2004-04-19

I don�t drink coffee. I�ve recently stopped drinking pop (that�s �soda� in Yankee-speak) as well as black teas. I only drink green tea in the mornings. The upshot of all this sanctimonious healthier-than-thou abstention is that on the rare occasion I do ingest caffeine, it fucks my shit spectacularly, as they say, up.

Hence, last night, hours after drinking a cup of black tea I�d mistakenly thought was herbal, I found myself still awake at two-thirty in the morning with my brain performing explosive pinwheels of chemical-studded backwards logic. I had visions of ninjas performing in a chorus line. I had rapid-fire epiphanies of the �three lines of coke past last call� variety, re-examining my life and making sweeping plans for reform; then I started thinking about the nature of the epiphanies I was having as a sort of meta-epiphany; then I thought that if I were a superhero, I�d be �Useless Epiphany Girl�: �Help us, Useless Epiphany Girl! Linear Logic Luthor has trapped us with his Descartian Mind Ray! We need your inventiveness to free us! What should we do?� �Well, you sh�hey, I just thought of an awesome new recipe for sponge cake! Excuse me while I duck into a phone booth to write this down.� And then three years later, I fell asleep.

Today I�m not sleepy, but I know I should be, and I�m skulking around with the feeling that I�m getting away with something. Compounding the notion is the fact that my travel visa will be officially delivered to me today. I�ve got my ticket, I�ve got my visa, I�ve given my notice, I�m going to England and nobody can stop me, The End. And on this self-same day, I happen to have started my new book � a collection of essays written about living overseas (thanks Mom!) � and I�ve bookmarked it, sentimentally, with an old Air Canada boarding pass. Poetic, no?