something about hearing things

A heart that beats but feels nothing at all. There are years and years that I don't recall.

something about snoops

Some people like estate sales, wandering through a stranger's home, seeing pieces of another life. Some people like being in the office when everyone else is gone or reading a letter written to someone else. You feel distant, tempted to feel, almost involved, but still in control.

something passing

Here, stashed behind a woodpile, miles from the Capitol, loneliness surfaced at first in moments. The times waiting linger like an anchor. The feeling that one should engage more with the world takes root. But, why, when doing so always ends the same?

about listening, sometimes, and a lack of perspective

Some people are desperate for someone to listen to them. Others, you feel special because they chose you to talk to this time.

Communication breakdown

It is well known that a whole train of thought can pass through one's mind in a flash in the form of some kind of feeling, without being translated into human language, let alone into writing ... Because many of our feelings, put into ordinary words, would appear quite implausible, would they not? That is why they are never revealed, but remain locked up within us.

  -from "A Disgraceful Affair" by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Half-day

On half-days in grade school, right after the first bell we'd file out of school into church for the first of a two-part mass. After noon we'd return, incense swelling, to witness the priest recover the alter. This brief reprisal would end with a spirited hymn sung with all the joy of children eager to start the long weekend early. It was during the singing of one of these hymns I remember first feeling the rush, like adrenaline, like possibility, like freedom, raw and holy, pushing over the precipice of the sky, promising to obliterate us all.