Los Angeles, Peter Bradley Adams
thoughts. slow. jumbled. i should have gone to yoga but i wanted to sit in the bed i have that rests on cinder blocks and listen to this song on repeat all night. i carried home a bouquet of flowers and met two people on the train tonight who otherwise would have remained the empty faces of my fellow commuters. one was bob, an emory student from zambia who i spoke with about the stress of traveling and about the differences between public health concerns in america (facing a plague of degenerative disease) and africa (experiencing outbreaks of infectious disease). he told me that my flowers were beautiful. i mentioned they were for my birthday two days ago, and when he heard that, he dug around in his wallet and presented me with a celebratory jamba juice gift card before we each boarded our trains. the second person said that my flowers smelled beautiful. i agreed. ::awkward pause:: then: “thank you. despite having no responsibility for that.” and it became his turn to agree that the purple ones did indeed smell like cinnamon.
i wonder if i’m still a cat pawing at life’s yarn tendrils. i wonder more whether the fantasies i’ve entertained lately are more beneficial or disadvantageous to my mental health. it may be true that the feelings of love and fascination my fantasies lend me are “real,” physiologically, but what follows them is also a very real feeling of deprivation once i remember that what i dream about may be destined to stay riveted within the confines of my mind. the images that effortlessly take me up and away to some wonderful, faraway place - with stars reflected on water and a naive optimism for the future, and with this burning feeling that rests somewhere very deep in my chest - that they may never be actualized is the most disappointing part. i hold these very tangible emotions with no certainty that their existence, however impermanent, can ever be proven. i wonder if they’re ever meant to be, and then i hopelessly start dreaming about they moment that they are.
