Rendezvous

I wake up in the middle of the night, the ringing in my ears like a serenade of ten thousand insects on some Louisiana bayou. Only there are no critters out there in the cold night making the deafening, all encompassing noise - it's the byproduct of a head cold and ear infection.

There's a bad taste and an irritation in my throat with each swallow, and it's obvious I'm not going to get back to sleep any time soon. I'm hot and cold and sticky with sweat. My stomach moans and creaks uneasily.

Dark thoughts of death, sorrow and isolation germinate. Words and sentences grow out of my mind and take independent form. They become compulsive little ditties in my head. "This is a state of unhappiness...u-n-h-a-p-p-i-n-e-s-s-u-n-h-a-p-p-I-n-e-s-s..." and so on for minutes at a time. Why these obsessed repetitious word games? What do they mean? And I realize that, in fact, I speak this way to myself all the time, that the rhythm of my mind is not as complicated and interesting as I like to believe, that I'm going through the same patterns day after day. I feel like a lost child at a surreal amusement park, where the distorted clowns all bear some version of my countenance.

And I wonder what holds it all together, in so much as it is "together" at all? What keeps this earnest facade in presentable, marketable condition? How close is it to crumbling and turning to dust, right before the eyes of the world and my own self-observing eyes?

I sneeze so hard and long I wake up the dog. She shakes furiously and looks at me with her coal black eyes. To me she seems concerned.