In that weird sleep deprived fugue state where I'm unable to discern if I've dozed off or been laying here for hours but whatever the case I can't fall asleep and I'm getting the weird psychedelic visuals you get in these moments but more intense than normal and I'm remembering that my absolute #1 fear is just spontaneously snapping the tether and losing my mind with no warning, like a stroke, and that makes me want to be with you more. I keep thinking about the comet over salinas and how easily it could have been a missile, or how it could have struck us with no warning and all we would've had the power to do was gawk at the sky and accept our fate. I think about how I probably have near death experiences every single day that I am entirely ignorant to. And maybe one night I wake up at 3 in the morning with my vision erupting in kaleidoscopic shapes and I fall inside of myself forever, and I never get to go to Boston, and I never get to hold you again. I think part of why I feel such an urgent call to see you is because I always feel that I'm on the brink of death and part of why I dread insanity is rooted in the belief that I've always had, that all I am is my conscious mind; and when my mind goes - be it through physical death or through cognitive decline - my body ought to disappear along with it. I have witnessed the consequences of what happens when the body is allowed to remain while the brain devours itself. Texting this to you is helping me ground myself, I think of how sleep deprived we were on our trip, how every day I woke up after a tragically brief and terrible night's sleep. How I would rest my head on your shoulder the instant we boarded the bus, slumped against you, drifting off as the sun rose over the rolling countryside. If only you were in my bed now, I would wake you and try to explain these thoughts as I had them but I am nary as eloquent when I speak. You make me feel safe in a way that no one else does. Right now I am comforting myself, by telling myself that if I stave off/fail to go to sleep for a few more hours then I can call you, and the sound of your voice will finally allow me to rest. Maybe this is what death is. Maybe every night we are rehearsing for the last time we shut our eyes. When we are overcome by the irrational sensation that we are falling and jolt ourselves awake, I have been told, our body thinks itself to be dying and tries to thrash itself back into existence. Like an overturned junebug twitching on the concrete. And subconsciously I am doing this, incessantly tapping at characters until they become words assembling themselves into sentences until I talk myself back into reality, until I convince us both that I am here. I have nothing of importance to say and I never have. Outside there is a lightning storm. Two nights ago, I dreamt of lightning. It's strange how dreams blend into memories blend back into dreams, how occasionally you will experience something mundane that will prompt a vague feeling of deja vu. Perhaps linearity is an illusion and we are undergoing our lives all at once. A friend read my palm once and told me I had a strong lifeline with an abrupt end, it did not taper off, indicating that I did not go easily. I did not find this notion disquieting and thought it made complete sense. I feel sleep trying to take me and I am struggling against it.
That night we took too many stimulants and stayed up solving the mysteries of the universe I saw the sunrise and thought, if I could, I would never shut my eyes and drift away again. And when I finally do I will imagine the sunset over the boundary waters. The borderless rabbits and birds, flying lazily over the frozen bay. I see you, as if in a home video, walking off into the distance and remember how desperately I wanted to follow. How geographical separation is not practically that different from death itself. Just as I cannot reach out and hold my lost relatives I cannot reach out and hold you, and so this sleepless bit of rambling might as well be a futile prayer sent wayward into thin air like a message in a bottle tossed to an inbound tide, a letter washed back up onto the shore from whence it came ... lodged in the sand, never to bridge the chasm. Vancouver might as well have been the afterlife. It certainly looked like heaven, while I sat on the ruins of some half-demolished concrete structure watching the sky explode in orange and pink, colors that grew gradually duller until the only light visible emanated from the skyline across the bay. I knew you were somewhere within it but could only hope you'd return to me. I wondered which twinkling light was yours just as I sometimes scour the stars. It's thundering now. The sky has opened up and the rain is pounding at my window - we don't get storms like this in Oregon. One of the glow in the dark stars on my ceiling no longer glows. For whatever reason, it is invisible unless I shine my phone's light towards it, in which case I can barely make out the outline of a plastic five point star in the sea of luminescence. I hope you catch your train, I wish I were there with you, slumped against your shoulder as the countryside rolled by. Drifting somewhere unknowable until you pull me back outside of myself to let me know I am here.