Sensory Hallucinations.

I can't sleep enough these days it seems. My sleep is always between fits of hallucination: a pressing on my chest, water on my legs, a hand on my back, as images I recognize from the past or future flash before my eyes.

I can't wait to be home in a few weeks. Nothing current can be familiar. I want to sleep in an actual bed that's my own and I want hugs from Liam and Tammi and Emmie and Quinn and everyone else that will be there.

So much of what others imagine my happiness being seems to stem from just being in awe of existance. What is it going to be to not exist anymore. I doubt I can imagine it, but what I have now is spectacular. Realizing that we're all in together and that we're all broken and beautiful. Realizing that since that is the case the only proper response to most things is compassion and love and love and compassion. I often think of airplanes, how perfect and complete everything looks from so high up. That would be how some sort of god feels if it exists I think. That may not be the best thing for it. I want to be able to sleep, needless to say hopefully rather soon I'll be able to kinda-sorta write after I get certain personal messes under control. Until then, hopefully this is enough.

Hopefully everything is enough.

And perhaps there are no answers, only this.

"The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing."
-R.Frost

Happiness comes and goes, as long as you remember not to lock the door.
But sadness is your favorite relative, grown sick in the guest room.
They never leave. And that's okay.

Lost in your own home.
Lost in my own metaphor.

"All war commanders are little men with broken hearts."

I carry, among other things, foolish notions of the past being any different, and that the future will be different too.
But then I keep reminding myself that there never seems to be a past or a future, rather a constant stream of the present.
Does this make me a pessimist?

Constant trade-offs, keeping us all awake at four in the morning, wondering where we went wrong.

Recognize the weight and reality and existence of everything around you, don't forget these things and carry them in wherever you keep such important things. That's the one thing I've learned.

The mind and the heart are awful copycats of each another. Force one to open and the other will follow suit by it's own accord.

All I can hope for is that a bit of this will make sense to someone else. Then I'll know I got it right.

I used to be told I'm manic depressive. Maybe they were right.

Life? Freedom? Love?

I doubt it's a coincidence that the words we put most of our faith in are the ones that we can never quite define.

“No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky.”

-Bob Dylan.

...That helps.

ByeBye

I am made of electrons and of dust but it's okay, you don't need to worry. I'm disintegrating but you are too so we'll just decay together if that's alright with you.

Because when it's all done I'd like the dust that used to be me to be near to the dust that used to be you.

My plan for getting better.

Vegan grilled cheese with tomato soup
Orange juice
Tylenol
Tea
McSweeney's books
Hugs
Hugs
Hugs
Hugsplz

I'll write something real whenever I get better.

Good things

Sweaters right out of the dryer
Orange and Purple Sunsets
Libraries
Leaving Notes in books that won't be checked out for years
Tea
Hugs
New England fall
Thoreau-Cat
Life Plans
Days when you can just stay in bed and do nothing but read
Large bodies of water
Nice people
In-season blackberries
Art pens
Being the only one awake
Footie-Pajamas
Mass sleepovers
Pancake Breakfasts
Kittens on Roombas
Large bodies of water
Heads-up pennies on the sidewalk
Chalk-drawings
Hopscotch
Swingsets
The New York Review of Books
String instruments
Goodwill shirts
The second formulation of the categorical imperative
Free-will
Pomegranates
Old typewriters
Baby Pandas
Knitted hats
Broken converse sneakers
Books involving Prague
Conscientious objection
Pacifism
The size of the Pacific Ocean
The size of all your atoms
Tempeh
Midday showers
Empty city streets
Ferris wheels
San Francisco
Scrabble
Soup
Bread
Archie Comics
Long drives to soft music
Not being sick.
...A work in progress, I'll finish it someday.

Scattered thoughts: January.

How often do you have a thought that seems so perfect and personal only to later find out it is someone else's. And then our tastes change and it isn't even your thought anymore, you think the opposite. Everything is broken and then, without warning they fit together and there are no gaps. Then the next day atoms are scrambled and you are alone. You're confused because it's a cycle but it doesn't feel like one so it's also not a cycle and it makes everything seem fleeting as well as lasting. But it turns out that there is no sin in cycles that aren't cyclical. But I might think differently tomorrow.

If I ever wrote a book, it'd be on grey pages with grey type. But I probably will never write a book. I can imagine characters but nothing ever happens to them, they just meander through their world which is conveniently located in my noggin. Maybe I'm just inventing a new form of fiction called super-hyper-realism where nothing happens and no one is good or bad no matter how hard they try.

It's been cold but I don't mind. It makes me read books at a wonderful pace because I never want to leave my bed. But sometimes I have to.

Maybe we could all go up to a stranger and tell them all our secrets and let them tell us ours and give them a hug. We could start the best kind of revolution. Because it turns out that it's perfectly all right to be sad sometimes. Or maybe I mean lonely, I sometimes confuse those two words.

Wouldn't it be great to go live in a cabin with everyone you love? And then they can bring everyone that they love too. And everyone that they love is welcome as well. And so on. Then eventually the whole world will be in the cabin. Maybe the whole world is the cabin and that's why you should always be nice. Because if someone's in the cabin it means that someone loves them.

It turns out everyone's as lost as you are, they've just learned to hide it a bit better. If you're a nomad you're never lost and you're always home. Maybe that's why I want I hitch-hike across the country, because I won't know what lost is and I'll always be home. I feel more at home on long drives or deep in conversation than I probably ever will anywhere I sleep.

Forget the facts, but always remember the feeling.

Nothing is as bad or as good as you could ever imagine it. But it's real and that makes it both better and worse than you could ever imagine it.