t.a. miercoles, fragment

t.a. miercoles, born at the hiccup of midnight on a tuesday, was putting himself in order in front of the mirror. he averted his eyes from his own gaze, finding something particularly unnerving about the way he stared at himself. running a comb through his hair, he turned away and sighed. the phone rang and he ignored it. some music was playing on his computer that he wasn't familiar with, yet he didn't stop to ascertain the song.

he had long flirted with the idea of leaving the town, but somehow had stuck to it like a barnacle. he preferred to spend his time alone, though found himself from time to time besieged by the urge to integrate himself into the social continuum. these urges passed, though not without leaving a slimy track of self-loathing across his brain. he spent most of his time asleep, though not by design, and slept the longest when he fell into it accidentally, propped in a chair awkwardly before his desk. after midnight, if he had put sleeping clothes on and slid beneath the sheets, he would lay awake for what seemed like hours, eyes pinioned open, fixed on the ceiling, waiting for a dream to sneak up and ambush him. he wouldn't call it insomnia. he slept enough.

and when he slept, he dreamed: big huge dreams, vivid dreams that destroyed him, his loved ones, the world. he escaped from cataclysm as many times as he fell into its gaping maw, talked wordlessly to strangers he had met before. little girls with pink tongues danced slavishly around maypoles. buildings collapsed and triads of old women fumbled foolishly with knitting needles while pointing and laughing at his tireless effort to save someone from the rubble.

beast.

the shrill whine of the phone, like a shocked animal. unexpected at this hour.

spring has just shuddered around the bend, gracing us with warm days & with balmy nights. the window is open & the bedside lamp is staining the walls with diluted yellow. i can't sleep. i've gyrated from position to position, ultimately no more comfortable in one than the other. the sheets are a mess. i've stopped caring.

on the display is an unfamiliar number with an even more unfamiliar area code. by the third or fourth ring, panic grips me. indecision stews in my stomach, but it doesn't even have time to simmer before, for whatever reason, i answer. it's S on the other end. i knew it, somehow, maybe the fog of insomnia gifted me with extrasensory perception. i heard his voice seconds before he spoke, like an echo ahead of itself. with that recognition came surging dread, and the muddle of my thoughts gave me away.

i feigned drunk, too drunk to move. certainly to hang out. he doesn't want to "rekindle a relationship," he says to me, but he "misses" me, and "was thinking about" me the other day. of course he was. they came into my workplace. and due to my conspicuous evasion of them - (which, by the way, is no longer a question) - he found it necessary to recall my number from the swirling depths of his memory & use it at four in the morning. not that i begrudge him. i never sleep early. i don't think that will ever change. i will burn myself out on late nights. he told me he would call me tomorrow, but he hasn't, and i know what he heard in my voice, and i know what i heard in his: disappointment.

i am wilding around the edges, creeping with a sort of acquired fauna that appears lichen-like but which behaves like bacteria. i am concerned for my gulping, pulpy bagpipe of a stomach. for all of the slick organs, pumping in tireless rhythms against all the other rhythms. eventually the drummer's arms become weary. i meant to say that i was fraying at the edges by the word "wilding." not fraying harmfully, but in a slow pattern, as if getting one's favourite sweater caught on the exact same nail at the exact same time every day of one's life.

it's windy and E. has put out the table & chairs in the courtyard by our porch. there will be a lilac tree in full bloom, and what appear to be tulips, proudly striving to always be the first flower of spring, yet constantly beaten by the smug daffodils, the crocuses. the tulip is a flower in denial.

the son of vladimir nabokov, dimitri, has decided (against his father's last wishes) that the last novel (unfinished) will be published.

the hetrarchical hagiography

revisited my novel yesterday. touched lightly on the meta-worlds of sorry and claudia and moe pelican and edwin oak. it's this damn hofstadter and his authorship triangles, and his axiom schemas.

last night: tentative plans, breached in the glassy brown light of bourbon & beer. maybe some hiking, in the woods, said james. new york city, in the fall, said johnny and ryan. and all the while it's cold in the summer city, and the wind makes the dead leaves skitter all around on the sidewalk. this town, one street in particular, is full of ghosts. i have got to get out of here. i've been having panic attacks, for no particular reason. especially at work. last night i had one at johnny's house: it gets hard to breathe, suddenly, and i lose my balance, all sense of orientation. it's like the universe is paying back for faking epilepsy in fourth grade.

it never fucking stops, you know. you think you've got it by the balls, but it turns out the only balls you're grabbing are your own, and don't you look like a fucking moron then.

and every girl has the same face. and every moment has millions of possibilities linking it to the next one, which is really only one of many possible outcomes, and the bifurcations are driving me insane. i better figure out that there is only now and deal with it, or else succumb to some kind of insanity; be shot through the heart by Zeno's arrow as it flies from point A to point C on its way to point B (on its way to point D, (on its way to point E....))

and so i drink again. bourbon is better than beer is better than being sober. and if i end up like Papa Hemingway, insane, owning many cats, and a shotgun, oh well. people tell me not to talk like that. but i do. and then they get mad at me, because it never fucking stops.

my therapist wants to put me on anti-anxiety meds. to stop the "hum" underneath it all.

johnny says the hum is what makes me make things.

it's like locusts.