a great poem I wrote, I admit; but then, I must have been half-asleep at the time. Danielewski's new book, The Familiar came out two days ago. I picked it up at a store on the day it came out, but I haven't had a chance to read it since then. I'm excited. It's the first volume of a twenty-seven volume series, and this book alone is 880 pages. It's sat on my desk now. I think I'll start reading, maybe put up a few posts on it.

The book has an awesome trailer which you can see here.