tonight i can't sleep. the world at large rushes through my head and won't go home to the various beds where it sleeps. even the blanket i've put up to insulate myself from everything has ceased to work now. laying here, staring at the ceiling and feeling like a cliche- these are the things that keep me awake. nothing ever moves you to write at the right times. you'll sing the best song of your life in the shower with no one to hear and nothing to write it down with. it's just you and the thousands of drops and the cobwebs. the knowledge of the moment is enough for you to yearn for it in your regular life. it's those little things that make life unbearable and survivable all at the same time.
laying there, staring at the ceiling i think of the salmon bisque from lunch. it was, in a word, lacklustre. campbell's tomato soup with a little sour creme, dressed up like a dish.
i think of how the seasons are changing around here. it's nothing sudden like my home; instead it's a slow bleeding of the greens. everything is turning yellow, brown and dead now. fall is my favorite season. the fog comes sometimes in the morning and wraps around you and whispers that you needn't go anywhere, they won't see you if you go, anyway. nothing exists outside of me and my little island in the mist. sound never travels far in a good fog. rain never bothers to interlope and everything sleeps. everything except me.
i don't know when i developed this habit of insomnia. somewhere between the mountains and the coast i left it in a dingy hotel room in boulder or a lonely prarie along the columbia river. i feel like it drifted away on the wind when i wasn't looking.
i remember now the stories my grandmother used to tell me about her childhood. she told me about having to save everything. more often she told me of how she watched her life blow away on the wind. i often picture her on the front stoop of an old white-washed house like the one you see in the movies just counting as every grain of her childhood slowly rolled away. i envision that when it came time to pack up very little remained that would show the rich life she had. it was time to leave. so i see them packing up a few day's food and water and all of their clothes and the bone-white crocheted curtains. i see them looking at their farm one last time and then leaving it for what they hoped was a better life.
more often i see them looking for where the wind came. not because they really had a choice but mroe because they needed to see what such a place looked like. you often see that people are drawn to the very thing they know will hurt them and leave them face down on the street. and so it was- they looked for the wind.
they wound up in chicago, feeling the wet breeze blowing off of a dank, indigo expanse. this would be home. in chicago there would be no dust to blow away; in chicago there would be no plantings or havestings or markets; in chicago there would be something new and hopeful; in chicago they would start over.
and so it was that the great port, the stacker of wheat born in their old soil, became home.