Now I'm in a state of just not wanting to bother eating. It's like sleep. When it comes to lack of sleep the first 24 hours are the hard part, then everything seems easy for a while.

But with eating, or lack of eating, my stomach gets all knotted and warped. Everything makes me wanna retch, but retch what?

Retch up my life, maybe.

That might feel fine for a second, but then there'd be that sudden overpowering regret that there would be no more anything and that would be a sorry way to be.

So today I am trying to think of how best to satisfy this indifferent desire (is there such a thing?) to eat. Or shall I just drink coffee for the next 6 hours and retch that up, instead?

I am listening to a midi version of the song "Braaaaaazzziiiiiiiiiilll" over and over and over.

In recent weeks I've been trying to establish a routine for my daily life. I like a routine. I'd like to be the kind of guy who gets up at 6:30 every morning, takes a shower, makes some eggs, does some sit-ups, drinks some coffee and watches some TV before getting to work at least 1 hour before everyone else in the office.

But the fact is that some days I do get up at 6:30, but other days I sleep until 9:30, skip the shower, skip eating anything or even checking to see what the weather will be like, and get to work 2 hours after everyone else. I leave the radio and the TV on all day while I'm out, and turn them off the moment I get home, even though I wish I was the kind of guy who came home and at least watched the nightly news.

The centerpiece of my so-called routine is leaving work at a decent hour, like 6:30, getting home by 7:00, practicing scales and Schubert for at least one full hour, cooking dinner and playing Doom, then watching TV or getting drunk or both.

I did this for a couple of weeks. It felt fresh, like a new life.

But it did not last long, though nothing should stop me from resuming it.

But I think it's metaphorically similar to a blank canvas, or a blank sheet of music paper.

Franz Schubert was said to be inspired to compose songs simply at the sight of blank staff paper.

Or maybe he had that cyclothymic condition that Handel and Vincent Van Gogh had, in which they went through episodes in which they could not stop creating.

I saw a news story once about medical and scientific research into cyclothymia and posthumous psychoanalysis of Van Gogh.

The report focused, though, on how this condition manifested itself in more ordinary people, and in particular they focused on the artwork of an amateur painter from the Horror Vaccui school.

This fellow, whose name I forget, could not stop producing mediocre paintings. Dozens of them every week. And when the story ended the reporter wrapped things up by saying that cyclothymia might seem to put creative artists of genius at an advantage, but that while Van Gogh was a genius, this amateur painter was not.

Somehow that did not seem like a nice way to end a story about someone with a chronic and fairly serious condition.

But I prefer to stare at a blank wall rather than a pretty painting. Who needs a painting or a drawing to do the thinking for you? A blank wall, a blank sheet of paper, these things challenge you to think of something. Anything. Ask the wall a question, demand of it an answer.

So I find repetition inspiring.

The "Pain Web" is my name for the Paine-Webber Building in midtown.

I have no moribund associations of my own with the building or with that company.

I call it the Pain Web because while looking for a job in midtown back in 1991 I was walking along Central Park South when I looked south and saw the Paine-Webber Building. But some of the lights were blown out, and others were obscured, so to me the sign simply read "Pain Web."

And I imagined that such a description might be pretty meaningful to some of the people who worked there. And in fact a couple of years later I met a person who worked the graveyard 11:00 p.m. - 6:00 a.m. word processing shift in the Paine Webber Building, and he got a nice long laugh out of my Pain Web joke.

Now I work in the shadow of the Pain Web, and I feel fine.

What if The Sheraton's enormous neon sign lost some letters and at night all you could see was "he at"?

Wouldn't they need to know? Haven't they hired people to watch these things?

I was thinking that the Sheraton, which is also visible through my office window, really needs to be informed that some of their letter-lights are getting a little tired. The "t" sort of quivers at the middle. And for several days the "r" was totally dark.

I think what I'll do is address several envelopes to "Mark Thomas, Department of Light" at various neon-sign-enhanced business establishments throughout the city.

Every month or so, or maybe with greater frequency, I'll send a note to myself at these businesses with information about how the lights are doing. Hopefully, someone who reads the mail will route it to some department which could theoretically be a Department of Light, and they will open the letters and read them and be informed.

I want green "Department of Light" files to be created in cabinets across the land. I want my name to appear in corporate memos as the person to whom all light reports are credited.

In fact, I think I'll do this right now. I'll be right back.

I'll do that tonight.