And then I woke up, and I felt hopeful and excited.  For a few minutes, I denied the waking up and willed back those wonderful feelings of longing, the kind you know are being returned, matching and genuine.  I willed back her face, her smile, the prospect of her skin.  I thought that if I just held on strongly enough, she would stay fresh and real, and we could continue our story, if now right away, then another night, cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.

The problem with dreams is that the ones you want to recur never do.

This is not the first time that the emotional intensity of my dream world exceeds that of the world we call real life.  I think that slumber is the time and place I feel most secure in sharing truths with myself, the time during which my eyes are forced open to see iridescence in the dark.  It is also when I cry.

*****

The pollen has fallen.  It starts sixty feet up near the tops of the pines, and on windy days like today it blows and wafts like smoke from burning branches.  If sunlight catches a cloud of it, and if the backdrop is just right, you can see every single particle in motion, a vast flock of microscopic birds.  I’ve been educated in the physics of this.  I know the equations that describe the flow of swirling dusty air.  Yet I still hold in awe its inspiring natural beauty.

Alas, today I missed it.  I didn’t think of the swirls until they had long dissipated, until the dusting of pollen had washed my world in a yellowy greenish hue.

*****

My mother is in hospital with a fractured pelvis and a head injury, such was the undesirable turbulence of my weekend.  Things could be better.  Things could also be much worse.  I’ve been busy, preoccupied, in and out of the car, at the bedside, all the while tending to children with stomachs that need continual tending to, the iridescent ruby-throated hummingbirds that they are.  Somehow, I managed to move a few more yards of topsoil from the mound on my driveway to the new backyard garden.  There were healthy earthworms.  I find this promising.

It’s been a long day.  I think I’m a little beyond feeling right now.  I think I’m waiting for a dream.

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I’m more sensitive than you. I’m not bragging. I’m not being self-deprecating either. It’s just the way things are.

When a snowflake falls, I see the snowflake. I also see water and ice and super natural crystal growth of triangular molecules. I see igloos and glaciers and avalanches. I see patterns in the chaos and chaos in the patterns. Did you know that when there is no wind, a snowflake falls to the ground spinning in a downward spiral? No, you didn’t. But if you did know this, and if it was something you saw and figured out all on your own, then you are probably my soul mate and we need to talk.

When my fridge hums, it penetrates my skull and stays in my head as a standing wave. You say just ignore it. Just focus on something else. But you are asking me to stare at a festering rash and to refrain from scratching it. While I play it off as a joke, I resent it severely, and I resent the engineers that allowed such a design, and I resent the store for not cooperating with my plight, and I resent you for not understanding. I resent myself for failing to get my act together to deal with it myself.

Please, leave me alone. You think you’re sitting quietly with a book minding your own business, but you’re sitting in the same room as me. That means I’m aware of your presence. It pierces the air like the hum of the fridge. You scratch an itch on your ankle and grumble for a second about the god damn mosquitoes that got into the house. You think—you think—you think nothing actually. You certainly don’t think about how your cussing is like a cannon shot across my peace arch and how it is worse than the mosquitoes themselves.

If you want to do something good for me, let me lie back, pull off my socks, and rub my feet for an hour. They are tired feet, and they are in desparate need of loving attention. You will think that ten minutes is enough, but you will be wrong. I am tired of you being wrong about me. So please, trust me on this.

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Every time a weekend passes and I stay away from the internets, I sense the imaginary online masses moving along, forward or backward I do not know, but always farther from the center of me. I’m the protagonist at the train station watching his lover recede into the distance as she holds out her white-gloved hand in farewell. This time, the weekend revolved around my wife’s birthday, her 40th, and I ate and drank and stayed up late for three consecutive days. We had visitors, and we did things with them, and the only time I opened the laptop was to play “N” with my son, a freeware game involving the coolest little 20-pixel ninja dude I’ve ever seen.

Wow, I’m already lying. I did open my laptop for the other usual reasons, like to check my RSS feeds, read Twitter, open e-mail, and stalk old girlfriends. But the reason I was lying about this is because these things fall into a new category, the one that consists of things I’m starting not to care about. One would think that Exhibit A: My Lack Of Participation would be evidence enough for my jury of inner children to convict me of truancy.

Wow, not only am I lying, but I’m getting all meta too. I promised myself I would never do this. Now I’m a liar and a promise-breaker. Hooray 2009!

I haven’t abanded the internets altogether. I really enjoyed that off-the-wall thing that Scott wrote last week. It’s too bad Websense considers you a sex predator, Scott, otherwise I would visit and comment during work hours like in the old days. Ashley has cracked me up a few times. If this was 2006, I would be all over you like a warm tongue. Bad analogy, Peefer. Now you’ve made Ashley nervous and leery. Gawd I wish my hair was softer.

Here’s the thing: I still enjoy you people, even as little as I interact. If you were to disappear from my imaginary landscape, I would be all, “Hey! Don’t go! I’m not ready for this kind of change.” So, you know, do as you please. I’ll be okay. I really will. Just … just … just don’t go!

Okay, I’m glad we’ve had this little chat.

My headache has not gone away yet. I’m blaming it on certain prescription drugs, and now the withdrawal from the said drugs. It’s the most logical of explanations, and Occam would support me fully in this. Still, as the tumor hypothesis is the more exotic one, I’m still holding on to it in my back pocket. I’ve always wanted to be special, and I’m afraid that if it’s NOT A TOOMA, I will have failed once again.

kthxbai.

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