It was like two o'clock in the morning when I was startled awake. It was an old feeling and that shook the sleep from my head and started to thread needle points into my spine. I recognized it like some nasty troll come back from the dark territories looking for some place to intimidate and I regretted immediately having the nerve endings to see it and to internalize it. The room was crowded. I was stark naked alone but everything else was there squatting on my head. Can't lie still. Can't run away. Can't tell the truth and can't tell a lie. Can't do anything quiet. Except fall. Fall and twist through overheated synapses that pressurize on contact and build beyond control. Need Escape would be an apt here. Get me out is all your brain can shout but it was too late for that. I was having a dream. I had to dive underneath the water. I had to fetch something down there or to meet someone below the surface. And before I knew it - wham - there was electricity running through me like I was a wire. I limped outside and ran my eyes against the stars. Overhead the night sky was beautiful and catching and took you away to beautiful ends the way it does and overlays you in the drunken asides of songs. Down below however there was a different equal sign. Do you try and convince yourself hey this is all just in my head? When what's happening amounts to your body being squeezed and atomized and you think wait a minute I'm disappearing? Perhaps my greatest fear would be losing a sense of humor that I've had since birth. If I can't laugh then I can't be serious. And it's not for a lack of maintenance! I could sit on the back porch forever. Like some exercise in extreme sitting and watch the world turn and go away and have it not miss me as though there was the sky and this was the face of a mountain. But I like to participate. I like to be somewhere. I like to have attention. Even if desires lose out to a moment in time - and what you have is all this shit surrounded by futility - ah the fucking life of it! - the point as I was seeing it last night was this total freaky moment. How do you pull back from something that's in your head but is not necessarily your thoughts? And I had this weird image sitting on the porch. It was a calculation. Which in itself was strange. But here it is. There are only fourteen weekends in a summer... Now whose idea was that? And those weekends go fast. So fast enough you're scared if you look at them squarely.
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How do you figure it? I walking along a street on the way to a used bookstore. And a bee flies into my face. What's the chance? Of all the used bookstore streets in the world I had to walk into this one. So the bee stings me on the right cheekbone. Ever been hit by a hammer in the face? Not that I have but that's what it felt like. From nowhere. Both me and the bee. How come? That's what I was left with. Thinking how come? First response: swat the bee. Second response: how come? Are they somehow different?
Better to be around than to simply look around. That last taste of honey at the bottom of the tea cup is so worth it. A little surprise down there. Robert Duvall had a line in the movie Get Low - or says something like it - "I planned on traveling a lot, but never really got nowhere special."
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