Last night, I fought the sleep. Hard as I could. Music. Internet. Reached out on Twitter (which I think I should employ a bit more than letting friends know when the new blog is up) and followed a couple hundred more people. If you in turn are reading, thank you and hello! Unfortunately though, come three in the morning, when after three nights of exhaustion and restlessness, I finally fell into a fitful sleep on my living room couch.

When I woke up it was three in the afternoon and I couldn’t remember my dreams. No detail. No idea of direction, whether the monster had returned on the prowl, whether he had said his piece, spoken whatever it was that gripped me the night before, or whether he was even there at all. It should be mentioned too that I’ve never had recurring dreams before this. Not before Valentine’s Day this year anyhow. These are different. These are bold in the way that introspection can be bold, bold in the way that a come-to-Jesus with a best friend can be bold, the way of hitting you over the head with a frying pan, if not trying to get through to me, I feel as if they have, as if there’s something significant, whether there is or not.

With this feeling underlying the others, I’ve woken from the last few nights sleep, early in the morning, but this afternoon upon waking, instead of fear I shook out that funny stuff cobwebs are composed of, nostalgia, rush, that odd comforting sensation of deep-set joy. Essentially the kind of feeling you get from a good dream, an adventure. The underlying rationale, the significance of the thing set deep, deterred me from believing it was just another childish make-believe world, but just the same, it was sure nice to wake up feeling rested and cheerful. Really nice.

Only the clouds were responsive when I got outside. Driven out of my house, wanting to break the spell it had cast upon me these last few days, I knocked on Kyle’s door to no answer, even threw aside pride to knock on the door of the neighbors on the other side of me, to say hi, but to similar response. I curled up next to the window, opened a crack to let the air inside, but even then the parking lot sat mostly empty, the cars notably vacant, no one walking past, not even out with a dog. Was this what it would be like all summer? I wondered. Deep inside I hoped not. I might call myself independent but a part of me is very aware how comforting the society beyond my door has already become.

By four thirty, the clouds had closed in above in funny layers, a thick gray cloud dropping rain loomed directly west, but layers of dark blue, gray, puffy white, and hazy intermingled the rest of the way across the sky, alternating, darkening, something threatening about them all in one place like this, friends and enemies only stand next to each other when the epic shit goes down. At least, that’s what popped into my head when I saw those clouds coming in from west to east this afternoon. As it were, that was about the only thing I saw all afternoon. Clouds. Sky. Later still, the setting sun and twilight that lingered. Rain came at one point, but the mass moved along and the sun peeked out again, as if to say, “All well down there, friends?”

“Yes,” I said aloud through the glass pane. “Today is a solid and pleasant one.”

The haze and clouds slid past, over, under, out again. I saw it nod slow and smile. I smiled back.