Before Dawn
Red moon tonight.
I couldn't see it through the gray underbelly of the overcast, but I could feel it up there like a heart.
There's a terrible anticipation in the air. It doesn't come from anywhere. Or, rather, if it comes from anywhere, it comes from my own brain.
I've always had these feelings, these ominous moments that seem dredged up from some cthonic darkness. Always before I've taken them as portents, signs that things were turning invisibly in the earth of my subconscious. They have something of the character of darkness just before first light, of the silence that rides before the storm. Moments in between, neither here nor there. Always before I felt them like premonitions; portents of some great work about to be undertaken, of some event just over the horizon.
Now I know that they're just part of being bipolar. Mild agitation, restlessness, coupled with a kind of sinking sadness. Usually they only last for a few days, a couple of weeks. This one has gone on and on. Weeks, now, and no relief from it. It's maddening. But, then, it's the month for madnesses.
February. Febrile. Februum. Fevers and purification. There's also Lupercalia, lycanthropy, love. Love and purification are in short supply; I am not feeling much but the fever and lycanthropy of late.
I am filled with something, some word that wants me to speak it. Its presence prickles under my skin like hidden hair, as though I've been turned wrong side out. There are so many things I want to say, and no words to say any of it. I can't write properly, can't speak. Can barely think.
I don't like feeling like this.
I want to run away, put distance between myself and this life that just . . . isn't working out. Or from the part of me that isn't working.
I want to run from this bedeviled house, run away from this terrible world, and go to a place of certainty where I can be sure of myself again. Where I will know what I am again.
I want to run, but where do you run to when that full red moon is always inside you?
I feel like a doomed creature. I feel like I'm stuck in a world that's all traps and poisoned bait and wolf-getters, where I can trust nothing and can only look forward to the huntsman's axe and a belly full of rocks. I want a place where I can put my head down and sleep unguarded, still believing in a happy ending.
I want to howl; that's close enough to the words I'm looking for.
If you actually listen to wolves howling (and I am, right this very minute), you will quickly realize that it is much more than random wailing. The song rises and falls from the silence; one voice, two, three, many, fewer, none, then back again. And each wolf modulates their tone up or down to a pitch that is not only distinct from the others but is often dissonant. The chorus is described as harmony, but it often is not. I suspect that is deliberate. It makes their numbers seem larger to those outside the pack, and to those within it makes each wolf's voice quite clear. It's a strange and eerie effect, like two voices coming from a single throat. Hard to believe that only a handful of animals could sound like so many.
It is not a mournful sound, or a joyous one. It's beyond that. It's just wild. I'm not sure it's possible to understand it.
I wait every night, wait until almost dawn, trying to understand the dissonant thoughts in my head. I can't even tell how many there are. I wait for that something to happen, for that hesitation to pass and that inspiration to strike, and it does not come, and I do not understand where, if it's not coming to me, it is going.
This pre-inspirational waiting, full of phantoms, is Baudelaire's enemy of slumber, and I wish to god it would just end. Even if it left me with nothing, that would be better than this waiting.
Dawn will come, and I do not know if it will come in through my window blue and immense or if it will merely circle dimly outside before yielding to a day-long twilight. I don't know if I'll be asleep, or wakeful, or just shifting about between beds that no longer hold any rest for me. I just know that I'm afraid of it, afraid of tomorrow, afraid that it won't be different, afraid that I still won't know what I'm supposed to do.
I sleep each night with a sense of resignation, I rise reluctantly, and I wait all day for something that never comes. Each night, I think "Tomorrow will be the day. Tomorrow I will know what to do. Tomorrow I will be able to do what it is that needs to be done."
It's been a month of tomorrows, and I still don't know what to do.
I still don't know what to say.
Oh, and there's Baudelaire. On the night of a red moon, the tears would be . . . what? Blood? Wine?
I couldn't see it through the gray underbelly of the overcast, but I could feel it up there like a heart.
There's a terrible anticipation in the air. It doesn't come from anywhere. Or, rather, if it comes from anywhere, it comes from my own brain.
I've always had these feelings, these ominous moments that seem dredged up from some cthonic darkness. Always before I've taken them as portents, signs that things were turning invisibly in the earth of my subconscious. They have something of the character of darkness just before first light, of the silence that rides before the storm. Moments in between, neither here nor there. Always before I felt them like premonitions; portents of some great work about to be undertaken, of some event just over the horizon.
Now I know that they're just part of being bipolar. Mild agitation, restlessness, coupled with a kind of sinking sadness. Usually they only last for a few days, a couple of weeks. This one has gone on and on. Weeks, now, and no relief from it. It's maddening. But, then, it's the month for madnesses.
February. Febrile. Februum. Fevers and purification. There's also Lupercalia, lycanthropy, love. Love and purification are in short supply; I am not feeling much but the fever and lycanthropy of late.
I am filled with something, some word that wants me to speak it. Its presence prickles under my skin like hidden hair, as though I've been turned wrong side out. There are so many things I want to say, and no words to say any of it. I can't write properly, can't speak. Can barely think.
I don't like feeling like this.
I want to run away, put distance between myself and this life that just . . . isn't working out. Or from the part of me that isn't working.
I want to run from this bedeviled house, run away from this terrible world, and go to a place of certainty where I can be sure of myself again. Where I will know what I am again.
I want to run, but where do you run to when that full red moon is always inside you?
I feel like a doomed creature. I feel like I'm stuck in a world that's all traps and poisoned bait and wolf-getters, where I can trust nothing and can only look forward to the huntsman's axe and a belly full of rocks. I want a place where I can put my head down and sleep unguarded, still believing in a happy ending.
I want to howl; that's close enough to the words I'm looking for.
If you actually listen to wolves howling (and I am, right this very minute), you will quickly realize that it is much more than random wailing. The song rises and falls from the silence; one voice, two, three, many, fewer, none, then back again. And each wolf modulates their tone up or down to a pitch that is not only distinct from the others but is often dissonant. The chorus is described as harmony, but it often is not. I suspect that is deliberate. It makes their numbers seem larger to those outside the pack, and to those within it makes each wolf's voice quite clear. It's a strange and eerie effect, like two voices coming from a single throat. Hard to believe that only a handful of animals could sound like so many.
It is not a mournful sound, or a joyous one. It's beyond that. It's just wild. I'm not sure it's possible to understand it.
I wait every night, wait until almost dawn, trying to understand the dissonant thoughts in my head. I can't even tell how many there are. I wait for that something to happen, for that hesitation to pass and that inspiration to strike, and it does not come, and I do not understand where, if it's not coming to me, it is going.
This pre-inspirational waiting, full of phantoms, is Baudelaire's enemy of slumber, and I wish to god it would just end. Even if it left me with nothing, that would be better than this waiting.
Dawn will come, and I do not know if it will come in through my window blue and immense or if it will merely circle dimly outside before yielding to a day-long twilight. I don't know if I'll be asleep, or wakeful, or just shifting about between beds that no longer hold any rest for me. I just know that I'm afraid of it, afraid of tomorrow, afraid that it won't be different, afraid that I still won't know what I'm supposed to do.
I sleep each night with a sense of resignation, I rise reluctantly, and I wait all day for something that never comes. Each night, I think "Tomorrow will be the day. Tomorrow I will know what to do. Tomorrow I will be able to do what it is that needs to be done."
It's been a month of tomorrows, and I still don't know what to do.
I still don't know what to say.
Oh, and there's Baudelaire. On the night of a red moon, the tears would be . . . what? Blood? Wine?