the habit of being

Late at night I realize I am repulsed by things, and that scares me. Late at night I realize I am really (truly, indeed) very lucky, and that scares me too.

Tonight the sky is red when these eyes look, though they do not, for the curtains are closed, and not quite sheer enough. Still, the whole world is red, soaked in it, drenched, but it is not blood, it will not reach out to my symbolic nature, it refuses to be so easy, so easily defined. ( Crimson? Out, out? No. Pigment only, and we all know what red means. ) My sentences are long and rambling, vine-like and sloppy, with a parasitoidism of commas and parentheses, random. To say things are random is to say we are at this time ignorant of the pattern those things adhere to. This is random, still. I want to say: Ecology bores me to death, all my lovely cells are hiding; I find I am simply put off by things larger than myself. Give me a fly. Give me viroids, prions, sub-atomic particles even. (A very pretty young lady once told me about anti-matter. Positrons, that sort of thing. I forget it, but I was intrigued. Gesture of hand passing above head : you’ve lost me.) A night, like other nights - a color for this night, all nights have colors. It is no phenomenon that another day has passed, streaked by, with my sitting aboard, somewhat dizzied from backward momentum. (Momentum is a lovely, lovely word. I should keep it for later.)

At times today I have thought to myself, “Katharine, you are alive.” There is a nice inner laugh following such declarations; they strike me as heavy and hilarious. Once, I said “Katharine, you are in love,” because it had never before occurred to be to use those exact words (they seem reserved for shooting stars, girls who sigh like willow trees, people in black and white with just enough contrast at every given moment to seem philosophical and French). To this my little post-synaptic response was only “yes.” Like all internal dialogue, it was filled with drama and overtruth. Of course, I have always been in love. I may not have always been alive, and that is what makes them weigh down on my chest, those silent words, causing me to giggle a bit insecurely, a bit too much like someone must be watching.