rites of spring

Springtime. Long shadows fall over the neighborhood at the end of a warm day, the first of many to come. The sun has cooled to a sweet yellow that gives life a sentimental quality, reminds me of childhood. I’m sitting at a patio table under the low limb of a tree, fresh with new green leaves, still soft like the wings of an insect that’s just been born. The light glows through them beautifully and they rustle in the breeze. Tinny fluorescent green bugs are everywhere. I constantly have to brush them off my shirt, noticing I’m feeling slightly unhappy about hurting them. All the people around the front of this café are friendly looking, very civil. All seem to be in their late twenties, over-educated, casually toting books, -like me, but markedly less weird. A couple of attractive young women cut glances at me. One of them looks familiar, but I’m not sure. I came here wanting to sit peacefully in the dusk, enjoy espresso and cigarettes, to read Dostoevsky, to be with people but not have to talk to them.
I’m alone here, and that pleases me. No one I used to know is with me anymore. I’ve outgrown all my friends year by year until I find myself far out and all by myself, all my mistakes far behind. I left everyone behind at various stopping points on the way. 2004, 2005, 2006… each year I know fewer people. I’m not trying to loose friends; they seem to loose me. And that’s fine. Everyone who thought they knew me hasn’t the slightest idea what’s become of me -or who I’ve become. I don’t stand still. I look with a special recognition at the words I just wrote: DON’T STAND STILL. There’s a good motto.
I couldn’t be happier with the pleasant scene all around me right now. And yet I feel that something’s very wrong. I’m paralyzed with fear. Why? I don’t have any idea what I’m afraid of. It’s all I can do just to open my satchel, take out a notebook, and write these words. But why do I write these words? Why do I write anything? Shit, I don’t know. No one’s going to read it. No one’s going to tell me how superb a writer I am or that I’m a deep and insightful guy.
Are other people freaking out in the apparent safety of clean civilized lives? Are there worms in their brains, squirming through the gray matter while the person tries to keep a straight face in public? I do think so.
A little time passes. I sip my coffee. I want a glass of water, but I can’t manage to stand up and go get it. I glance across the street and something’s wrong.
A blind spot appears (or I should say disappears) in my field if vision. Just left of center, there’s a spot where I can’t see anything at all, but there’s no gap there either –just an absence like invisible static. Not a black hole; a white shadow. The blind spot grows very slowly, originating somewhere in the optic nerve, maybe from constricted blood vessels. I don’t know. This is what’s called an “aura” in migraine lingo. I suffer from optical migraines.
Numbers and letters in print become abstract arrangements of lines, totally meaningless. My eyes can’t understand them. They vanish into the white shadow. It eats them. It’s a rising tide swallowing landforms.
There’s a strange taste in my mouth. I loose comprehension of faces. The shapes of facial features become like words I can’t read, no longer recognizable human touchstones but abstractions. Soon enough though, this aura devours the faces too. Even if someone I knew were to arrive I probably wouldn’t recognize them. Wherever I look there’s just a hole full of white noise, no faces. I close my eyes and see a field of neon zigzags in the darkness behind my eyelids, static crackling in a color that doesn’t exist. These storm clouds always precede a migraine.
The migraine, the melt-down, the freak-out, are all rites of spring. Insanity comes with the brilliant flowers and pollen and warmth and rain.

May 12, 2009