Over the last few days, I've had a general sense of unease about nothing in particular. I get these periods, spells, whatever you want to call them, periodically--they come and go like the weather. I'm not sure what triggers it. Maybe it's the short story I'm working on, which is very personal--even autobiographical--and is dredging up unpleasant memories. Maybe it's that I feel swamped with "real" work right now. Or maybe it's the change in the weather, which is always a bit unsettling. I find myself getting angry about trivial things and sometimes talking to myself, or sighing loudly for no descernable reason. But everything is really all right. Really. Isn't it?

The novel I've been reading, Knut Hamsun's Hunger, probably doesn't help, though it's a thoroughly enjoyable book. It was originally published in 1890 but is written in a modern, stream-of-consciousness style. Apparently, it's the first novel of that sort. It's all about a young man, literally a starving writer, who seems to teeter on the edge of insanity. He walks around the city, following people at random and often haranguing them, while he struggles with writer's block and the rent coming due. The back cover blurb calls it "one of the most disturbing novels in existence" and says that "The whole modern school of fiction in the twentieth century stems from Hamsun." Great stuff.