2.32am

ever find yourself just not sleeping when your body really needs to? I am feeling that way now. My face feels sore and hot and my eyes feel like I rubbed them in a sand box but I am listening to inspirational African singers and playing mindless quizzes. I painted a gardenia and quite liked the effect. I am finding the painting so relaxing and yesterday had some downs that I really needed to do the painting.

Hope you like it Mim. :)

I watched a TED talk tonight on learning to speak another language like a native speaker in six months. The principals were not unknown to me but it was good to see them all in one succinct talk and I am going to apply them to my own language learning. This has been sorely neglected in the past week due to the weak excuse of surgery and facial recovery. I shall launch back into the clarinet in a few more days when my cheek is not so tender.  I would really like to be able to speak a second language with some effectiveness.

I should go to sleep but I might watch a movie and cycle my noncycle instead.

Scene stealer 15... http://writetodone.com/scene-stealers-create-a-protagonist/   my response

    In twenty years as a therapist, she was the only one I’d met who maintained eye contact. This was her third session, and she had yet to look away.  I found myself unable to maintain the contact. Every time I glanced up from my notes to ask her a question she was staring fixedly at me. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. This was ridiculous, I am fully trained with decades of experience, I should not be so unnerved by a staring youth. Not a blink or flicker of lash broke that intensity. I reached up and rubbed my forehead imagining I would find blood from the hole in my skull. I sniffed at my foolishness.

“You got a headache Shrink?” her tone suggested concern and I managed a weak smile.

I was in fact developing a headache. She pointed at my glass of water and I picked it up to sip before I had realised I was doing it. I put the glass down very carefully. Her stare seemed to intensify if that was at all possible.

“Do you always stare like that? I hadn’t noticed it so much in our previous sessions.”

She shrugged one faux leather clad shoulder without shifting the arm draped across the back of the couch. I jotted the word faux on my notepad.

“It’s real leather Shrink. Got it in a yard sale. You should drink that water. For your headache.”

I had lifted the glass again and sipped the water before she had finished her sentence. I put down the glass wondering how she had seen what I wrote and wished she would stop staring. She dropped her eyelids slowly over her glistening orbs. My head ache eased and I smiled again but she was looking out the window and didn’t see.

“It must have cost quite a bit.”

“Nah they gave it to me for nuthin’”.

“That was generous of them.” I could not suppress the surprise in my voice. “Why did they do that?”

 “You’re fun Shrink.” She swung her face back toward me and smiled. “I stared them down.”

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