You know when you accidentally stay up so late you look at the clock and realize you might not sleep for a few days? So you stop writing, and you try to stop thinking, and you outlaw drawing, and then you think about turning on the television, maybe a DVD will put you straight to bed. But are the two or three hours I get while it's still dark matter at all when it's light? Probably just make it worse. It can always get worse. It could be raining shit, and it can still get worse.

That's where I am right now. I'd like to say I've been working hard, but I haven't. I'd like to say that I was out all night drinking, but I wasn't. I did do a lot of writing. And I did talk to some poets. But that doesn't matter.

I've been trying to explain the feeling when you accidentally stay up for 48 hours. I'm no talking about all-night study sessions mediocre students pull in college or drinking enough coffee and Jolt to get to Fort Lauderdale in good time by driving through the night. What I mean is when you have no mission and no reason to be up this late. When you're not drunk and you're not working, why are you awake? And it's like holding your breath through a long tunnel. You're just taking a tunnel. It doesn't mean anything, and you forget that you held your breath through it five minutes later. But you make it through and wince in the sun. And you keep driving as if nothing had happened.