Dream Quest of the Unknown Cat

Twitter Sonnet #22

It seems sleep deprivation for me's changed.
Now I only feel like shit at evening.
Can still almost think and act at close range.
But for distance the will's still found waning.
Lights aren't real 'til they streak across the screen.
Another harvest goes to Yoghurt Mill.
No midget or dwarf is full from a bean.
I should like to talk via Lynch's Lil.
I probably ought to get the mail soon.
Assuming that there's any mail to get.
I think sometimes it goes to Brigadoon.
To sleep and to dream of Nyarlathotep.
Dreamed also of hot dames and Gunga Din.
Both got into my dreams like Errol Flynn.


I don't have very much to say about yesterday--mostly just worked on my comic. I talked to Trisa on the phone a while as I did so, then I listened to Basil Rathbone reading Edgar Allan Poe--several poems and two stories, "The Masque of the Red Death" and "The Black Cat". Like "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Black Cat" features one of my favourite aspects of Poe's genius; to believably portray characters who deliberately do things they know are unwise and subtly suggest the psychological problems these people have that lead them to do such things. The narrator of "The Black Cat" talks about how everyone has done things in their lives precisely because they know they oughtn't, but that doesn't quite explain why he begins to hate the things he loves and then proceeds to feel compelled to love things that lead to his doom and commit actions that can only bring disaster for him. There's an absurdity to it, but there's a real insight into human nature playing underneath. I was reminded of the thin line between horror and comedy--both require absurdity with a certain amount of familiar human psychology. I think sometimes the difference is only a matter of perspective.