In the timeless twilight between sleep and waking, words are eaten alive, no rational thought escapes, life itself stands still, quietly watching, watching. Dreams within dreams crumble under nightmare visions of the waking world. People halfway who they are, come and go, sliding aimlessly, no, not aimlessly, illogically, no logic, dream logic, sliding in and out of dreamspace with motives hidden. Dogs who are not dogs, long remembered, long forgotten, not doing doggy things, just being. Noises from above penetrate the twilight as if they too were part of the miasma, part of the wispy failure to connect, failure to launch, failure. Waking that isn’t waking, lazy waking, turning lazily, no, too lazy to turn, even in the twilight. Bright may be the sun this morning but it does not make its way here through the darkening shades. So many twisted meanings. Ant trails in the kitchen, ants to be fogged into another existence, as if that did not mean death. Ghosts of sleeping kittens float just below the surface. No light at the bottom of the lake. Days and days of feverish dreams within dreams, no sleep at night. Lazy happiness sinks the muscles, a paralytic drug leaving the brain active but the body unmoving, so you can’t actually punch yourself in the face in your sleep. Plans disappear in this fog; so do good intentions. Good intentions, bad intentions, any intentions, the whole idea of intentionality, of getting things done, miles and miles, and months and months, of getting things done, spreadsheets and calendars, all lost in a confusion of movement, movement alternating with this paralysis not only of body but of spirit. So many spreadsheets and lists, all lost in a digital dream, a drama of loss, of tragicomedy of life, useless or used up, take your pick, Who Do You Think You Are?, the docudrama song of the wearily depressed, too tired for depression; in any case, depression has become a cliché now that we know it’s really just joy wearing a mask, and under that mask lies another layer, always another layer under the surface, under the complexity, skin forming and re-forming all the time, cells renewing while you sleep. Sound of lawnmower triggers guilt, guilt about plants untended, followed quickly by floods, tsunamis, of dread about everything else left undone, drifting when I should be scheduling, sliding when I should be walking, staying silent when I should speak. But paralysis seems to have seized my throat as well, aphasia setting in. Now I can’t un-hear what I’m hearing. Wishing for … certainty. One thing only is certain: It will be a cooking day today.
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