Here’s what I’m doing: dredging out. Layers and layers of dusted-under sensibility, sedimented over a period of months. Geologically a blip; experientially an eternity.
What to say, really? Second-guessing does me in time and again. The only tonic for it seems to be outright utterance. Just hitting publish and let the pixels spin. What blogging is supposed to be anyway. And it occurs to me that I haven’t really blogged in years–or maybe ever. Always so hyper-aware of what I’ve written and rehashing it. So here I am, trying to do it differently, to unbury.
I sit on the 27th floor of a Chicago highrise, watching fat spiders suspended outside wobble in wafts, oblivious to height, busy casting and repairing webs to withstand wind and fix prey. I traverse shopping crowds on Michigan Avenue daily to and from the train station, passing familiar homeless people with their signs or sayings or rhythmic cup-shakings day in, day out. Everyday I’m someplace in the middle, navigating between extremes and under the radar.
What’s it like to be invisible? Feels like outliving oneself. Still here and yet not. I remember be-ing, but I haven’t in a long while.
All around are people pushing strollers, holding hands, going about daily business, and it feels nothing so much as utterly dislocating. Writing is supposed to help. I guess we’ll see.