Full moon sneaks into town and steals my sleep.
My spirit animals chase each other around my studio and through my half waking, and I'm not really sure what that means.
Wolf.
Fox.
Hart.
Whale?
Falcon.
Swan.
The fox is only joking, half the time.
The fox is only joking half the time.
Full moon sneaks into town and steals my sleep. Makes me sound crazy and redundant. Makes me vibrate, blood humming. Makes me speculate in the silver dark. Makes the animals restless.
A thief, and a gifted one at that.
Suddenly bored, it seems the desultory race has dissolved into a game of the-floor-is-hot-lava. Deer on the table, fox on the fridge, wolf on the ottoman. Swan in the bathtub, falcon on the bookcase. Whale has a distinct advantage. Did you ever see Life of Pi? Beautiful. They stare, in the animal way, which is to say none of them are looking at me directly and hence I've never felt so keenly observed in all my life. I feel near feral myself. Achingly alert.
Love: It will kill you and save you, both.
I am not high. I swear. It's only the moon, dragging me out of my bed, toward the sky.
The animals flicker, then collapse like stars.
Showing posts with label insomnia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label insomnia. Show all posts
April 26, 2013
October 16, 2012
soggy quilts and jackals
Jumped ship, escaping. Fuck this shit, I'm out. Swept away in a deep, deceptive current, struck and stuck against sloping rocks. Thick blankets, useless now, soaked and cold and burdensome and onerously heavy, dragged out painstakingly and laid flat to dry. Night falling. Small fire, no food. Unexpected, unwelcome, unhelpful company. Will not be hushed. What will find us in the night if she will not hush? Jackals. Pitch black ones, ears perked. Slow and steady and menacing and coming straight for us through the dusk. There's a shotgun at hand, but it's old and empty, and cocking and firing for show of strength produces only the faintest click, a sound so inconsequential as to be simultaneously insulting and intensely embarrassing. Strike out feebly with the blunt end. Give the alpha a mild headache, at best. Prepare to have your face eaten.
Or maybe just wake up.
Or maybe just wake up.
March 26, 2012
September 1, 2010
last of days
"The world carries on without you, but nothing remains the same.
I'll be lost without you, until the last of days..."
I'll be lost without you, until the last of days..."
August 31, 2010
August 26, 2010
measuring up
I have an interview with the District Manager tomorrow for a promotion. Spectacular communicators that they are, my supervisors only told me about it, in a rather offhand way, this afternoon. Which either indicates that it is going to be really easy, or that they are all just completely unorganized. Either way, I do not feel in the least prepared.
Insomnia is killing me. I ache everywhere. My short-term memory is shot.
Sleep. Will. Not. Come.
And I am only days away from the anniversary of my son's death. God. How awful it looks in print! Worse still, spoken aloud. The words hit the floor in a crowded room, heavy and volatile as land mines. The anniversary of my son's death. No one should have to string those words together in the same sentence. Ghastly.
In short, I am afraid that in my current state, I will botch the interview and be totally humiliated. Although, to be fair, I fear that even when I am at my best... So perhaps I will muddle through after all?
Insomnia is killing me. I ache everywhere. My short-term memory is shot.
Sleep. Will. Not. Come.
And I am only days away from the anniversary of my son's death. God. How awful it looks in print! Worse still, spoken aloud. The words hit the floor in a crowded room, heavy and volatile as land mines. The anniversary of my son's death. No one should have to string those words together in the same sentence. Ghastly.
In short, I am afraid that in my current state, I will botch the interview and be totally humiliated. Although, to be fair, I fear that even when I am at my best... So perhaps I will muddle through after all?
digressions
It's 2:00 in the morning and I'm tired and my eyes are burning but I want to keep reading and reading and not have to come up out of the story at all. I wish I could fall asleep reading and wake up there, instead, into a world where my babies didn't die and my parents loved me and no one, none, dared lay a finger upon me to do me harm. Or, even if bad things did happen, it could somehow be undone, or such great good could come afterward that it would hardly matter anymore; and I could be half-mad with happiness, instead of grief.
I've been told, by more than one person, that I will have my happiness. That the things I've dreamed of will be attained, even if a little later than I'd hoped, even if not in the order that I'd planned. Sometimes a hopeful, undamaged fragment of my soul believes it. Mostly I just feel wistful at these words. Mostly I think: Ah! That is kind. But you do not know. None of us can know.
None of us can know.
----------
My knicks and scrapes of the day are stinging, my feet are very cold, and I cut my left big toenail too short. It is sensitive there. My back is full of twists and knots again already, though I spent over an hour in the afternoon lying flat on my yoga mat with soft music playing, thanking as many parts of my body as I could think of by name, one by one by one. By the time I had finished, I was so relaxed I could hardly stand, nor remember why I ought to.
I am calm, I am relaxed, I am calm...
I am sore, and I am weary, and I crave rest in the most profound sense of the word. I long for protection and for comfort. And yet it occurs to me, and I must mention, amidst all this -- I still feel pretty. Simply, unabashedly. Can't escape the feeling, these last fews days, incongruous as it seems. Ever since that little girl, with her selfless declaration. She has eclipsed every other voice that ever spoke those words to me. Hers is the one that has mattered most. Perhaps because she caught me unawares, in a moment when I was feeling anything but lovely. And perhaps because she was so wonderfully, strikingly, vitally present in that moment, it leant her an authority that no one else has thus far had. "You are really beautiful." Full stop. Fact. Straight to my heart. And I'll never see her again. She'll never know she changed my life that day.
Her mother and brother were embarrassed, would not meet my eyes. I wonder how she got to be in that family. I wonder how any of us got to be in the families we are in.
----------
"Perhaps I was born different. Or made different by the parents who raised me," said George honestly. Did anyone ever know why he was the person that he was, animal magic or no? "Perhaps I also made myself different, because I wished to be," George added after a moment. --Mette Ivie Harrison, The Princess and the Hound
----------
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife.
I've been told, by more than one person, that I will have my happiness. That the things I've dreamed of will be attained, even if a little later than I'd hoped, even if not in the order that I'd planned. Sometimes a hopeful, undamaged fragment of my soul believes it. Mostly I just feel wistful at these words. Mostly I think: Ah! That is kind. But you do not know. None of us can know.
None of us can know.
----------
My knicks and scrapes of the day are stinging, my feet are very cold, and I cut my left big toenail too short. It is sensitive there. My back is full of twists and knots again already, though I spent over an hour in the afternoon lying flat on my yoga mat with soft music playing, thanking as many parts of my body as I could think of by name, one by one by one. By the time I had finished, I was so relaxed I could hardly stand, nor remember why I ought to.
I am calm, I am relaxed, I am calm...
I am sore, and I am weary, and I crave rest in the most profound sense of the word. I long for protection and for comfort. And yet it occurs to me, and I must mention, amidst all this -- I still feel pretty. Simply, unabashedly. Can't escape the feeling, these last fews days, incongruous as it seems. Ever since that little girl, with her selfless declaration. She has eclipsed every other voice that ever spoke those words to me. Hers is the one that has mattered most. Perhaps because she caught me unawares, in a moment when I was feeling anything but lovely. And perhaps because she was so wonderfully, strikingly, vitally present in that moment, it leant her an authority that no one else has thus far had. "You are really beautiful." Full stop. Fact. Straight to my heart. And I'll never see her again. She'll never know she changed my life that day.
Her mother and brother were embarrassed, would not meet my eyes. I wonder how she got to be in that family. I wonder how any of us got to be in the families we are in.
----------
"Perhaps I was born different. Or made different by the parents who raised me," said George honestly. Did anyone ever know why he was the person that he was, animal magic or no? "Perhaps I also made myself different, because I wished to be," George added after a moment. --Mette Ivie Harrison, The Princess and the Hound
----------
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife.
symbiotic destruction
My father was a crocodile. My mother was a plover. And I was a baby in a basket, that didn't quite make it down the Nile.
August 18, 2010
August 17, 2010
constricted, restrained
It hardly seems worthwhile to mention: I didn't sleep well. This seems to be the pattern and I have finally given up. Not even my trusty sleeping pills will do the trick. It takes forever to get to sleep, but once I finally do, then it is nearly impossible to wake up. So. I just count on being up until at least 2 or 3am, and then lucky if I'm awake again before 11am the next day. I hate this schedule, but it's not worth stressing about.
So many noisy thoughts storming through my brain in the wee hours of the morning. Sex, death, race, religion, politics, emotion. All the topics not discussed in polite company. But how I loathe polite company! I hope this is never a place for polite company.
----------
I don't love my life yet. It is still so small and boring and confined. I want a life I can be proud of. But so much is outside of my control. I can't make a company hire me for my ideal job. I can't force a publisher to choose my manuscript. I can't input information into a GPS and track down the man of my dreams. There is no guarantee that a baby will ever grow in my belly long enough to be delivered safely into my arms. I can't ever know the full scope of the effect of my actions on others.
But oh, I wish I could.
----------
My body is in high-gear baby-making mode, primed and ready with noplace to go. It is single-minded and insatiable. It is rattling my poor fragile psyche to bits. Shush, I say. It's all right. Someday; someday we'll have our turn.
Someday! Ha!
My body doesn't believe me. And I can't really blame it. It's heard that line far too many times before.
So many noisy thoughts storming through my brain in the wee hours of the morning. Sex, death, race, religion, politics, emotion. All the topics not discussed in polite company. But how I loathe polite company! I hope this is never a place for polite company.
----------
I don't love my life yet. It is still so small and boring and confined. I want a life I can be proud of. But so much is outside of my control. I can't make a company hire me for my ideal job. I can't force a publisher to choose my manuscript. I can't input information into a GPS and track down the man of my dreams. There is no guarantee that a baby will ever grow in my belly long enough to be delivered safely into my arms. I can't ever know the full scope of the effect of my actions on others.
But oh, I wish I could.
----------
My body is in high-gear baby-making mode, primed and ready with noplace to go. It is single-minded and insatiable. It is rattling my poor fragile psyche to bits. Shush, I say. It's all right. Someday; someday we'll have our turn.
Someday! Ha!
My body doesn't believe me. And I can't really blame it. It's heard that line far too many times before.
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