3:15 a.m.
ephemera #16: insomnia, night visions, and the fierce words of Anne Sexton.
Words fail me today. I only slept three hours, and I feel the full weight of weeks spent juggling the logistics of a new home and curating Literaria. I love both, but this weekend wasn’t a moment of rest; on the contrary, I feel completely exhausted and empty.
To make matters worse, I woke up around 3 a.m. from a nightmare, one of the most intense, and couldn’t get back to sleep. I found myself scrolling through Instagram, a desperate attempt to distract myself from the disturbing images. It’s a hollow way to spend the night, yet sometimes it’s the only way to get through it. I know, I could have read...but, to be honest, my brain wouldn’t have been able to process what I’d read.
Rather than force an analysis I don’t have the strength to write, I’m sharing a visual archive of dreams and nightmares that speak for me.
I’ll also leave you with the words of Anne Sexton, a woman with a rare ability to give complex, intense, and vibrant form to even the most banal and mundane things.
By Anne Sexton
So it has come to this –
insomnia at 3:15 A.M.,
the clock tolling its engine
like a frog following
a sundial yet having an electric
seizure at the quarter hour.
The business of words keeps me awake.
I am drinking cocoa,
the warm brown mama.
I would like a simple life
yet all night I am laying
poems away in a long box.
It is my immortality box,
my lay-away plan,
my coffin.
All night dark wings
flopping in my heart.
Each an ambition bird.
The bird wants to be dropped
from a high place like Tallahatchie Bridge.
He wants to light a kitchen match
and immolate himself.
He wants to fly into the hand of Michelangelo
and come out painted on a ceiling.
He wants to pierce the hornet’s nest
and come out with a long godhead.
He wants to take bread and wine
and bring forth a man happily floating in the Caribbean.
He wants to be pressed out like a key
so he can unlock the Magi.
He wants to take leave among strangers
passing out bits of his heart like hors d’oeuvres.
He wants to die changing his clothes
and bolt for the sun like a diamond.
He wants, I want.
Dear God, wouldn’t it be
good enough just to drink cocoa?
I must get a new bird
and a new immortality box.
There is folly enough inside this one.
A rare opportunity: To celebrate the growth of our community, you can join the Inner Circle at 50% off. I don’t offer discounts often (this is the first one since the start of the year), and it will vanish in just a few days.
Make sure to catch it before the window closes.
That’s all for today.
See you tomorrow for the next Ephemera.
Nicole.
🥀
Previously on LITERARIA:
the geometry of desire.
A quick note before we dive in: I’m honestly overwhelmed by the response to the Eros and Thanatos reading list. Seeing so many of you join lately gives a whole new meaning to my work.
a curated tour of my medieval book collection.
Lately, the Middle Ages have started knocking on my door again. It’s a cyclical obsession, a ghost I thought I had laid to rest years ago, only to find it watching me patiently from behind a row of English and Italian classics and lit-fiction novels read over the last two years.
love is a hook.
Fresh back from Milan, I started reading John Fowles’ The Collector. It’s a book I’ve had on my TBR for a while, one that’s always intrigued me. The moment I saw it on the shelves of the American Bookstore, I absolutely had to pick it up. The first thing I noticed was a French sentence in the preface, which immediately caught my attention and prompted me to do some research.