|
January 21, 2003
mark thomas Some mornings I wake up and all I want to do is throw a dart at a map of the United States, then pack up my bags and move to whatever city or town the dart landed nearest. I don't have darts, but I do have a set of steak knives. I wonder if the sound of steak knives hitting a wall is distinctive enough that the neighbors would take note and report me to the cutlery investigators. Today I woke up with an overwhelming desire to be anywhere but here. Before even putting on a pot of coffee I was leafing through a road atlas of the United States, for some reason lingering over Oklahoma. The desire to be anywhere but here, however, was not so overwhelming that I did not detect its irrationality, and thus that it was probably born of something I had just dreamed about before waking up. This is the sort of post dream state that I wake up in sometimes. It can take hours for me to realize that I was only dreaming. In this case, though, I could not remember what the dream had been about. Last week I had a vivid dream in which I was forced to amputate the fifth finger of my right hand. After doing this I handed the finger off to somebody who knew what to do with dismembered digits, then I went home. I woke up from that dream and was wide awake for at least 2 hours before I looked at my right hand and was alarmed to see that all 5 fingers were still there. It was a real shock to me. I don't know what causes this disconnection from reality, and I don't know why it lasts as long as it does. I worry that without realizing it I may be living in a continuous state of quasi-hypnosis by having never snapped out of some dream I had years ago. I think the dream last night was about the physical objects I've accumulated, and how they are starting to intimidate me into feeling like this apartment and this living space mean more to me than they really do. It's all about the clutter. All these possessions and objects are starting to encroach on my sense of personal space. A few weeks ago I was rummaging through some old stuff and I found a picture of this apartment from 3 or 4 years ago. There was hardly anything here. A table, a small TV, one set of bookshelves. I looked at that picture and thought "Man, that looks really nice." It looked peaceful and promising. That's because to my way of looking at things a blank wall is more inspiring than a wall covered with posters and memorabilia. A blank wall doesn't just force you to think up something creative, it leaves you no other choice. Busy walls and cluttered spaces inflict noise and clatter on my mind and on my recently attained but very tenuously maintained sense of peace and serenity. Maybe I should sell off everything I own and start living like a monk. No TV, no piles of papers that date back as far as the 4th grade, no stacks of old magazines, no collection of AM radios. I'm starting to warm up to the idea. Or maybe I'll re-visit the dart, or rather steak knife throwing metaphor. Maybe I'll randomly pull names and street addresses out of the Manhattan white pages and ship boxes filled with my junk to those addresses. With each box I'll include a one-hundred dollar bill and a hand-written note explaining that "I am out of space in my apartment and could you please store this box safely for 1 year? It contains no hazardous materials, and you are welcome to examine them as you see fit. $100 is enclosed for your troubles. I will contact you in approximately 365 days with information about forwarding this box and its contents to a new address." Let confusion ensue in whose ever home my possessions land.
Recent Stories
|