Tuesday, February 7, 2012

oh. of course. afraid.

I feel quite still. The stillness is like the echo of the roar of a close and fast-moving train that has just passed. My ears are ringing with the stillness. 

I was a whirlpool and now I am a glass of water. Small, still, and contained. 

Relentless, excessive, crescendoing worry has been, for now, replaced by the quiet tick tick tick of a small and accurate clock. 

Now the air pushes on me from the outside and not from within. 

I have given the empress Anger a new name: Fear. Perhaps I have begun to obliterate her false world so I can live in a real one.

I feel slow and deliberate and just a little uncertain. Like trying to walk in three-inch heels. While drunk. And over tired. And hungry. In public. During an interview. While unemployed. In an unfamiliar country. With a shifty-eyed stranger for a translator. (Who may or may not have a shiv in his pocket.) All while trying to impress the most beautiful person I've ever seen. 

(Must I relinquish metaphor to obtain a visa so I can inhabit Reality?) People are not metaphors.