A Reflection

I sneezed a moment ago; it felt both satisfying (it was not a painful sneeze, as they have been recently) and intoxicatingly nostalgic. It reminded me of the countryside just beyond the gates of Rochester, though I have no idea why. The stoic grooves of the fish hatchery pools, the towering, cracked silos that contain nothing but old air, the rusty sun, the parched horizon, my old car.

It's ridiculous, is it not? A sneeze is meant to be a sneeze, a vehicle of health, not emotion. And, yet, this is not an unusual sort of reaction as of late; no, it is almost commonplace. Everything seems to remind me of something else, and at the strangest times. I'm confident that this comes from my lack of downtime, that I've taken this whole two job thing too boldly, that the stuff of Me, like a pan of boiling pasta whose lid has been left on, is boiling over in objection.

Oh, fun dreams

I just woke up from a really fun dream.
It was a Jurassic Park-type fantasy, all chase scenes, gore, and truly mind-boggling animatronics.
Actually, it was more of one ongoing chase scene, with various, mildly-distracted dinosaurs, giant apes, and other in sundry immediately in tow as we swung, dropped, ran, flipped, jumped (there was a lot of jumping), and so on to our inevitable safety.
The last scene for which I was asleep (instead of vice versa, because instead of missing the rest of the movie for my dozing spells, I am missing it because I have woken up) involved one the aforementioned giant apes in hot pursuit of my older brother and I, who were piloting handy little bone kayaks (for lack of better term). On a hill with many rivets, divots, and smooth holes, we were like Mexican jumping beans, dropping, in our kayaks, into these giant cutaways whose scoops and smooth inclines would catapult us skyward, giving us a chance to find yet another cutaway and, if all went well, an aerial getaway.
And an aerial getaway we were granted. Our bone kayaks ground to a halt at the edge of an eternal lake, a dark corridor of depthless water with browning lily pads floating haphazardly along its shimmerless surface. Though we had made good time and some pretty sweet moves in our kayaks, the ape was regaining ground and would soon overcome us in our water's-edge stupor.
I turned to my brother. "I'm going to pogo-stick across this pond here. I don't know if it'll work, but we'll find out soon enough. If I die, well, I'll just be reincarnated later." And I meant it. But I couldn't help but wonder, as I prepared my pogo stick, what it would feel like to die. I mean, I was sure that it wouldn't be all that pleasant. Surely it couldn't be that bad, though..?
And from this wondrous, adventurous dream I awoke, engulfed in a sea of hypersensitivity that is accompanied by a feeling of being bitten by a spider every two or three seconds, every time in a different location. I sat up on my bed, rubbing my left elbow contemplatively. Two in the morning. I had gone to bed at ten. Why had I awoken? It had been such a fun dream.
It was at this point that I realized that it had not, in fact, been such a fun dream. I was stuck with that unmistakable, lingering sensation we all associate with post-nightmare consciousness in which you exist in heightened awareness of every creaking sound, every shadow.

I wrote all of that down to see if it would help me calm down. I think it has.

Winter comes, and snow

I have quit smoking. Again. I have given myself a canker sore, I think, from chewing nicotine gum. I regularly apply Orasol, an Orajel look-a-like manufactured by Wal-Mart. It numbs the pain and my tongue and usually my upper lip as well, making me talk like I've been hitting the bottle at work. Jesus Christ. A cube of ice just cracked inside my glass and my heart skipped several beats.

I'm hitting the bottle but it's after 8 on a Friday night and really it's more of a friendly punch to the bottle's shoulder than anything. Bonnie "Prince" Billy's Master and Everyone is playing in the stereo opposite the sofa on which I sit, a record that has been playing almost non-stop for the last forty-eight hours. An hour ago, just after picking up my room and putting away the clean dishes, I sat down on the piano bench in Mike's studio and picked out the chords to The Way, the first track, and learned how to sing and play a song on the piano for the first time. It's rusty, I'm all over the place and my rendition is painfully simplistic, but I love it.

Jesus. The ice keeps cracking and startling me something awful.

In a performance evaluation at work this week, my manager, on several occasions, cited my "anxiety disorder." I found this to be both horrifying and amusing. I wasn't aware that I had a disorder, but I'm not unwilling to hear about it. I should note that, besides this, it was a perfect evaluation (in fact, she even went so far as to say that "it's not really a problem, I'm just supposed to come up with something, you know?") and I'm not getting a bloody raise. Nothing. I'm not bitter, but I am disappointed. And maybe a little bitter.

What a strange place I'm in right now. I have a bill due August 15th for $1750.00. Christ.

And there weren't enough of them

"-Wyatt, what is it? What's the matter?
-A dream? . . .
-Only a dream?
-But . . .
-It's all right, darling, whatever it was it's all right now.
-It was . . .
-What was it?
-At home, in bed, that parsonage was a big empty house and I know every step in it, I woke up and I could hear footsteps. I woke up there hearing very heavy footsteps in an even tread and I knew where they were going. I heard them down the stairs and through the front hallway and into the living room, across the living room and through the back hall past the dining room toward the kitchen . . .
-But, was that all?
-But listen, what was terrible was that I know ever step in that house, I know how many steps it takes to come down the stairs or to cross the living room, I can't tell you the number but I know, but these steps I heard in the darkness, they were regular and even, not in a hurry but what was terrible, they kept reaching places too soon. I know the sound, I know how the sounds change when you step from the front hall into the living room, or passing the dining room or off the last stair and . . . but these steps kept arriving too soon, not hesitating anywhere and not in a hurry, but if you take regular even steps, and there weren't enough of them."

from The Recognitions by William Gaddis