Night and Day
It is in the periods of liminality that I am most aware of him.
Late nights on the porch—as the random wind and nightsounds displace order.
Mornings—as I lie in the pre-dawn dissolving back into this weary shell.
I think I remember in older days he made more of an effort to disguise himself, erase his tracks. But now, like an old man tired of holding back his farts, he’s grown careless. I find odd books left open on the chair arm, books I can’t, or dare not, read, sticky notes left in haphazard places around the house, maddeningly almost legible. Disposable epiphanies, casual mockeries, wizard words? I don’t know. He abandons them indifferently and eventually they blow away like leaves, or end up in corners, snagged in webs, or just fall into the cracks of the universe.
During the day I am obsessed with details. I find, gather, organize them. Details mimic the march of seconds and minutes and hours, and consume the day. This is my work. Neurotic and exhausting. Obeying the master, submitting to tedium, day after day—this brings no real fulfillment. Only the avoidance of more regret. If lives had flavors, this would be mine.
This is my thought: he has no such master. He lives in the wild nights. He cares nothing for details and has no goals. He doesn’t bow to the tyrant of time. He lives in a smear.
Yes. I envy him.
He thinks I’m insane. No, be honest—he knows I’m insane.
Only him. I can’t say what others suspect. But he knows.
He sees me killing myself with my habits. This is why he knows I’m insane. Or is it the other way around? Who cares?
How I wish insane still meant something.
I just want to be him.
And if that made him me, that would be his problem.
Oh, my sweating dreams. That series of Sisyphean labors—trying to free a car from a sea of mud, being forced to mouth the words of a language I don’t understand, carrying burdens down endless corridors, one turning into another. All the regrets, the futilities, the beliefs—mine alone! While he pads about the dark house drunk. Or bored.
And when you are scattered behind yourself like a wreckage of broken glass, what is left to be you?
Yes, when I gravitate to the porch at night I can feel myself growing more like him, but this is the threshold where he takes over.
He watches me killing myself—why doesn’t he just finish the job?
Ha. I won’t let him.
March 25, 2020