that niggling feeling

was up until 2 am reading Shamsie's Kartography and then spent another hour and a half thinking, staring up at the ceiling wondering occasionally if i should get up and write an email or write a journal to catch a thread in the stream of thoughts that wouldn't stop and didn't make sense and made sense at the same time. have you ever read a book and couldn't stop turning the page in disbelief saying oh my god oh my god oh my god and wonder what will happen next because you know the character you are the character and you laugh because the idiosyncrasies are spot on you cringe at the pained reaction to all the asinine things you do in real life? trying to live in the now, to be present to the present but the narrative intersperses the past with the present, the past is so present in the present and can you really shake it or is it just an illusion that the past is in the past? i mean in the whole freudian/lacanian sense not in the arbitrary linearity of time. the map of our existence constantly changes but i still go back sometimes and wonder what if this or what if that, how different would things be now, would they be different at all or is that map just an etch-a-sketch pic that disappears with the slightest of movements. and of course i realise i'm thinking all this, and why, because of a book and it's funny how books can do that to you (to me) and i'm wondering why the hell i'm thinking this and it's all so camus and sisyphian and circular and then of course, another brilliant question - do you ever feel like you're living someone else's life followed by would that feeling change if your life were radically different followed by an adamant no no no. can't shake that niggling feeling that we're all just jumping through the hoops of maya, one husk after another but whaddaya do when you're acutely aware of the husk? at this point i want to go to sleep, body is limp but mind is bouncing like a paint mixer. miraculously it happens, not by counting sheep but by setting into motion endless mental playback of radiohead's 'there there'.