1. I am reclining in the dentist chair, my mouth full of my own tongue and novocain. It is the only time I will allow myself to the control of another, a depressor jabbed into my mouth with only noise and no words to protest. Somehow, numbed to dull pain with a sallow light glaring in my face, I cannot remain awake. In and out I drift of the world with its tortuous drills and sterile palms.
2. Hours later I lie, but it is not familiar, it is a prisoner's bed. The only light that drips in comes from beneath the opaque shade, but it is as if my greatest enemy himself had scuttled up the wall outside and, balancing effortlessly on the impossible ledge, breathed a mocking canopy of sunbeams into the room. The room is not haunted, but my heart races, or is that my mind? On the plank I lie, chills running down my back and the sunbeams twinkling into my eyes and scalding my face and chest. Sleeplessly, I toss and turn and though the room is silent, I can bring not a quiet thought to mind. I cannot find comfort under my favorite blanket.
3. So it often is, as the body is still, the mind is not. I curse that demon mind, I run from it, I try to fill it with petty thought. A boomerang it is, the mind! Thrown many times over and always it returns to make it's same snaking course, cutting a well-worn (or is it worn out?) path through the soul. It is the head that is our master, our predator even, filling itself greedily with our insecurities and shortcomings. The mind is but a stomach, the more fed, the hungrier it will be, opening its caverns endlessly for darker secrets.
4. But perhaps the mind is merely vengeful. It has gifted me deptless thought and curiousity, and yet I have scorned it. Sometimes I hold its depth close to my chest, not to protect it, but to shield it from other's view. What should they think if they know I wonder upon so many things with such joy and at times, agony? It is especially when he who I admire passes that I clutch it under my overcoat, flattening it against my racing chest. He should not know that my glowing face is afflicted by such tumultuous thought. And yet, as he passes, though I know him not and his dullness gleams unmistakeably from his being, I imagine his mind brooding on profound matters and his footsteps disappearing to pressing and empathetic tasks. Right it is to be angry, for the very gift it gives I have banished and mistakenly celebrated with adoration in many another. My eyelids flutter restlessly but I fall into a fitfull sleep.
2. Hours later I lie, but it is not familiar, it is a prisoner's bed. The only light that drips in comes from beneath the opaque shade, but it is as if my greatest enemy himself had scuttled up the wall outside and, balancing effortlessly on the impossible ledge, breathed a mocking canopy of sunbeams into the room. The room is not haunted, but my heart races, or is that my mind? On the plank I lie, chills running down my back and the sunbeams twinkling into my eyes and scalding my face and chest. Sleeplessly, I toss and turn and though the room is silent, I can bring not a quiet thought to mind. I cannot find comfort under my favorite blanket.
3. So it often is, as the body is still, the mind is not. I curse that demon mind, I run from it, I try to fill it with petty thought. A boomerang it is, the mind! Thrown many times over and always it returns to make it's same snaking course, cutting a well-worn (or is it worn out?) path through the soul. It is the head that is our master, our predator even, filling itself greedily with our insecurities and shortcomings. The mind is but a stomach, the more fed, the hungrier it will be, opening its caverns endlessly for darker secrets.
4. But perhaps the mind is merely vengeful. It has gifted me deptless thought and curiousity, and yet I have scorned it. Sometimes I hold its depth close to my chest, not to protect it, but to shield it from other's view. What should they think if they know I wonder upon so many things with such joy and at times, agony? It is especially when he who I admire passes that I clutch it under my overcoat, flattening it against my racing chest. He should not know that my glowing face is afflicted by such tumultuous thought. And yet, as he passes, though I know him not and his dullness gleams unmistakeably from his being, I imagine his mind brooding on profound matters and his footsteps disappearing to pressing and empathetic tasks. Right it is to be angry, for the very gift it gives I have banished and mistakenly celebrated with adoration in many another. My eyelids flutter restlessly but I fall into a fitfull sleep.
