Breaking Day

“I wish you were a stranger I could disengage.”

“This moment is part of a continuum.”

“That is how I will arise.”

What a trip. I'm listening to a song that I listened to, over and over and over, LOUD, when I was first falling in love with Stan. A part of me feels good about no longer being with him, and a part of me can't understand that first part. I'm in India, but I'm still me, living the same life and behind the same eyes, which is a constant source of amazement. One of the students in my group started at Bard the same semester I did, must have been within throwing distance of me for the majority of those three months when I tried on that life which didn't quite fit. She is the most vapidly pretentious person I've met. I feel vindicated. I find myself in a situation where a friend is in an intolerable situation that I can't mitigate in the least. How is that possible? How could I not be able to fix it even a little?

I feel strangely detached from my school work in a way that I don't think I've ever felt before- unattached, un-invested, only vaguely attentive to the voice which usually dominates the conversation in my brain telling me that my GPA must be maintained for grad school. Floating along, seeing so many things drift by, trying to grab on to something but not finding anything that will stay put long enough for me to catch.

I remember when I was younger, seeing clouds from the windows of airplanes. I knew that if I could just touch one, it would be the most amazing thing. It would be perfect...It's a little sad that I can't now fully remember just what I knew clouds would be if I could only get at them. I can think of words, but writing them down flattens whatever pieces of that magic that I still recognize.

I have been exhausted. Last night, I could've gone to sleep at 8:30. Tonight I fell asleep at 7:45, woke up at 8:20 for dinner. It's 10:58 now. The fan is going, the light's still on even though my roommate is asleep, the mosquito repellent is plugged into the wall and slathered onto my body, and my left wristhandarm hurts from typing.

In between? Is that what this is? Bright turquoise curtain hanging in the doorway which has a door, but one that never closes. Anna's towel, orange yellow fuscia gold mirroring the curtain, both of them shivering slightly from the fan.

Pajamas with parrots on them that I cut with scissors somehow and my Cafe Blues t-shirt, George the monkey and my new Indian cell phone bearing witness to my typingimagining.

“Everyone I knew was waiting on a cue to turn and run”

Maybe it's just that I am feeling acutely how utterly fearful, cowering, delicate, imperfect, just terrified we people are. All of us. Not always sad, just raw, technicolor, chafing and alarming, shivering in the train of a heart-shattering sunrise after two hours of sleep.

Now what? Go back home, go to sleep, talk about how beautiful it was with friends later on? Stop. Just let it be and become a part of you.