I'm back in Los Angeles, again. my jetlag appears to be working backwards this time -- instead of falling asleep at 10 p.m. because it feels like 1 a.m. to my body, I'm just not getting sleepy. which is totally unacceptable given that I am a champion sleeper, and if I don't get the sleep I need, I get sick immediately. I'm fragile like that.

the other wierd thing is that all my dreams for the past week or so, maybe longer, have been chase dreams. I'm constantly in these surreal and perilous situations, and at some point I end up escaping and running and being chased. I don't usually remember my dreams, so it kind of freaks me out when I do. any dream interpreters in the house? they're also really vivid, and when I wake up from them and go back to sleep, they continue.

anyway, I suspect that if I could work the dreams into a poem, they'd stop.

I finished Louise Erdrich's "Baptism of Desire" on the plane. Some of the poems are excellent -- fierce and terrifying. others fell short of the pace early ones had set. she wrote one whole set of them in the middle of the night when she had pregnancy-related insomnia. so if I really can't sleep, I'm going to try to write. and not this drivel, but an actual poem. I'm sure that pregnant insomnia is different from regular insomnia.

OK, that thought is my cue to stop.