Structure

I have been a mad insomniac lately. Well, for the past two years. I love the deep quiet of the night. Everyone is asleep except for me. I hear the slow, steady breathing of people and animals after I've watched my fill of television. I should read, but sometimes I cannot. I exercise, I don't drink caffeine after 3 p.m., I take hot baths, I drink hot milk, I take melatonin, I smear myself with lavender-scented things. When all else fails, and 3 a.m. rolls around and I'm still wide awake, I'll take an Ambien, which only buys me four hours. But at least it's four hours.

Oh, that lovely anxiety. Or pain, or whatever it is.

Today my family went on a tour of the Tesla factory, in Fremont. It was a fascinating and vibrant place, very different from what I had expected. A friend writes software for the cars and took us behind the scenes, to see how everything is put together. The factory is in the old GM/Toyota plant, and only takes up about half (or maybe less) of the space available; some parts of it, in the dark of a unlighted Saturday, made me think of scenes from Terminator. The designers have done a beautiful job, however; the interiors are bright and open and white, Bauhaus-y almost. For a factory, it's quite aesthetically pleasant. The kids enjoyed seeing the robots used to make the stators and rotors; to stamp the huge plates of aluminum to make the car parts; to paint the cars; to move the cars along a track towards completion. I'd seen one of the documentaries about Tesla, so it was especially interesting to be on site and see things in person, observing how Elon Musk wants things done in house, and how his vision extends to small details. I wondered what William Morris would make of the factory, and I couldn't help but think of all the money spent, and the labor involved (or not involved) to make these luxury items, and about the inequality of our economy...but that's another story.

I was also thinking about how to structure the article I plan to write, and on Friday, I'd run across a book that immediately piqued my interest: Oscar's Books: A Journey around the Library of Oscar Wilde, by Thomas Wright. How intriguing to get to know Wilde a little better through his book collection (and annotations!), although one cannot judge a person completely by his library. What did he think of Rossetti and Homer and Flaubert? I look forward to finding out.

Many years ago I briefly dated a very intelligent but socially inept physicist. He was not good at being supportive or reading people, and he annoyed the hell out of me when he said that he could tell who I was by reading the titles of the books in my room. At that time, I was a penurious graduate student, who had about a tenth of the books I have now, but who had of course read thousands more titles than he could see. I found his comment exceedingly hubristic and rude. I told him off summarily. It was probably the first time ever that I had told a man to go to hell and that he had overstepped boundaries, so good for me. It was not okay for another person to sum me up that way, because it seemed like he was calling me ridiculously poorly read, and like he was trying to put me in my place, in a quantifiable box with a label. He did have a point, however: I can tell a story about myself that way, perhaps a very well structured story. I can at least use my book collection as a jumping-off point. As I was thinking some months ago, to someone uninitiated, my books are a jumble of titles crossing many subjects and ideas; to me, they represent a cohesive whole. They do stand in for different aspects of my interests and my personality.

So whence?

A good tale depends on the skill of the storyteller, and the materials available. What story is it that they're trying to tell?

It's about what's put in, what's left out, what's shaped, what's edited. What are the justifications? How much heart is there in the telling? How persuasive is the storyteller? As in Yann Martel's Life of Pi, which version of the story does the storyteller, or the audience prefer? Sometimes we convince ourselves that the more fantastical will be better believed, when it won't, although it is more palliative, both to us and to our audience. There are always subtle clues that help us see the truth, however. Do people symbolize feelings in ourselves that we shy away from? Do we punish ourselves, others, or both for thoughts we cannot express, or express falsely?

Although we know that truth can be terrifying, it usually ends up emerging, anyway. As I tell my sons, "It's best to own it, early and often."

I have begun my outline. The theme is blood.