Am almost too beat to read this evening, but like dear Mr. Neave, I press on. Enjoy a crackling, hoarse, stammering attempt to clamber through Katherine Mansfield’s An Ideal Family, one of the great short stream-of-conscious experiments. Some nights, when I can sleep, I have clay-puppet-wrestling-match dreams of Mansfield and Va. Woolf, and if only I had a television and

Crikes, in the haste of a working week I’d completely forgotten that despite not wanting to go straight to Calvino (because let’s face it, everyone expects Miette to read Calvino, and when have I ever met something so vile as an expectation?), I had mentally dog-eared this one for yesterday. And yes, I could wait a year, but in another year, who’s to say we’ll still be podCASTing at all?

Here’s a nice short one to make up for yesterday’s nice long one. From Robert Walser, a master of the short-short story, and the closest anyone’s come to Swift since Kipling. Basta is one of those fine Italian words that the Germans have managed to appropriate (read: swipe), and I’ve long wished we would adopt it. We, English speakers, you know, not savages.

This is both perhaps just-too-long and read by a just-too-tired head; maybe just assume the intent is to separate the yolks from the hen’s asses… or something. Kudos to you if you make it…

Despite not wanting to overwhelm the Internet(s) with too many Russians in too short a time, Vlad is really a nomad, as we all know, no more or less a Russian than I am a humvee. And yes, I can refer to him as Vlad,

I had wanted today to read Philip Lamantia (what was I thinking?), because he understood living more than I (and probably you, Internet, but that might be presumptuous) ever will, and because he’s now dead, so a tribute seems fitting. But, that said, I don’t think I can read his poetry, because I don’t think it will convey anything at all as it’s supposed to, and besides, Miette’s Bedtime Poetry Hour PodCAST is another project, isn’t it?

A personal secret: I, like many, have long succumbed to seemingly endless bouts of insomnia. It’s not clinical, and I love sleep very much, but I often have a difficult time performing when called on to do so. Bedtime stories don’t help much, because once I find one I’m particularly fond of, I will read all night. Another personal secret: I, Miette, am a bit compulsive with the reading. This could well be clinical, but I’ve never been fond of DSM labels, as we all know.

Some days, especially those in which my lack of tolerance for this city is only matched by my impatience with the job, I suffer the wildest joyriding fantasies of working at a used bookshop. To elucidate, the fantasy usually involves moving to smalltown Americana and opening up one next to a Wal-Mart, grabbing curiosity-seekers on their way out, and making recommendations based on their blue-light purchases. If they were frumpy housewives whose impulse buy was the latest People magazine to go with their two cartons of Virginia Slim 100s and sale-rack throw pillows, I’d toss a Flan O’Connor their way.

Hypnalgiaphobia, the nightly quest for a real OOBE, learning to read more slowly and maybe with no accent, elas, these are the things that make us turn in the wee hours and if ether were the answer I’d be first in line. But maybe a new bed is a fine substitute? Maybe just a bedtime story?

Welcome to this, the humble inaugural edition of Miette’s Bedtime Story Podcast, which is really nothing more than my excuse to have a podcast.

You see, I’ll bet that other people don’t read to you enough. I know that people don’t read to me enough. So this way I can read to you, and then later listen to it myself, and take care of all our problems. Or at least take care of this one. For all of us.