Somnambulism...

MORE Nights in the Rough: I woke tired with enough sleep, sore, as I have been the last couple waking, then went to the bathroom & discovered my brand new deodorant is missing. Looked everywhere, but know what happened. There NO reason it would have been moved unless the subconscious Id has coming to surface to work my body when I'm sleeping like a robot. Yup, I'm #sleepwalking again. That explains also the soreness, the bruises & tender spots, caused by my somnambulist activities. This is very distressing. I HATE being out of control. And what can one do when they're entirely unawares? I even tranquilized myself slightly with Benadryl due to excessive itching last night. I would think that would have sedated me enough not to roam. I guess I'm wrong. I really don’t know what to do… I feel entirely lost.

The Book of Werewolves by Sabine Baring-Gould

A very comprehensive book, written in the nineteenth century, regarding berserkers, werewolves, other metamorphic changes from humans to animals, witches, ghouls, and particularly, cannibalism, which riddled the pre-Victorian Age, lingering in some isolated communities when the writer was collecting his research. There is so much cannibalism it could be retitled The Book of Cannibals.

The last third of the book loses its lycanthropic focus for the cruelty of torturers, the bathers in the blood of children, the killers and eaters of children, and ghoulish misdeeds in cemeteries. All are very disturbing. Each of the later scenarios are given to excessive details that seem almost as filler to bulk up the pages and could have easily been excluded.

The first third was far more interesting and I give that 3 ½ stars, while the later runs between 2 ½ and three, thus disappointing.

Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton

It takes place in about a year’s times, dealing with frequent isolation in a rural house with no electricity during the crisis of a fragmented love affair with a younger women. There is much beauty in her paragraphs and grandiose depression smeared across many a sentence. There is also the dilemma of misconception bothering her enormously. This is the misreading of one of her recent collections of poetry, which leave many of its readers with a false impression of the poet. She professes not to be wise and despises fallacies as she undertakes to personally respond to all the letters she is sent. Little details of the feral cat, other wild critters, various literary readings elsewhere, and vacations, swim about and show us a very human artist confronting her insecurities and bouts of melancholy. I loved this work, finding myself in much of what she says, and give it 4 stars.

The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood

Recently I finished reading the immensely entertaining The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood. It is actually two books in one. The first, 'The Last of Mr. Norris', is the better of the pair & I would actually give 4 stars out of 5, while the second, 'Goodbye to Berlin', although still good & interesting, gets 3.5. Some will know the material because this is the foundation for the movie Cabaret, but so loosely based, No Kit Kat Club, no amazing Sally Bowles performances (she is a singer, but briefly in a low grade nightclub), no bisexual intrigue. One wonders why the musical or the movie, being vastly different, even uses it at all. Why not make up their own characters when you've made up your own scenarios? Isherwood is a genius for detail. He can describe a scene or a character where I am envious as writer, wishing I had half his talent. I highly recommend this as a window into that time when Berlin was on the edge after the First World War & during the global economic collapse, which harmed Germany immensely, when the Communists and Nazis were battling in the streets to get control, and when Jews were beginning to feel the strain of sadism while still remaining in the folds of humanity, able to walk the streets freely.