I need things. I’ve got things. Why do I still want things?
There are two paths to the extremes of life. One is to run as far as you can from existence, to observe life from the outside. The other is to wrestle with it directly.
The first path keeps you safe from the shit. It also keeps you safe from the bliss. Selah. The second path is drowning in a substance that is indistinguishable from yourself & still (still!) you cannot identify it.
In a dream, I was home in the early morning standing at a large picture window w/my sister & a man I’d never seen before while we watched the moon ignite from the upper edges & explode outward, slowly & silently engorging & then engulfing the sky & dropping, bit by molten bit, into the land around us until everything was black - utterly black & empty. Then the dream went on. The world ends & still you have to go on.
I woke up in an empty bed. The sky was dark like the sun had gone out but it was only early. I found my wife on the couch, unable to sleep since four am. We talked for a while & then each fell asleep there beneath the same blanket. Unrecollected dreams. When I awoke, the windows were awash in sunlight.
Passing through Chinatown this early A.M., only half back from the lands of sleep, when I noticed the most unusually beautiful music coming from down the little street. Assured & exotic, with intervals I’d never imagined & a rhythm that went ill & then recovered & carried on, the song strengthened like a hurricane over warm water until I met an intersection & came face-to-knee with the instrument… a young boy riding a tricycle while out with his mother.
The rear wheel needed oil. I walked on, pleased that it did.
