A Helpful Dream

Still not writing. But I did go lie in bed and read the last three pages of Lolita again. So now I've found two writers whose work consistently yields some lesson or pleasure every time I pick it up: Joyce and now Nabokov. I'm sure there are others! I spent twenty years re-reading Joyce and wouldn't touch Nabokov because of the lurid reputation that Lolita had acquired (even though I read it myself when I was a drunken collegiate lout). Which just shows what a fool I am.

Anyway, I was reading the final three pages when H.H. is standing there at the canyon's edge and hears the whispering of children at play. That passage is so satisfying that I decided to close my eyes and think about it awhile and my thinking slowly faded into sleep but right at the edge of sleep, just when my thoughts stop being my own and become someone else's, I heard this voice telling me that I should not judge myself too harshly, but should do my duty by my characters and give them the best possible story in which to live, and that when I'd made a good-faith attempt at this I would be free of them and could move on. This seemed like such wonderful, sensible advice that I promptly relaxed and went to sleep.

You might think that I awoke from my nap refreshed and that perhaps I tumbled drowsy and happy to my keyboard where the words came forth in a golden flow; that hasn't happened, I'm sorry to say. Apparently procrastination trumps epiphany.