It is six-thirty in the morning and still dark out. I am lying on the floor cocooned in my military sleeping bag, having just awoken from another nightmare, and I feel lonelier than hell. Looking at the time, only a half hour has passed since I last woke up from another dream. This is the third night of no sleep . . . I’ve tried every little thing to fix it, too . . . I suppose all I can do now is ride it out till sunrise and then start driving south to get as far away from here as possible.
a transcription of a communique i received from dearest isabella (gego’s mom) in snowy berlin . . . she sounded so uplifting at the end
meanwhile . . . been looping this for an hour (the sad lonely dracula ryan world theme song) . . .
yeah dude . . .
p.s. apparently i am watching gego when i get back to berlin in december. or anyway, that’s the rumor . . .
the world is turnin . . . i hope it don’t turn away lol
This morning I woke up in Cecelia’s apartment in Bay Ridge, ate the muffin and drank the Americano she’d gotten me, and hopped on the R bound for Manhattan. From the steps of Penn Station and behind dark sunglasses I surveyed New York City and felt absolutely nothing. I crossed the street and boarded a bus bound for Union Station in DC, and from there caught a commuter train back to Virginia . . . I’m here for all of 16 hours. In the morning I’m renting a car and driving all the way to Tennessee to see Emma and all her friends. Apparently they are throwing me a sort of party to cheer me up . . . and then I’ll spend Thanksgiving with Emma’s family. Word around the campfire is that Cousin Spud will be there . . .
It will be good for me to drive all day tomorrow and disconnect my brain from any higher thought . . . I’m done thinking. PRESENTLY the sun has gone down and I feel quite lonely. If I could leave right now I would, but all the rental places were closing as my train pulled into the station earlier, so I’m trapped for now. I want out so bad I feel half-tempted to start walking to Tennessee, and maybe even farther than that . . .
This has been a surreal out-of-body bad-dream sort of day, and I’ve had about enough of those. Today is fucked. I feel extremely sad and yet my body is numb. I wonder which functions are working inside me to protect me from bodily pain. I wish none of this were real but of course it is. I am powerless to do anything except watch the clock tick away . . . or watch the moon glow brightly in the night sky . . .
Once more for those who came in late, the tears of King Lear:
You do me wrong to take me out o’ th’ grave.
Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound
Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears
Do scald like molten lead.
. . . i don’t want to sit around feeling sorry for myself . . . i’ll get over it. tomorrow, once again, i . . .
that’s all folks
perhaps this could be said for anyone. but i have so many quiet little sadnesses and pains inside me that i have no choice but to endure and live with every single day. there isn’t anything i can do about it and it is not for lack of trying. i can’t forget my memories nor my dreams, and sometimes they swirl together and i cannot distinguish one from the other. then i’m really in trouble. it is a sort of agony. the closest way i can describe it is that it feels like being haunted
i am staying in my friend cecelia’s apartment in bay ridge and i am alone . . . the building is old and has creaky wooden floors. i’m lying here in her bed feeling a little sad, and i kept hearing these little creaking noises that are of course just the radiator or her neighbors walking around upstairs. but deep down in some part of me, whenever i hear little house noises like that, i always think it’s dante padding through the house to come join me in bed. i remember the feeling of lying in the dark in bed in any of the places we lived together and hearing those noises, and then hearing my bedroom door open just a little as he used his head to push it open . . . and moments later hearing his four paws land on the comforter after he jumped onto the bed to lie down next to me. i can’t think of a more comforting sound than dante purring in the dark beside me as we fell asleep together. no one has ever loved me so totally like dante did, nor have i loved someone as much as i loved dante. we were together nearly every day for 16 years, which was the entirety of my adult life. i still struggle to live without him. i don’t know how. and it’s little things like the noises i hear at night that creep up on me and remind me how horribly alone i feel without my little brother.
