Safe enough in the shadows of my mind.

or, "what it's like to be in my head"

There are snowflakes falling, it’s dark and they shine orange-yellow in the streetlight against the dark sky. I crane my head to look, crane my neck to catch them on my tongue. It is a little cool, some might say terribly cold, but the wind in my face makes me feel alive, and I’m actually warm, or at least, comfortable, as long as I keep moving—no one believes me when I tell them that, but it’s true. I prefer cold, I prefer chill, nothing makes me feel alive like ice. Anyway, the snowflakes are falling, and I twirl and stretch to catch them—it doesn’t cross my mind that I look quite the fool, until it does and I reign in my laughter and return my wandering gaze to the sidewalk. But before long I’m caught up in the sidewalk, the pretty crystals, catching the light like a field of diamonds—not like a field of diamonds, though, like a path of snowflakes and ice crystals. Every image is like itself, a little like every other image, but most like itself. That occurs to me, and I smile at the simple complexity of it. Simple complexity, simple complexity, com-plex-it-y, simple, simple plan, it’s a simple plan! Not like the band, though, like a simple plan, they never turn out to be as simple as you first thought, do they?

Sometimes my mind is a scary place to be—imagination isn’t as bright and fuzzy as some people seem to think—but moments like this I wouldn’t want to be anyone else. The beauty of the moment strikes me, the orange streetlights on the ice, the brown of that little clump of snow against the white, the snow on the trees, the cold air like a long drink of life, the moment is beautiful. It’s the night that brings it out in me. I’m never as calm and wild and content and restless as I am walking in the cold at night. It’s why I want to move somewhere far North, where I’ll always have a cold, dark night to walk in.

Back five minutes.

I’m laughing, laughing at the sheer craziness of it all. I know I locked the door, I know I locked it at least once, but I’m still bent on checking on my way home, though it’ll add five minutes to my walk. I remember locking it, but what if that was on the first trip? No, it wouldn’t make sense that I locked it on the first trip, I knew we were making two trips, wouldn’t he have reminded me? No, I definitely locked it. But what if, what if, what if I didn’t? Worst case scenario, someone breaks in and robs the place stone blind. Second worst case, the unlocked door is discovered in the morning and we are both fired; third worst case, I am fired. But this is all folly, because I locked the damn door.

Or did I? I laugh aloud again. Life would be simpler, I remark aloud to the empty air, if I just wasn’t so crazy. Laugh, laugh, it’s all you really can do—I am amused by the futility of my reasoning, amused by the inanity of my situation, amused by the cold and the walk and the idea. And I am walking to the store to check the door, which is, of course, firmly locked when I get there. The snow, which I assumed to be blowing out of the trees, begins to look more like a snowfall, and I laugh because of course it starts snowing as soon as I am resolved to walk the extra distance.

Back another several minutes.

Barnes & Noble is a pretty nice place to sit and read, even if it is cliché and whatnot. This coffee is a little too sweet, but that’s okay. I have a new book, and that makes everything better—it’s one I’ve heard about several times online, but not by name. I recognized the characters when I flipped it open to a random page and started reading. I only know the names, and that one is an angel and the other, a demon, but that’s enough and it’s by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett—do I need any further goads? It’s in my price range, and that was proof enough.

I’m sitting there, sipping the “tall” mocha and popping little balls of chocolate-mint-stuff and laughing to myself at Crowley, barely aware of my surroundings, except for the guy at the table across from mine. We’re facing each other, on opposite sides of our tables. He’s using a laptop, a Mac—we made brief eye-contact when I walked in, and he’s hovering in the back of my mind now. He’s tallish, wearing a white and blue plaid-type shirt, medium-length curly blond hair, and has shadows under his light blue eyes that suggest a lack of sleep all too familiar in this corner of the world, surrounded by bookshelves and quiet regulars who prowl the pages like hawks on the wind. He’s handsome, looks like late twenties, early thirties, and I kind of wish I wasn’t too shy to look up and smile at him. He smiles at me anyway, when I look up, and I smile back. When I get up to throw the coffee away and go, he asks me if I was popping coffee beans and I laugh and explain. I wish, I wish, I wish I could get to know him.

Back about half an hour.

I’m flashing you the peace sign over my shoulder as I take the crosswalk and he drives off. It’s a good night, it’s a good night, I’m laughing more sincerely than it’s been in a while, the deep snowbank that I sink right through doesn’t faze me, it’s a good night for a walk in the clear air and the soft snow. In my ears, it’s “Lemon,” and I ignore the deeper feelings that song pings in my heart and focus on the beat, a good beat to walk to.

Back several minutes.

He’s counting money, careful and generally organized and so on, and I’m leaning up against the counter, distracting him with mindless chatter. Eventually, I run out of words and fall silent, but not for long. I’m never silent for long, when I’m in these moods. It’s kind of a pain. But this was supposed to be the inner monologue, so yeah.

After all this time, I’m used to the store with the lights turned out. It’s not too dark to see, not up front, and I’m wondering if I could juggle if I tried. Of course, the answer is no. I knew that, I’ve known that for a long time, but it’s never stopped me before. As I go to pick up the nail files, I see my friend and boss mark down another number on the sheet and stop. The scenario plays out in my head, I mentally see the tired head-shake, and the exasperated sigh, and start laughing instead. He looks at me, looks like he might ask what I’m laughing over, and then shakes his head and goes back to counting. I grin. The rhythm starts playing in my head, and the inside of the first knuckles of my thumb, forefinger, and middle finger start drumming it out on the counter. It takes me a few moments to realize that he’s stopped counting and is glaring at me, and another moment to figure out why.

“You can stop that any time.”

And so I pull up short again, and turn from the counter. I pull a few bags of seed forward to fill gaps on the shelf. There’s something about the surface, the cool plastic bulging with seeds underneath, that invites drumming, or juggling, but I restrain myself. The intense mental image hits me, of the bag bursting, a force of seed bursting out like an explosion, and I grin, and then start laughing as the picture solidifies. He rolls his eyes; I don’t have to turn around to know that. I grin and turn back, and the inevitable follow-up image is a bullet exploding into the back of my neck, out of my forehead. Or some forehead, anyway. It’s a pretty awkward feeling, the imagined senses it drums up in my skin. I shiver a little bit, and stop thinking to watch him count. He eventually notices that I’ve stopped pacing and looks up, making a strange raised-eyebrow face at me watching him. I grin.

The next image is the little digital computer-register clock shattering. I can see it, fragments of bright turquoise numbers flying, and black glass all around, the little tinkling sound. I snicker again, picturing the fragments embedding themselves in the five and ten pound bags—somehow that amuses me. He shakes his head—I’m a lost cause, but I think we both accepted that a long time ago. At least, I did.

Back an hour or so.

We’re talking U2, both more excited than we’d probably care to admit to anyone else. He’s talking about his life and Bono’s, and I kind of see how the dovetail could be. I wish, I wish, there’s so much he could be. I hope more for him than for me, sometimes. Often, actually. If anyone deserves to make it out of this purgatory, it’s him. What I wouldn’t give to see his name in lights—my name, my name I would see on a PO box in a village somewhere on the edge of the wilderness, but that’s a dream I would do without to see his face on an album. Man, it’s crazy how life pulls us.

I’m trying to unscrew the whatever-it-is; this is a copy-and-paste situation; today, it was a pole and a bolt. He can’t find the right tool, I can’t find it either; the solution is to either leave the task undone, indefinitely or until the tool can be found, or to improvise. He’s for leaving it; I’m trying to patch together a solution with spare parts. He’s pointing out the fallacies in my logic; I’m ignoring him. He’s usually right, but it’s worth it for the sparkling moments in between where whatever half-baked crazy scheme I’ve come up with actually works.

Back another hour in time.

I’m sinking into the snowdrift, laughing because although it’s cold and wet, it still feels fluffy, and it makes me smile. An image flashes across my sight, blood splattered across the white and brown plow-snow in a pattern of bright red, turning dark. I shake my head to clear it and keep walking, smiling still. The images barely even bother me anymore, I turn up the music, it’s Bob Marley and the Wailers, which is nice after something like that. The cars whiz by, and the suggestion passes my mind to leap in front of one, and the sensation of my bones being crushed against a high-speed fender whispers. I ignore it as best as I can and keep walking.

It’s a good day for it, after all.