observations (non-fiction)

dreams

The dreams from which I wake are, on rare occasions, not so distinct from those I enter when I open my eyes. It is that gentle time before dawn and I am inexplicably out of bed, my soul-brain called to that time of morning only nature and the insomniac can know. I slip my way through the void, kicking slippers and trailing my palms over rough, painted plaster until I find glossy coolness beneath my fingers.

Unlatching the door, I step outside. It is strangely warm for a winter morning. I later wonder if this has anything to do with high pressure or the orange sky that rises as I watch clouds of incense pool away in the breeze.

Everything in my body heightens. I resist the urge to run, away from the darkness, back into the house. I stay. I stay, letting my eyes adjust to the distance.I hear faraway windchimes and trees whispering through tongues of rattling leaves; a single streetlight serves as a lighthouse on a distant horizon. Swarms of birds and bats dance along the morning zephyr to their place of wake or rest. The electric cloak of darkness lays upon my shoulders, as I am knighted with new vision: promise and potential threatens to burst forth as the sun rises from its eastward slumber.

I do not simply embrace what was once my biggest fear, but wear it, feel it in my mind with its corners and textures. The single street light, burden of night passed unto another for the day, now goes out.

I go inside. I am invisibly changed. The dark veil is restless in my bones.

There is stirring elsewhere in the house. I set my coffee to grind and turn on the lights.

what's the point

Around and around in my head an endless carousel unable to enjoy life the moment of living the presence of being here wanting to be at work not wanting to be at work what is work what is play spending money keeping money getting manipulated into purchase and sell and buy and buy and want and feel and throw up being lonely then not wanting others and missing a vital state of equilibrium the world is good the world is malice being here is not good enough being there is a distant abstraction running and circling and fighting and giving up and friends and enemies and fools and wise men and hot and cold and love and guilt and shame and observing the absurdity of a never resting mind is one of the few things that can give me five minutes of peace

Not worrying about here or there or anywhere hands moving at an unprecedented pace motivated by emotional motion the galvanized motion of a tightrope walker who runs and slips we never see the slip only the walk though the slip feels like what I am doomed for any time it runs through my fingers and it slips falls but what I cannot ever understand is that he slips but never ever hits the ground

I am normal I am special I am freak I am tempted to make this rhyme like that Meredith Bitch song but that is far too cliche and I do not have the word is it not miraculous how many words can evacuate my skull and synapses when there is no punctuation no order no dam to keep the flow in or banks to shape its course around and spiral and flow and down and up and wet and dry and rocks like a snake and a shell and a peacock feather encaptured in a clam and a pearl that opens to reveal the contents of things that are too good and holy to ever dare touch with a word

It's okay to feel sick. It's okay to sit with anxiety. What else are you going to do? You can't run away from it. You can't run away from yourself.

water

I've often dreamed of dark lakes, terrifying bodies of water where I'm walking in a forest until I slip and drown into the abyss, clutching at wet, slippery roots and grasping at clumps of mud in an attempt to swim to the surface. But every time I fail, and it gets me, and it pulls me down, until I wake up.

skink

As we walked through the corridor yesterday I noticed a skink. "Look!" I laughed and said, pointing, and ____ came up behind us and said "the poor thing is just going to be wandering around until it dies." He tried to grab it in his blunt hands, without force, and I saw him for a split second as a boy once, who perhaps saved lizards and tried to save the creatures that got lost, though this skink "really doesn't want to be saved." He said he needed a plastic tub, and ____ came up seemingly from nowhere and offered him one. They got the skink into the tub and put it outside in the bushes, where it might live a happy life, but "will probably get snatched up by a bird in eight hours, but it's better than being found dead by a child in two months' time".

It got me wondering if I'm the skink in the universe's great plan, whether I'm just trying to avoid the hands that carry me back to the path, to just get in the damn tub. Even if what seems like safety to me keeps me away from predators, is it better to die in nature's ebb and flow or to unceremoniously turn to dust, a corpse alone, away from the path? If one is to die anyway, perhaps it might be best to listen to the hands of the universe; some great creature we cannot comprehend trying to get us out of our own way.

han san

Life doesn't need to be mystical to be fun. You know what's not mystical? Hand sanitizer. You know what ends up half the time being goopy as fuck and leaves you wondering if it works? Hand sanitizer. You know what's in front of me on my desk, along with four students just as lazy as me? That's right, hand sanitizer. I still have the same bottle in my car as I did in 2020.

disappearance

Today I woke up and felt as if I was missing something, or as if something had disappeared. Both _____ and I felt this way, but we haven't forgotten anything as far as I know - laptop, keys, wallet, food, and whatever else. But I still can't shake the feeling. It's a little odd, not really bad, but moreso anticipatory.

You know, I'm always hoping for and living in a state of anticipation for something to happen, which it probably will. But I also just started having thoughts about the end of the year - what will I do for four weeks without my work friends around me? I'll probably catch up with _____ to go somewhere or do something, but what about the others? It'd be nice to have some pretense to see them over the holidays. Universe, if you feel like granting a wish, make it so.

Anyway, it's quiet. I'm all alone in my office and I've got to keep my head and heart open so I don't get overwhelmed by the day. But if I get to see _____ tonight, that'll also bring a smile to my face.

I miss seeing some of my other friends. It's more like excitement and yearning to make lots of new friends and connections here, to feel like I have overcome and worked through a lot of my fears. Maybe I will just take some space for my intuition today instead. And just go through my papers, or do something similarly meditative. I feel a little sick because I forgot to eat something proper. Protein bar for me.