Queen Mab & Dostoevsky, or What I Did from 9 to 10pm

What an introspective mood I'm in! After reading for 30 minutes or so I could no longer focus on the book and had to put it down. Thoughts are whirling around my mind like dervishes. Like energy pent up in tight muscles, the desire to write is almost physical. I can practically feel the keyboard beneath my fingers but curses; I left my laptop at home.

There has to be some scrap paper around here. I found some lying on top of a stack of old office supplies. Typewriter paper-what a relic! I hope this isn't one of Mrs. M's late husband's effects, something she wants as a keepsake. It's odd paper, kind of like parchment paper and not all that good for writing on. The pen, on the other hand, is my favorite kind: Uniball grip, fine point, blue ink. None of that gel stuff for me.

What was I going to write about, anyway? Queen Mab?

The field off the front porch was beautiful at dusk. The grass was such an intense green that it seemed to permeate the air. Green rising above the trees, fading to evening shade blue where the lights of Manch dot the horizon like low-lying stars.

Queen Mab keeps going around in my head, driving her hazelnut cart pulled by--what was it? Dust mites? Termites? Ha! Poor Shakespeare, over and over in his grave. I picture her with a sword or scepter no bigger than a needle, her hair flying back like Nike's, the spires of her crown ending in spheres. Surely that's an Arthur Rackham illustration. I didn't just come up with it on my own...

What a fever! If I could write the whole world and all of human experience I would start now, tonight. The raccoons would creep out under cover of darkness, the birds would settle among the branches of fir trees, flowers would close their faces to the night and I would write. In the morning the deer herd would come to eat and leave when the lid of the great fuchsia eye lifts, shooting the field with color. I would go on writing, still except for my pen while life moved around me.

I wonder how the literary canon would be altered if people had always had electric light to write by.

Dostoevsky said he expressed himself fully in The Brothers Karamazov. I wonder if he ever changed his mind. Like on his deathbed, did he say, "I want to add one more thing." Is it possible for anyone to express himself fully? There is so much to say, I don't think I'll ever say it all.

It's like music. There's an infinite combination of notes, right? Is it possible that one day every tune will be taken? Whenever I hear a new song on the radio I am freshly amazed at human creativity. To think that a mind put that combination of notes together, creating something no one has ever heard before.

Writing is like that. The material is not infinite but the combinations are. I don't know if I could ever fully express myself...

Once I tried to capture the entire ocean on 4 salt water splattered pages of notebook paper. What chutzpah! But I was 11 or 13 and I didn't doubt that it could be done. Maybe I was older then, as Bob Dylan sang. Now I'd never even attempt it.

I wrote about the ocean while onboard the Coronet. After roaming the ship above and below deck, fore and aft, and delighting in the Coronet's beauties (mahogany paneling, skylights, nook & cranny berths) I leaned over the side, mesmerized by the action of the ship cutting the waves, or waves breaking around the ship. I was mesmerized but I was energized, too, with something like an introspective fever.

Getting my hands on some notebook paper, I scribbled for most of the remainder of the trip in an attempt to describe the ocean and identify the longing it filled me with. I still don't understand that feeling...

What am I going on about? Human experience, wonder? I feel like I'm on that salad spinner ride that demonstrates centrifugal force by pinning people to the wall. Or a giant waterfall is pouring on my head so hard I can hardly stand upright. It's not painful. If the water is life, the motion and force on my body is joy and excitement. All I can do is laugh as the water pounds me...

I have no idea what Dostoevsky was talking about. I really must write about Mab.