cells, roaming like feral raindrops

that's what my head feels like right now.

nothing coherent. just random baffling things that keep buffeting me in the manner of storm winds hitting your siding. itsy bitsy spider style, i navigate my world.

*sigh*

i decided to do dan's WoW download for him today. of course, i didn't get home from work until quite late, with every intention of just eating some lean cuisine thai chicken (which wasn't bad) and sitting down to beat crap up with my new character.

however, i started the download at 7. it's now 840 and i'm at...let's see...16%.

take that, pentiums of the world.

i keep telling myself that i should just lean back, flip on my machine and pay my bills. but i'm just not up to bill paying tonight. perhaps tomorrow night.

tonight i'm up to running a bath. but i need someone else to run the bath for me, because actually going upstairs, wiping out the tub, running a hot bath, finding bubbly liquid for the bath, and getting and out of the bath, are all apparently far, far, far too much to handle.

so.

i'm sitting here. blogging. because that's the only thing that i can safely accomplish whilst the hurricane in my head swirls onward. i'm hoping it'll hit mainland and die down sooner than later.

***

i had this weird feeling at work today. like i was suddenly not seeing myself but actually feeling my body in relation to the rest of the space around me. spatial awareness? meh. not sure. just standing there next to someone else's cube desk, i had this clarity of mind--this is how much room you take up. this is the area which you inhabit. this is the size and span of how others relate to the idea of kim.

i carry my territory with me.

it passed pretty quickly, thank heavens. because otherwise i'd have gotten no work done, just stood there understanding something that i'm sure can be explained by the theory of displacement.

***

i'm just feeling...aimless.

like i'm not leaving tracks behind my self, when i walk.

and if i am, when i turn around, it looks like i've been dragging the carcass of a moose with me, but it's really just me, flopping here and there. sometimes other people have reached out and grabbed for a limb, and pulled me along like a little red wagon, like the one i had as a kid, only missing a wheel or two, randomly.

i feel this pressure inside of me--anxiety, hope, wonder, curiosity, the feeling that i need to write something. it's like the feeling you get right before you puke, right before you know you're going to need to run to worship at the foot of the porcelain deity.

the lean cuisine is certainly not producing this feeling. i'm physically fine, at the moment.

but whatever the flutter is, it's causing a direct effect on my stomach--the same butterflies i had as a child, on the first day of school. i'm trying to think of it in terms of WHY AM I FEELING THIS WAY and/or IS IT GOOD OR BAD. it feels bad, right now. teetering on the edge of sanity. or perhaps i'm teetering on the edge of insanity; perhaps this is what sanity resembles, and i've just never explored this part of the map.

my sister's world map: they had that map for years before anyone noticed that there were two Indias on it--one on one side, one on the other. a matched set of the same country. and the map owners didn't even know it; it was just a part of the house, wall decoration.

***

i feel far away from the screen right now. the little window at the bottom bar says that the download is at 18% now, then 19.

i suppose that if a watched pot never boils, a prodded download never completes.

***

this year has been odd. i was just reading an author's blog, in which she says that she's just not a linear thinker, and she's come to terms with that. i'm not a linear thinker either, which is why i have trouble plotting and writing a book. hell, i have trouble planning a blog post.

or when to pay my bills.

or run a bath. you name it.

it's like everything is suddenly thrown into such detail and clarity that i'm frozen in place. i'm a deer, in the proverbial headlights. i have looked faced to face with a basilisk, and am turned to stone.

perhaps that is what i found in side my self? the one genetically italian cell, my very own evil eye? i can suddenly see all the imperfections and perfections of my surroundings, threads and nubs of carpet. the hair on the side of my face is bothering me, even though it is all pulled back. only a few hairs touch the nape of my neck, and yet that few is too many. if i concentrate, i can tell you that there are five hairs pressing onto my skin.

this doesn't happen all the time. usually my brain is well behaved. usually it riots rarely and is more organized. today it was fine until i got home. now that i am home, it's running in circles. i appear to be typing, but the gray matter's on a stationary bike, keeping pace with lance armstrong.

i feel restless. there are things to be done. i need only stand up and move, and they can be accomplished.

but to stand is to risk. and to risk is to fear. and to fear--for me, is to be paralyzed.

***

someone is shining a flashlight into my head. someone's poking around with a long stick. it's me, searching for the shadows and trying to poke them out, push them out of the insulated cave in which they reside, quite happily.

it's me, reaching in, pulling them out like the snarling moles they are.

i'm scared to do that. i don't have gloves. stretching my arm into the snake tank. i remember a poem i wrote about dangling your feet in a shark tank. i may have to find that and post it, at some point.

some point later. some point not tonight. tonight i am up to emptying the dishwasher and writing a blog.

i remember my uncle's mantra, as he recovers and learns the limits of his body after massive strokes: little by slow.

i can chart my self; find the limits and boundaries within which my countryside lies. even if today i am beset by some tempest and trapped by a rainstorm of my own creation, perhaps tomorrow the rain will let up and i can venture out once more.

***

the itsy bitsy spider
climbed up the water spout
down came the rain and
washed the spider out

out came the sun and
dried up all the rain
and the itsy bitsy spider
climbed up the spout again.