pillows

when i stare at things or hear things, i think there might be some kind of beauty to them. i mean the little things, the way we make it through the day, experiencing pleasure. trees in streets or a small bird flittering around the garden, paint flaking from the kitchen windowpane, dust motes in sunlight. i am alert, you might say, to the beauty of these things, the local nuances that bring life alive.

but all there is, is sadness.

i am so far removed, from everything, that i can't even cry. there's a chasm between me, where i am, and the world i am in. the world i move my feet through. the atmosphere i breathe is like golden syrup, twenty-seven atmospheres thick. i'm wading through the swamp that my body has become. so i miss a lot now. so that's why everything is fucked up. i am fragile like porcelain plates though i feel like a block of cement. this is not a weather forecast. nonetheless i feel the outlook is bleak. i am tired.

but i have to ignore that, and hardly sleep, and scar my brain even in dreams, and wake up again tomorrow. still, how can i think of the future when i can't even think of the past or today? but every now and then, even during bad times, i get a glimpse of state where the mind is free to roam through spaces greater than what the body knows.

waking up, it is possible to envision a plane of such endless proportions that atom contains specific scenes of interest. stone pillars crumble. this takes place over centuries. you have that much time. follow the path of an eagle, wings spread wide, as it traces in an infinitesimal rate of curvature. a swoop of beauty so painful it takes your breath away.

the eagle's eye can hone in on a speck of dust; not forever, but for a very long time. here is the mote growing larger and larger.

the eagle is the perfect hunter. one atom will sustain him.

it is possible to follow this thought into others ( emulating with some grace, the path of the eagle ), even when the world conspires against you. for a while, in the gray between sleeping and waking, for seconds, or even a minute, it can feel okay to be alive. and then you wake, properly.

and it all comes rushing back. you ask the question, who am i? and the answer is always the same. i am nothing but need. i will hate today like every other day. it's so hard to experience beauty when it all stands in contrast to a greater unbeauty.

so i go back to sleep. in the faint phosphorescent light of the storm, i submerge myself to dreamland -- nothing could ever be this close. i close my eyes and feel entirely dislocated from the earth, which has never existed.