Tuesday morning, 3 a.m.

I've hit the hypomanic high that happens when one finishes a good book.

No, wait. That's not true. "Hemingway's Boat" is more than good. It's great. It is, in fact, the best book I've ever read on the Papa saga. That's no hyperbole.

It's 3 a.m. as I write this. And now I'm alive, full of ideas, ready to write, ready to read. Which is a good thing because I received word today a book proposal I've submitted was accepted! But, more on that later.

Minimized in the right corner of my Mac are three articles. One is a 2004 New Yorker profile of the just-retired knuckleball Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield. Another is a New York Times piece on CBS correspondent Lara Logan. The third is "Goodbye to All That," Joan Didion's 1967 elegy to New York. I just now had to put down the next book in my queue, "Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines A Life" by Ann Beattie. It's weird, but it's literate. I'll keep reading.

Now I'm starting to feel the crash, brought on by exhaustion, by the lateness of the hour, by the final remnants of illness.

Some take drugs. Others jump out of planes. Me? I read books. I listen to music. I watch movies. I write. I dream. I love.

Time to sleep.