5th day of sick. Sore throat and fever, tiredness and blank mind. Slowly getting better. But 2 days ago when the fever was at its highest and I was the most delirious, it happened again. Whole sections of a new book were revealed as if I were listening to a recording of how to do it. So I got up and luckily my cell phone, on the bedside table, has a recording app. So I talked into it, hopefully getting everything I had heard...though the sound of my own voice seemed to wipe out the delicate memory, so I had to talk fast and abbreviate. The only way I can explain it, since it's happened twice now, is that I the conscious day-to-day mind is so crammed full of details having nothing to do with what you are writing that the thoughts you need can't get through. When your mind becomes stupid and empty, as it does during a fever, what you were looking for just floats in.
Today I read that Mailer took mescaline for the first time when he was struggling for the ending to his book Deer Park which had a next-day deadline, and the last 5 sentences came to him through a glittering, golden something or other.
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