09/14/24

    Lazing around all day, I haven’t spoken a word since I woke up this morning. I got up from the living room floor and took a shower in the dark and around 4:30 pm. I ate a square of chocolate just to feel something. Waiting for it to kick in, I generously put away the clothes I had flung around the room after arriving home from Asoko late last night. I fit all the books lying around the house into the bookshelf then cleared off the frames from the windowsill, the one without the AC and opened up all the window to roost on the windows ledge.

5:16 pm 

    I tried all sorts of music to see what would resonate best with my come up but every song is was grating. I turned off the speaker and put down my phone. I heard all the sounds around me so clearly. That of children laughing on the street, the whooshing of cars driving by, an occasional honk. I tuned into the sound of a plane flying over head and glanced up at the sky to see its bright white shape so clearly even the little birds flying above, I could see those perfectly too. The late afternoon sun cast a pale yellow veil over the tops of the buildings that I could see from the angle I was lying in. I felt the breeze and heard the rustling of leaves from below me. Door men and their leaf blowers. Birds singing. When I looked into the room every color had become contrasted, the shadows deepened, and for the first time in a while I found my room to be beautiful and right. 

    I’m looking up into the clear blue sky and thinking about a line from one of the short stories in Lizard that had played itself over and over in my head since reading it yesterday. "I just lay there in bed, staring at the clear blue autumn sky. It looked so impossibly clear that I somehow felt betrayed."

I closed my eyes.

    H came home to find me cat napping in an L shape in the windowsill, my feet up against the wall and a pillow behind my head. You’re the freakiest person I know he said. I did indeed feel like a cat. I stood up as though I was on autopilot. He told me about his day. I felt like a puppet on strings walking about the room. I plopped down in the armchair. The orange tones in our apartment stood out so vividly; looking around, so do the reds. The nose of the Nara stuffed dog, the spine of a magazine under the coffee table, a bottle of Aperol on the bar.

We discussed dinner and while my mouth did the talking my eyes wanders around the room to admire how brilliant all the colors had become.

6:33 pm

    I stepped outside for the first time all day and was thrust into a world going 2x speed while I was moving in slow motion. I imagined Avril Lavignes Let Go album cover. I impulsively played with the strings  of my hoodie then my with the strands of my hair. I felt a smile creep across my face. Put my headphones in before stepping into the grocery store. The music reached me now. I turned on noise-cancelling and lost myself in the produce aisle. I was starved, every snack looked good. I ended up spending $100.

    When I stepped outside, the scene had darkened with only the light of a shrinking sunset, one signaling the last of these hot days, and streetlights that seem to be frozen on red guiding me home. Everything was washed in red in the most beautiful way. I finally began moving in time with everyone around me and the clear blue sky that had earlier betrayed me had dulled in comparison to the red draping over the tops of the buildings. This vibrant red radiated from within me too.

    H cooked while I sat at the counter taking a bite out of each snack I bought. We watched The Darjeeling Limited. The cast of Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, and Adrian Brody looked so truly like actors I felt as though I had never seen a movie before.

Playlist

Nude - Radiohead

Look To The Sky - Antônio Carlos Jobim

Pyramids - Frank Ocean

Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor, Op. 57 “Appassionata”: I. Allegro assai

Cirrus Minor - Pink Floyd

Hedgehog’s Dilemma - Shiro SAGISU

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