Life Today

Saturday rained all day and then again all night, the winds roved and howled, invisible powers shifting forms, sound; like an electronic vacuum cleaner, a plane taking off from a runway. 

 

My sleeping bag was soaked, worse at the bottom where my feet should have been, I was cold to the bone and I kicked off the jeans I was wearing to cover the freezing feet. 

 

We're in the middle of March now, I've been rough sleeping for one month, on a night I struggle to lose awareness, it seems difficult to become comfortable, and in the wee small hours I listen to the scurrying rodents and wild foxes inside my circle making pre-linguistic communication sounds. The foxes screech, they have throaty beats, it can seem unnerving and I keep very still, playing possum.

 

Before I left the house R said, "Do you know where you're going to go?"

"Roughly", I said.

"Not happy", he said.

 

Falling was dumb. My wrist hurts so much I can't automatically move my hand to write, I sip hot coffee, charge my phone in a morning caf. Cigarette. The body seems to forget the cold of the night during the day.

 

I fell asleep as the daylight seeped, thinking about a communist politician, his words belonged to someone else, they were not his own, he was an empty chitinous shell and his mouth moved and there was sound, but he was not who I had thought he may have been.

 

I woke from dreaming about an ugly woman, a monstrous villain, plaguing, menacing and cruel. Her eyes seemed to bulge, she was seething with hatred, and her skin seemed green. The scene shifted and I was with others and the monstrous woman sauntered towards us and then past us, dark rings encircled eyes, her former personality gone, she was now heroin chic and the person I was with said, "Downloaded construct", and I said, "What?" and he said, "The monster wasn't her, it was a program, an artificial personality construct, like a drug". She had become possessed, I was fearful. The man said, "They call them emojis, they do it for kicks, she's on a different one now". 

 

How awful, I thought. Hairs standing perpendicular on cold thighs, hands rubbing skin, I wake, pretending cold is heat, the illusion burns, and then breaks. 

 

It's raining again.