Fifth Element Traffic

I’m feeling particularly scattered today, but I’ll see if I can get something coherent down.

Somebody had a dream about my mind the other night, then told me about it. I liked it and I didn’t, but I’m like that with everything.

I’m not sure what other brains do, but when I am carrying my flip flops down the beach in the same hand, they need to be perfectly aligned and book-matched, convex out, or I can’t hold them. I don’t litter though, so I have to check from time to time to make sure. The same goes for everything that everyone else is holding, or carrying, or has set up on the beach.

I do my best to be stoic about it all, I mean, I try not to judge everyone by the standards that I judge myself. I can’t help but notice though, and if I notice, I process, and I wonder what enables you to lay on a towel while it’s flapping in the wind like that.

What’s going on there? Probably nothing, but I couldn’t do that, and I wonder what the difference is, and why, and what would I have to do in order to be able to relax like that, and is it better, and are you really ok with that much sand on you?

So I wear mirrored sunglasses that somehow make me feel better about not making meaningful eye contact and plumbing the depths of everyone’s soul, and, horror of horrors, actually taking my interest for interest and doing something about it, because MY interest is generally fleeting, and may already be somewhere else, like what’s that noise? Avoidance? It could be, so I wear noise cancelling headphones and listen to house, and Tom Waits, and death metal, and Regina Spektor (and cry, she always makes me cry, and I’m kind of in love with her for that) because if there isn’t noise, there’s noise, you know? Like tinnitus, well, there is also tinnitus, but that’s just the backdrop, the eternal wave, the endless signal that somewhere, the programming is over, and I should shut down for a while, seek oblivion, stop standing in traffic.

So someone dreamed about me in traffic the other night, then told me about it. Not just regular 2 dimensional traffic, but full on The Fifth Element multi horizon jammer traffic, complete with vertical police chases, and the Chinese food guy that comes by in his flying junk to sell me noodles and read my mail, “You are fired!” Mix in a little Dr. Strange arena warping, and that’s the visual environment, with me, standing on nothing in the middle of it all, trying to discern a pattern that I can use, and occasionally signalling a vehicle to slow, and come close and be appreciated, but a vehicle is..how many moving parts? and what are they made of? and how are they made? and what are the machines that made them made of? and where are the mines located? and what does the flag of that country look like, and what does that symbol mean? I wonder if it’s in my dictionary of common symbols? and why the fuck am I so far away from my books? and why...am I...alone?

Oh...

OK.

Bring that in.

and breathe

You left to prove how much it means to stay around.

You’re ok.

Write that shit out.

Breathe.

And watch your step, the traffic is brutal.

 2023