Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2002-06-13 - 10:31 p.m.

Prowling

I'm restless tonight.

Something is calling me, but I don't quite know what it is. I move from one chore to another, waiting to arrive. It's not here, at the sink; it isn't here, sorting the piles of clothing in the bedroom. Perhaps it isn't a place at all.

I check mail, hoping for distraction. Nothing at the moment. I check my writer's site for fellow night owls. All is quiet there.

I wonder if this is when other people turn on the television.

I have a mystery novel, if I want to go to bed and read it. I've read it before - we're down to slim pickings. In fact, I have read the series, over the years, in and out of order, until I become confused: is this character not dead yet in this one, or is this after he turns out to have faked death and become an undercover agent? Not that it matters. Tonight I will read a page, and then another, and then realize I am only sliding my eyes over the print, my mind having wandered away to worry some other bone entirely.

A friend appears on icq. I consider a conversation, but realize I have nothing coherent to say, and no patience for a piecemeal conversation. I want depth, I want intensity, I want to finish the dishes, I want to go out for Indian food.

I think of a bath, one of my favorite soporifics. I don't need to go to sleep, but I am bored - with so much around me to do. I could run the bath, a hot one; but in a few minutes I am sure I would run the scented water down the drain, begin again to prowl, picking things up and putting them down somewhere else. Wondering if I should have forgone that afternoon coffee. Looking for a way to harness the edge, turn it into letters or articles or a gleaming kitchen floor. Not finding enough edge to get a grip on.

I wish I weren't alone. Maybe this is lonely. Is this what lonely feels like? Or is it only the wish that another person would tell me stories now, sing to me, tell me of their lives and hopes, take me somewhere to see something I haven't seen?

I've seen everything here. I've seen it twice. I have found most of it and brought it home and put it away and gotten it out and used it up and dusted it and put it in a new place and put it back where it belonged. I have left it out and swept it up and offered it to guests and carried it out to the garage and lost it and run into it years later. There is nothing new here to see.

I want to have Indian food. In India.

The girls are in bed. I wish they weren't; if they were up, they would bug me with requests for scotch tape and permission slips and what's for dinner tomorrow, until I would be cross and wish them into bed again.

I am confined; I am at loose ends. I am diffuse, I am driven. I am tired, but I am ready in a moment to be spirited away by some magic, some boat that may arrive unexpected, bearing tales and foreign spices.

It's late in the year for Spring fever, but I am seldom on time for anything.

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