I should never stay up late

I'm paying for staying up late. I can hardly work. I've wasted the morning, mostly. I'm taking this break at less than 1200 words to shame myself into writing more.

I'm trying to keep this from being a mere picaresque travelogue of the down-and-out South Bay. My guy spends a lot of time fleeing, though, and I don't know how better to set him up for life with the Boss and later with Candelario than to show his interactions with other people up till then.

I know that at some time I'm going to have to give it a snappier title than Gratitude. For one thing, I don't think it's actually about gratitude.

Now, when the time comes, is Araceli going to tell our guy "Puss in Boots" or "The White Cat" or "One Good Turn Deserves Another?" Probably "Puss in Boots." Still, our guy is not an enchanted prince, he's Faust's homunculus. I should reread Faust.

Faust!

http://www.tonykline.free-online.co.uk/Fausthome.htm

It's not quite true that everything's online, but things like this are. I have to find all the parts where the homunculus shows up. No, I don't, but the cat is outside and I can't vaccuum him.

oops

One's memory does very strange things. I had recalled that Faust made the homunculus to carry out researches and to bring him stuff and so on. Just now I read that somebody else -- Wagner by name -- made the homunculus, and that Meohistopheles employed it to -- well, it gets kind of vague here. Faust's true and virtuous love for Margaret is messing up Mephistopheles' plan. So the homunculus introduces Faust to Helen of Troy. The homunculus has ideas of its own, too.

Anyway, my guy is most certainly not that homunculus. He's more like a genie that is not a djinn, -- I mean a traditional djinnis a demon prince thing that is imprisoned and bargains his magical powers for freedom. My guy was made for this purpose.

That's enough. I'm going to go write at least 500 more words and then tile the wall above the breakfast nook.

2588 words

Not so bad considering that I was laboring at less than 1200. But it's after two, and I haven't done anything else useful, and my eyes are shimmering, so it's time to knock it off.