Tales of ordinary madness

The second story in the New York Times Magazine this week-- not the cover story, but the one that is just behind it in terms of length and, presumably, importance-- is an essay exploring the earth-shattering proposition that jet lag can be kind of weird. Apparently, under the right conditions, a human being may find him- or herself awake and alert at 3 am, or getting sleepy at noon, or maybe even both in the same 24-hour period.

According to the author-- who mentions in passing at the very beginning of the article that she is, under normal circumstances, sound asleep by 9 pm each and every evening-- a varied sleep schedule can produce unusual changes in mood and temperament. She then spends a few thousand words describing these changes in some detail.

I find all this worthy of comment not because the effects of occasionally staying up all night are a revelation to me, but rather because they aren't. The strange parallel universe of jet lag which this writer seems to find so interesting (she actually witnesses people leaving the clubs as they close-- imagine!) closely resembles what I would characterize, for lack of a better term, as my day.

And not even the most interesting part of my day, either. I feel as though I've just read an article on what it's like to take a crap: it's not something that I read about very often, but neither is it something that I feel is breaking a whole lot of new ground. For example, it's ten minutes to 7 am as I write this, and I haven't been to bed yet. On the other hand, there have been days in the last month when I fell asleep at 10:30 at night only to pop awake at 3 am. So, yeah, lady; I guess it's news to you, but not everybody retires and wakes within ten minutes of the same 8-hour range every single day of their goddamned lives.

That said, I do think this author has an interesting story to tell. It's just not the one she's telling here.

See, if you want to shock me with tales from the lunatic fringes of human existence, don't tell me what it's like to close down a bar at the exotic, otherworldly hour of 2:30 am. I know that. No, if you really want to blow my mind, tell me instead what it's like to be the sort of obsessive-compulsive freak who is in bed by 9 pm every night of the week, with the week's underwear preselected and stacked in reverse chronological order in the dresser drawer. You may think this perfectly normal, but for me, it's the real-life diary of a madman.

What I'm trying to say is that, for all of us, buried in the personal cosmic background radiation of one's ordinary, day-to-day existence may be a few things that one's fellows might regard as quite extraordinary-- things others don't know, but would like to. Good stories, in short.

We all remember our wild, once-in-a-lifetime adventures; those are the stories we trot out when stories are required. But we tend to forget that the nuts and bolts of our day-to-day lives must inevitably include a few loose screws, and that what seems commonplace to us may be, um, riveting to others. Just because washing your hands 40 times a day has gotten boring for you doesn't mean we don't want to hear about it.

And yes, this did occur to me in the context of a possible tack for writers or radio producers (whom I may or may not know) in search of material for certain hypothetical literary magazines and/or audio journals. Like you hadn't guessed. One has to take subject matter where one can find it, after all, and if you've got a topic that requires no research beyond the confines of your own skull; well, to my way of thinking, that's a pretty cushy assignment.

Only slightly less cushy (though perhaps sometimes less embarrassing as well) is the task of documenting the ordinary madness of others. Ira Glass once got a solid seven minutes out of a pair of sisters who, for 15 years, had communicated with each other almost exclusively through use of a hand puppet. They had come to think of this as unremarkable (though, when pressed, they conceded that others might find it strange).

Anyway, it's just a thought. Isn't that right, Mr. Quack?