I forgot how to write

It's sad to think that you met me when I was experiencing a mid-life crisis. And yet, it is even sadder to think that this is my mid-life. All of this and more makes me profoundly sad. And then I think, what a perfect combination of three letters. The word is small enough to be embroidered on a baseball cap or tattooed across your three favorite knuckles (index, middle, and ring finger). More importantly, the letters serve as the acronym for my favorite mood disorder, Seasonal Affective Disorder, or S.A.D.

Sometimes I feel those three letters swell up in my throat. They clamber up the walls of my esophagus and seem to stumble along the way. When it is time for them to emerge victorious from the trek up my rickety throat, they cower. They peek over the back of my tongue, and they refuse to admit to the world "We are sad! We are here! Deal with it!" If I concentrate really hard, I can usually coax them out of cowardice, and they roll off my tongue and mingle with the tears tickling my face.

Goodnight, Moon.

When I turned off the light so that I might close my eyes, a moonbeam shone across my face.

The moon had never been so bright. We sat in the backyard in the dead of night, and yet I could see the wrinkles in his forehead and the knowing smile on his face. It was the first time I had seen a night sky undisturbed by city fog.

I shifted around in my bed and watched the moonbeams dance across my sheets.

Quarks

What is the only positive thing one can discern from Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time? Gravitational metaphors and black hole imagery. So, for those of you who indulge me on a daily basis:

Let's get sucked into a black hole. Once we are there, we will resist the inward pull of our bodies' particles. For what will seem like an infinitely long second, we will be. And yet, you and I will be aware that once this second is over, our bodies will cease along with time and gravity and everything that our seventh grade textbook told us was important. In the second that lasts for days, we will just look at one another. But once our particles are done waiting, the second will end. In the moment that is no longer a moment, our bodies dissipate into an infinitely dense mass of something we don't know yet. Stephen Hawking will observe this in the night sky. He will note that while nothing can escape our black hole, the area surrounding it emits radiation and something he describes as "the infinite possibilities they had."

Only heavy things are allowed in

When my pupils were dilated, everything looked and felt heavy. I kind of liked that feeling. It was as if my eyes weren't for me to use-- they were there to be used. The gaping holes of blank yearned to be filled with a weight that would make them feel complete. The heavy things moved in and the weightless things went out. You are heavy. Since when have optometrists been so whimsical?

I'm blogging at Starbucks, what a cliché

And we were so close I didn't know which heartbeat was mine.

Tomorrow's Schedule

I will wake up to the sound of your alarm. You will go to class, but I will fall back asleep. My body with sense the need for consciousness and will pull me out of a deep slumber, throw me into rain-resistant clothes and force my legs to walk to class. We will sit next to each other and attempt not to laugh at our professor's misuse of religious terminology, ie: the text was translated into arabic, jewish, and latin.

As I scribble notes in varying types of cursive, I will die of boredom. When class ends, you will remove my body from the room and quietly drag it behind a building where no one goes. You will just cover my body with a sheet for now, you have other things to do.

Next, you will go see my mentee. I haven't seen her since last semester so it's really important that you do this. You will get lost because I wrote down the wrong directions to her new school, but don't worry, you will find your way. You will feel uncomfortable sitting in an elementary school cafeteria. The children will be eating meat patties soaked in meat sauce, drinking chocolate milk, and telling you about how their dad got the Jonas brothers' autographs.

After mentoring, you will do nothing. You have until 3:30 to lay in bed and just think. Or don't think at all, it's your choice. At 3:20, you will start walking to class. Make sure you have read The Iliad and understand it fully. Brother George will ask your opinion on the feud between Agamemnon and Achilles. You sympathize with Agamemnon.

Class ends at 4:45. You will return to the place you left my body. Hold a candlelight vigil over my body. Sing songs about mariner's and your ex-lover and when you feel the air around my body has absorbed enough harmony, you will use the candles to set my body on fire.