The strangest of lives is the one you live in your own head in realtime.

 

Perhaps, just maybe, the strangest life I've led so far, is the one where I look remarkably similar to everyone else, the mean, the mode, the average, when I fall closest to the mark.

Wandering in the pre-dawn I coughed into the night and a dog started barking.  And it barked and barked, as if to rouse the dead.

There may have been a scant moment where my soul was not connected to my body, or perhaps yet, my soul unaware of my body, an awareness that was as dark as the hours, two hours yet prior to dawn: this was my subconscious, I had become as were, a de-energized version of a Dali painting, something about masturbating with cold hands, or something, something of that spiral self-containment, that energy, that life force running amok within, banging and clanging into things, some of those things important, not just sausages and hams hanging in a smoke house, but the body proper.

I was reading where Paul said, "by the Grace of God, I am what I am" and I was thinking, yes, God gives us breathing room, unlike the restless enthusiasm of a Dali masturbation musing, and further, "and the mercy that was bestowed upon me was not in vain."

The strangest of the lives, of course, bestrides the "banality" of the common, or should we say the commonplace of the very novel and markedly weird, the tangental scrawl of a graph line turning into a Joker smile instead of a nice dell to have a picnic upon, and here I was, thinking I was actually disconnected from my body, the hen peck of rain drops on the drive, the porch roof, and my mind in sort of a pre-launch phase, waking in slow steps, even as I stood in place and smoked my cigarettes.

I had indignation in my dream, in my dream, I left the rooms, and walked among unfamiliar people in the yard, thinking they had no right; it was a rented room, for the day being appropriated; I went aside and there were familiars working old age projects, and one of them was spearing a small medical device with a Bic pen, saying off-hand that it was a heart monitor and GPS, his voice having the kind of love and familiarity one gives to thoughts of a pup, maybe, and I thought those people had no right to be in my yard.  I smoked and walked around, taking in, in particular, some of the women, as if for sport, for my own Dali paintings, musings on self-gratification, with reddened angry, energetic hands fumbling and tumbling and at once, not coming into mind, but at least mastering the person.

They had no right; it was my rented room: a big room on the outer-end, lined with windows, and inside, some comfortable chairs, and some communal tables for the shitters, doing their puzzles and games.  Heart Monitor, had a carton of french fries he pulled after he told us with that great puppy love about his heart monitor.

There was a pond beside--it was supposed to increase the rental value, but I paid no mind, wanting to be so far outside of the city, and so close, and the place fitting that bill, had no need of a pond, or a Trevari Fountain or anything of the kind; but what counterbalanced was the smallness and quaint fortitude of the little room on the end of the house.

Then an actual pup barking, as if trying to make himself seem more fierce than he was, just a little fish in a little bowl, stupidly calling out, making himself known even to roaming predators, and that unawares on the dog's part, as if perhaps too comfortable yet in his own space: not unlike myself, though I had paid for the privilege of dominating my own space.

Most of this took place in my mind, and if correlated to anything without, I was not aware, only sitting asleep, as if watching a dull movie in my own mind, walking the unlevel surface of the yard, around parked cars, taking hungry glances at the women folk coming and going.