Episode 6: tinkle, tinkle, crash. maybe. maybe not.

My mind feels like a vintage crystal chandelier. There's a breeze all around in my head, last night it was a gale, sometimes it builds up to a whirlwind. The prisms twirl and sway with the current, reflecting bright in the sun and dark as a black hole when the clouds build up. They make pretty sounds then crash together almost to breaking point, sudden like a door slamming because of the gush of air. 

I kept humming Debussy's Clair de Lune and Satie's Gymnopédies but they broke down occasionally into the dissonant clangs of an angry child taking over the piano. I'm calm though, the tornadoes can't lift me up, the brutal change of melody doesn't make me jump out of my skin. But in the calm everything is vivid, the colors are brighter, burnt fields, acid sky, rusty metal of the Underwood blinking at me. The smells sharp, dog, ravintsara, cornbread. There's a longing there, a physical ache when my heart valves close and open close and open. I can feel the blood pumping through my body, going round and round, no final destination really, but with purpose. 

There's a little voice, what is left of being sensible I guess (I have reason, too much of it perhaps, maybe that is instability in a way), the voice whispers "give up, give up, move on, run, run, run". But it isn't very loud and the chiming prisms of my head drown it out, almost. Maybe it's stubbornness to hang on to something when there seems no reason to, it is foolishness to be sure. But there is certainty too, pointless conviction maybe but a belief in magic. "But, said Alice, the world has absolutely no sense, who's stopping us from inventing one?" I would like to be right, I would like my sense to be the right sense. I would like to try. I would try hard. 

In the meantime I am not in a bad place. Literally. The water's current is pulling at the river weeds underneath the clear surface, they undulate around the rocks. Is it a cliché when it is happening right in front of you? I could dip my toes in if I just reached another couple of inches but it would break up the picture. There's a few water hens on the other shore, napping. Even the dogs are quiet, maybe there is wind in their heads too, rocking them into a lull. There's real music drifting out from the house. It is quiet otherwise and I am almost alone. But my heart beats hard, open, close, open, close.