Snoring Myself Awake

Saturday 24th October 2009 

AM

Least: Pretty close to 10:00am, I sat on the train facing a professional looking young woman who appeared to be doing something important on her laptop. After a few minutes, I couldn't help noticing her horrible nervous habit. Every few seconds, she picked or bit at her crumbling cuticles and fingertips. With each bite, a tiny piece of skin would disappear into her mouth. Rather than being embarrassed by this habit, she seemed to revel in it one tasty morsel after another.

Most: At about 9:30am, I opened Nostromo to chip away at a few pages. Even though it is a dificult read, it is amazing that the novels location, Sulaco is completely fictional, with almost nothing historical about it. This is in stark contrast to Conrad's other novels which are steeped in his personal experience. Although, I have read Nostromo before, I don't think I gave it the time it deserves - which it a lot.

PM

Least: Sometime between 5:37pm and 6:30pm, I snored myself awake on the train home from Wakayama. I must've been asleep for about ten minutes, but I'd slipped into a deepish sleep. The last couple of weeks with the flu and the knock to the head have exhausted me and it didn't take much of the train rocking to send me into a blissful sleep. The sleep was not quite deep enough though, to insulate me from my own snoring. I shudder to think what the expert sleeping Japanese thought

Most: At nearly 7:00pm, I watched the back of my train disappear north as I stumbled up the Mikunigaoka steps in a sleepy daze. For the next ten or so minutes, I sat on the platform. This time, unlike the past five or six months, I was shivering with cold. The wind racing down the tracks had a distinct chill that reminded me of the weeks after I arrived in Osaka. The chewing gum chipper had moved underground into a sea of blackened gum.