Fog and Molases
My right eye has been twitching all day. Usually the part that twitches is the bottom lid toward the inside, but this time, it's the top lid toward the outside. I'm not sure why it changed. Top or bottom, inside or outside, the sensation is the same a tiny muscle twitch, almost impossible to notice unless you were looking for it. It almost feels like some sort of insect, an ant is pushing and pulling my eyelid as quickly as he can. The reason it is twitching is that I haven't slept much lately, three hours last night, four the night before. Not bad in the grand scheme of things, more of a nuisance than anything.
A few days ago I was spending the night at my girlfriends apartment. It was a regular mid week evening for us. After she got off work we met outside the train station near her office. We rode the bus and got out at the grocery store to pick up a few things for dinner. Walking up and down the isles we discussed what to have for dinner and what to make for breakfast the next day. After some deliberation, a little compromise and a promise to make pancakes next week we had a decision, our groceries and we were on the way home. Once at her place we cooked, we ate, we watched a little TV and shared a bottle of wine. Our meals digested, the last of the wine all but gone, we worked our way a little clumsily to the bedroom. We undressed each other and had sex the way a long separated couple does. I got up to open the window and we curled up to sleep. On any given night what follows is this; I hold her until she has fallen asleep and then I turn on the tv watch half a movie and finally fall sleep. Instead, that night I couldn't sleep. I finished the movie I was watching and started a new one. I tossed and I turned, I watched the moon light travel across the ceiling and down the wall. I was almost finished with the second movie when, without falling asleep, I felt like I was dreaming. I looked at my hands and the tv, the mirror and window, all of it looked the way it should except that I knew it was different. None of these things were the real objects they represented. Like a word said over and over, everything in the room lacked substance and meaning. The bed only existed because I was touching it, the room only because I was looking at it. I was inside a machine that was projecting perfect copies of everything into an empty, hollow void. I wanted to hide, cover my face and hope that somehow the missing pieces of the world would come rushing back into place but I couldn't move. My eyes were drying up but I couldn't close them. What if this machine was all that there was to the world? It could all be gone if I close my eyes, or worse, it could all come back different. This ordinary, peaceful and completely satisfying evening exploded and reality hung on a hinge. It floated on a chip of ice no bigger than my thumbnail and it was melting fast into something dark and thick. I read that after water freezes, if it gets cold enough, colder than cold, it goes from a sold to a viscous, molasses like fluid. It stays like that until it hits a specific temperature when suddenly, unexpectedly and with an audible "crack" it re-solidifies. Just like that water my world snapped back into place and I fell sleep with my girlfriend curled up next to me.
A few days ago I was spending the night at my girlfriends apartment. It was a regular mid week evening for us. After she got off work we met outside the train station near her office. We rode the bus and got out at the grocery store to pick up a few things for dinner. Walking up and down the isles we discussed what to have for dinner and what to make for breakfast the next day. After some deliberation, a little compromise and a promise to make pancakes next week we had a decision, our groceries and we were on the way home. Once at her place we cooked, we ate, we watched a little TV and shared a bottle of wine. Our meals digested, the last of the wine all but gone, we worked our way a little clumsily to the bedroom. We undressed each other and had sex the way a long separated couple does. I got up to open the window and we curled up to sleep. On any given night what follows is this; I hold her until she has fallen asleep and then I turn on the tv watch half a movie and finally fall sleep. Instead, that night I couldn't sleep. I finished the movie I was watching and started a new one. I tossed and I turned, I watched the moon light travel across the ceiling and down the wall. I was almost finished with the second movie when, without falling asleep, I felt like I was dreaming. I looked at my hands and the tv, the mirror and window, all of it looked the way it should except that I knew it was different. None of these things were the real objects they represented. Like a word said over and over, everything in the room lacked substance and meaning. The bed only existed because I was touching it, the room only because I was looking at it. I was inside a machine that was projecting perfect copies of everything into an empty, hollow void. I wanted to hide, cover my face and hope that somehow the missing pieces of the world would come rushing back into place but I couldn't move. My eyes were drying up but I couldn't close them. What if this machine was all that there was to the world? It could all be gone if I close my eyes, or worse, it could all come back different. This ordinary, peaceful and completely satisfying evening exploded and reality hung on a hinge. It floated on a chip of ice no bigger than my thumbnail and it was melting fast into something dark and thick. I read that after water freezes, if it gets cold enough, colder than cold, it goes from a sold to a viscous, molasses like fluid. It stays like that until it hits a specific temperature when suddenly, unexpectedly and with an audible "crack" it re-solidifies. Just like that water my world snapped back into place and I fell sleep with my girlfriend curled up next to me.