This morning I opened my eyes and the leaves fell off the trees, and the blue was pushed by gray, rain fell from the gray roof over my head and I felt very, very sad.
The cat scratched at the window, wanting to come in. Meanwhile, I put my hand over my eyes. So for a moment I blocked out the sight of the leaves that fell off trees, the blue that was pushed by gray, and the rain falling over my head.
When you sleep you feel less sad, but dreams can be gray as well, and I ran my tongue over my mouth and discovered in horror that my front teeth were missing, and, in the middle of my panic, I woke up, just like that.
And I ran my tongue over my teeth and everything was okay and in place, and I felt happy but happiness never lasts long.
Downtown at Bellecoeur are newly-installed Christmas posts: white, towering, flowery. They look out of place in the rain, out of place from all the Joyeux Noel signs. Everything seems out of place under the rain, even people who make sense or mind their own business.
And why should people seem in place, when we are never really comfortable, even in our own skins, dressed like the people we are, called by the names we were baptised with, molded into the bodies we were borne into? Why should things be comfortable, when it’s a piece of blue sky to be uncomfortable with yourself, once in a while?
If only I could give everything to everyone who wanted it. If only satisfactory explanations could be given when we really need explanations. If only I could stop second-guessing things around, if only, like the Nada Surf song, I were “walking home from a party drunk on Bacardi and listening to voices that lie”…
But you can’t really get everything, and tomorrow is another day, hopefully tomorrow will be better, and there is no problem with continuing. Continuation is some sort of automatic response, a thing of the body, the will for the follow-through motion as they say in tennis; an occupation; Sisyphian multi-tasking.
So continue to press your face against pillows; continue trying to make another world your world, life is a balance of the things you know.
