Day 103: Touch

Vast expanse of charcoal sky stretched to the horizon. Distant lights shimmering. Air taut with silence. This bedroom could be a spaceship lost in the cosmos. Cut off from all of humanity. Ceaseless thrum of computer fan. Cold light from desk lamp. No sound of traffic.

I've just woken up from a nap after work. Was up at 6am for deliveries, after string of closes. Four hours sleep last night. Limped home and chatted to Phace, snug in her room under blankets, then up my stairs and collapsed in bed, watched mindless videos on YouTube until I passed out, been asleep since. Now I don't know which way is up or why I am or who life is.

Been feeling flat these past days, disconnected from the world. Like I'm bobbing on a boat on the surface of my existence, unable to pierce down to the depths beneath. I want to read more literature, take more photographs, look at the world through eyes soft and alert. Interact with the world through a touch that is greater than the grab and flick of thumb on phone screen. I want to caress. To fondle. To palpate. To murmur in the ear of the universe, and to hear it murmur back.

Look at this opening paragraph from the short story In Another Country by Hemingway:

In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it any more. It was cold in the fall in Milan and the dark came very early. Then the electric lights came on, and it was pleasant along the streets looking in the windows. There was much game hanging outside the shops, and the snow powdered in the fur of the foxes and the wind blew in their tails. The deer hung stiff and heavy and empty, and small birds blew in the wind and the wind turned their feathers. It was a cold fall and the wind came down from the mountains.

Can you hear the music? I have been having trouble hearing the music, but I can hear it a little, in this paragraph. I want more of this music in my life.

Time for bed now. See you tomorrow.