Aware…
Aware of a feeling of pressure on my buttocks, the pressure of the seat below holding me up so I do not collapse to the floor. Aware that this same pressure would arise if there were no chair, and I were to be held up, floating a thousand miles above the center of gravity, by the Earth’s surface. Aware that this is an existential crisis without end, for, in removing one surface, I simply follow the deeper pull to be felt, to fall inexorably towards some other center of gravity, to tumble and sink through the reaches of space to meet not the Earth but the Sun, then not the Sun but the Black Hole in the middle of the galaxy, then not even that but the blackest depression holding it all together.
Aware of the sounds of excitement, and of studiousness, and of inquisition and learning coming to my ears form a multitude of directions, even dimensions. Two directions make a dimension, yes? How many dimensions make a space? Where do the definitions end? How many more layers might there be beyond us, and this, and you, and me?
Aware of a slight dampness in my shorts, and across the chest of my shirt, from where I did two unusual exercises this morning; One, I sat on a wet(ish) seat in my car, and to, I crossed that same chest with a wet(ish), damp, rather, seat belt. Both were the residue of my prior engagement with the vehicle, earlier int he day. I had attended a bicycle ride, which turned into a shower on wheels, due to the downpour that shifted its path from the predictions, and chose to pursue us fifty or so cyclists, simply hoping to enjoy the overcast experience. But when Zeus woke up, and began targeting us once again with jagged lightning, launched playfully (for him), yet dangerously (for us) from his divine grasp, to jag and tumble and streak down from the Cumulus House to the waiting earth, well, we decided He had sufficiently scared us, and rightfully so, turned to head home. Thus, I captured approximately half of one of Minnesota’s finger lakes in my shoes, socks, shorts, and t-shirt, and, having no magic Shammey to soak up more than its weight in liquid, was forced to improvise by leaving deposits of clean, refreshing liquid all over the interior of my vehicle; on the seat, dripped into the door well, squilched onto the backside of the seatbelt, to be discovered later like some kind of poisoned, cursed treasure that, instead of blessing me, becomes a kind of burden, leaving its stain and stench and taint upon the remainder of all my day, for as long as that leftover residue chooses to remain.
Aware of my own throat, and a feeling of thirst; aware that my stomach is not hungry, but there is a corresponding desire to eat. Why? What sets off such a need? A want? A preference? For it cannot be need – I have eaten at least half of all the calories I will likely require for homeostasis today already, in but these few hours I have been awake and moving. So what is it, then? Routine? Social custom? Boredom? I suspect boredom. I suspect that, were I to decide to engage my mind, my spirit, my body in a stimulating, engrossing activity, or book, or conversation, I would forget all about that wisp of a hint of a desire, to eat, simply out of “nothing-to-do-itis”. I should put that reason for eating out of my head. I should abandon that thought entirely. I should cut out, lobotomise, incise from my brain forever, that part of me which has such a thought. That would be drastic, but effective, and permanent, and complete, if I could it it out like a cancer. My fear ,though, is that it – this thought, this desire, this illness to eat when bored – is not so much a contained space, or object, like a tumor, or a lesion, but, rather, it is a distributed process – a parallelism spread out across many spaces in my mind, across the hippocampus and the cerebellum and the pituitary and the thyroid, and, were I to attempt to get all of it, were I to be successful [illegible………………..][illegible…………………..][illegible………………………] leaving me both unchanged, and unfortunately, damaged in all my other actions and affects. [illegible………….]
Aware that now my pen has run dry.
Stephan Writes 