It's raining. A fine mist drifts down outside my window and I can see my breath, even in the house. As I watch the steady fall of silent rain, larger drops cascade from the eves in nonsense patterns. The black cat is cuddling with my cellphone, her little nose pressed right into the corner of it, her tail under her chin.
Winters are difficult. I am incapacitated by the linearity of all of it, although I realize that doesn't make any sense.
I watch a bird outside in the rain. It shoots around like a boomerang, flying from a spot on the roof of a house out and up asthough to escape, but pulled back in the same arc. I imagine that it is tethered there, like I am. I watch it hop between branches and fence. It dives and swoops up again: a ballerina on a bungee cord.
Time feels so stifflingly straight and so thin these days. I sit and do nothing, cross and uncross my freezing cold feet and grimmace at the thought of embarking on a quest for socks. I slide my hands between my thighs, into my pockets, under my ass to keep them warm. I let the cat sit on my lap. I move her when water boils in the kitchen and she resumes her blanketing task when I return. I do nothing and yet time moves forward.
It is pure white beyond that second layer of baren trees and I can imagine that I am on an island surrounded in fog and the hum of a passing car can be the dull vibration of churchbells claming themselves after an erotic display of force. And the silence is silence. And the trees are exhaling, slow and deep as an ocean and the dreams of this little cat next to me.
Hybernation sounds pleasant, but I cannot even sleep at night. Springtime is a time for makeup, sexual displays of color and sound, which is always erotic. Everything seems half-awake. The Sunda afternoon under fresh linens kind of half awake, swimming in dreams of laziness and crisp sheets warmed by the cocoon of sleep. But it is winter now and that seemingly unattainable cocoon beckons me with thoughts of darkness, naked and wet -- the bark of a tree. And I feel like shaving my head and lying in the tub listening to all the world's fruitless attemtps at sensuality. Drips like lapping milk. Purring engines a long dull fog horn.Trains pulling heavily to a stop over slick metal tracks.
And the cat does purr and squeeks a little when I put my palm on her to feel it. She wraps in tighter around that cell phone, demurely shielding her nose from the cold with one paw. I feel like the world is imploding very very slowly; or it has already and that's why I feel so trapped.
Winters are difficult. I am incapacitated by the linearity of all of it, although I realize that doesn't make any sense.
I watch a bird outside in the rain. It shoots around like a boomerang, flying from a spot on the roof of a house out and up asthough to escape, but pulled back in the same arc. I imagine that it is tethered there, like I am. I watch it hop between branches and fence. It dives and swoops up again: a ballerina on a bungee cord.
Time feels so stifflingly straight and so thin these days. I sit and do nothing, cross and uncross my freezing cold feet and grimmace at the thought of embarking on a quest for socks. I slide my hands between my thighs, into my pockets, under my ass to keep them warm. I let the cat sit on my lap. I move her when water boils in the kitchen and she resumes her blanketing task when I return. I do nothing and yet time moves forward.
It is pure white beyond that second layer of baren trees and I can imagine that I am on an island surrounded in fog and the hum of a passing car can be the dull vibration of churchbells claming themselves after an erotic display of force. And the silence is silence. And the trees are exhaling, slow and deep as an ocean and the dreams of this little cat next to me.
Hybernation sounds pleasant, but I cannot even sleep at night. Springtime is a time for makeup, sexual displays of color and sound, which is always erotic. Everything seems half-awake. The Sunda afternoon under fresh linens kind of half awake, swimming in dreams of laziness and crisp sheets warmed by the cocoon of sleep. But it is winter now and that seemingly unattainable cocoon beckons me with thoughts of darkness, naked and wet -- the bark of a tree. And I feel like shaving my head and lying in the tub listening to all the world's fruitless attemtps at sensuality. Drips like lapping milk. Purring engines a long dull fog horn.Trains pulling heavily to a stop over slick metal tracks.
And the cat does purr and squeeks a little when I put my palm on her to feel it. She wraps in tighter around that cell phone, demurely shielding her nose from the cold with one paw. I feel like the world is imploding very very slowly; or it has already and that's why I feel so trapped.