Night writer.

Losing illusions. 

I can’t tell if they stick to my psyche like glue or if I’m hugging the damn things so tight they’re nearly suffocating and can’t wait to be lost. Those little pieces of half baked knowledge splayed out in an imaginary roll of overexposed film strewn in front of my eyes, so lifelike they seem real. They conjure up all that I think I need and don’t need, and all that I feel I want and don’t want...

Some of the illusions, I feel so deeply about, clarity of thought is an actual afterthought. A jovial spectator from above, some cowboy boot with spurs wearing old dude, white mustache, white beard, mustache a little longer than the beard, and blue eyes—“Hey down there,” he lifts the brim of his black hat to reveal dark bushy eyebrows and it’s definitely a good look on him, a sprig of tall grass or whatever that is old cowboys pinch in their teeth while they’re talking to, well, me, “you seem to've dug yer heels in chin deep this time little darlin.” 

They used to come hurling out of me like a raging river at my therapist, crossing from the couch over the coffee table, a placeholder for the tissues I oddly always tried so hard to not use but usually did; over that coffee table, right into his expressionless but open and accepting face. Sitting there drenched in my illusions he’d say little, but man was it profound—deep enough to help me dig channels for that wide river of thought and feeling. 

The work turned on lights in the attic of my mind. Little spotlights shining through the holes in me. 

Then time, that beautiful accompaniment always playing in the background of life, sometimes with the pauses in there that make me wonder if it’s time to politely clap for as long as the majority of the imaginary audience does. All of us there, spending a lovely evening observing time.

Work and time. Time and work. Channels that redirect, dry beds where life rarely flows now, flourishing creek sides where I can go for peace, from time to time bubbling baby streams giving life to some fucked up jungle plants still tucked away in the dark corners of my mind, dormant but waiting. 

These days, no more raging, unbridled river, that I float down, unlearned, writing while inwardly illiterate. 

And when I’m miles from the rivers edge, digging my heels in, clinging to my illusions, I can sometimes hear his laugh before his boot-steps as he approaches, lifts the brim of his hat, I know the drill. 

Back to the rivers edge, back to life, into the sun set, a sprig of tall grass or whatever that is in the silhouette. Back to work. 

Back to reality.