Between Nerve and Land
Wherein I remember a cold night last year...
Between Nerve and Land
How You Feeling?
Hey, you want to do something fun?
I have this terrible headache from caffeine withdrawl (It got cold yesterday and I never drink tea, but then I drank like seven cups of green tea yesterday and now my brain is throbbing!).
Would you like to be the physical manifestation of my headache and I can tell you how mean you are to me and stuff? I might get really spirited, so I want you to detur me from treating communication like this (Or steel yourself and consent. That works too).
That Sounds Awful!
I can't be liguistically violent to my headache? You want me to love and support them?
What is this friends-to-enemies nightmare? I was so excited! I'm so mad at this headache and now all I want to do is cradle them like a bundle of reeds as I walk along the river of the world's shared ache. What can distract me from the dundun dundun localized entirely in my thinking bits? This is not a request at all, this is a call to tend. And I'm not having it! I won't take care of them, not after what they've done to me!
It feels so bad, it's like if my head was mercurious and my sinuses were the sun. It feels like every collision happening in the rings of saturn this moment are right here right now. How am I supoosed to find the crow flying across my window distracting, the beautiful weather distracting, the flow of the river diatracting?
My head hurts so bad all my pores feel like little heads that hurt in solidarity. My arms feel like the river in summer around them. My body feels like the bottom of the universe kicking its feet terrified it'll fall down. My tongue feels ...well, fine I guess; but I haven't swallowed since I started this sentence, and now there's a lot of sloshing going on as I type and the little pocket of air left on the roof of my mouth feels mucus-y when I go inspect it with my tongue just now.
I'm so upset, I just swallowed so hard I newlined. There's gotta be some way I can just be mad at my headache and sleep off all the symptoms and not think about any of this and call the day a wash. But It's a holiday, all the stores are closed, all the neighbors are strangers, abusive to their partners, hate trans people, or're away so I just need to sit here and be uncomfortable if that's alright.
That's about how I'm feeling, thanks for asking.
What Was That?
There's this hook. Three sheets of heavy cardstock, in landscape, hang from a pair of strings in a knot keeping the pages a knuckle apart, below one another, below the hook the top page has string through to hang to.
The three pages float up. And float back down. Up and back down. And do you know what they do, headache?
They don't thrash around all river like. They don't slice one another to pieces. They float up, is what they do. And they float down. Like laughter, like the pink clouds over the midnight mountains over the taupe treeline and emerald poaceae and myrrh riverbank and (...what the hell cover even is the river right now that isn't just other forms of water writing love letters to nitrogen? Sure:) "solstice blue" river, why the hell not. All these colors float up, receive their name, and float back down.
They don't fight each other for who gets named first, of course the clouds get named first way too often - the river gets named last bacause what is that I don't even, and the geese honks migrating would have to fly through at mach-social-norms to get a color (trainlamp yellow, or whatever). They float up. And float down.
Water Has No Color!
You didn't come all the way out here to tear through my skull. Talk to me. What is it you want. You said water. You said low light. I haven't had water all day. I think water is a beautiful idea. You see the person on the train tracks fixing their bike, pausing, continuing on? You know how I found them? I noticed. They had this sound they were making, like something striking the tracks as they coast smoothly down along the river. They do this every holiday. I don't know their story. I've never asked them anything.
They stopped right in front of my window I could have thrown a paper airplane at them and they probably would have looked up and waved ad I waved at them. But instead I am telling you a story, tending to you, making sure you are taking care of the way the person on the tracks took care of whatever was making that noise.
Now you've emptied the whole bottle. You've flown through all the clock times along its surface dividing the thousand millilitres into seven hours of the day for the first fill and more hours of the day for the second fill. You flew through fourteen hours of water in the time it took me to explain your situation.
Question
Would you mind if I pause to get you more water?