Today would have marked my Grandma and Grandpa's anniversary. Nigh on 50 years, it would have been. There is a strange calm in the house, as we don't really speak of it. We ignore it. Dance around it. Give in to whims, and passing fancies. Grandma holds up. I forget. Mom marks time. We only have time here.
I walked into work today with a glow about my brain like none that I've had in a long while. A comfort had descended upon me after a night of restlessness and insomnea. Sleep? Not to be found. Nothing more than a few scraps wrapped up in anticipation and nervousness. I said my piece, did my song and dance, and came through with a triumph that was almost comical in nature. I must repeat my performance tomorrow, but damn if my shoulders aren't more relaxed.
There's a knot that comes and goes with life. It races up and down a back, in a stomach, in the back of a mind. It crossees in front of vision, and through chests, and deep into the labyrinth of our bowels. And sometimes it erupts and sometimes it fades. Mine has faded, albeit temporarilly, and for certain shall be diminished. But never completely banished. That is the terrible comfort that it brings. Familiarity in discomfort's solace...whatever that really is.
After a while, here at home, I fell asleep, and dreamed. I have no memory of it, but I awoke with a start and more tired than I had been before my eyes closed and Morpheus took me. I woke up fighting something. Or maybe clutching to something--or someone--for dear life. Whatever it was, I let go when my eyes popped open.
I've written some. Deleted it. Wrote some more, and then walked a way for a while. Read.
I'm strangely at peace, if only for a moment. Tired. Burned. Alive. Everything is neurons firing, and cones having light bounce off of them. Touch and taste. When I close my eyes, I don't see anything. Just the filtered glow of light through my lids. Imperfect black. Undarkness. There are images flashing like ghosts of moments ago tha play across my retina, burned there by a soft glowing monitor, or a bright flash of light from a passing headlight.
I've opened the door. Just a crack. The trick is to figure out how to walk through it, and into the night. Into the light. Just pass...and go...and dream...and live the life of a conquering hero, left to the spoils of success, or at least the risktaker. Take my thrown and my crown, and try not to feel bad when "they" laugh at me, The Fool of the Festival.
There are clouds gathering, and the sky tribe is looking for its newest martyr. Perhaps I will give to the cause, and live with my head above the clouds, and try not to look down at the Earth too often, for fear that I will fall. That it will swallow me up and bury me deep enough to be forgotten.
Or perhaps I will fly. Perhaps.
The trick is to not get distracted by all the things that you desire. Just live them. Don't be lead by them--D-e-s-i-r-e-s. Fulfill them, as best as you can. Jump when you need to.
Impulse.
It's like watching someone else jump, or kick, or anything that you've done before. You feel it. Sympathy reactions. Your knees twitch when they approach the line, your feet move when you see them step. Twitch. Watch it strain. Feel it in your bones, and in the wonders of muscle memory. Here. There. Knots forming and disappating like apparitions across your eyes when waking from a dream.
It all seems like so much stuff of dreams. Five years of work and play. Four years of school and friends. Thirty years of a lifetime. 50 years of a marriage. 16 years of loss. It feels so fleeting...Like thoughts of words. Hopping from here to there. Like Gump's feather on the wind. Blown about on whimsey and desire. So precious. So full of possibility.
"What comes next?"
"Work? Relationships? What channel to flip to next? What?"
"All of it. What comes next?"
"I don't know."
"That's a good answer."
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