Dying light, dyeing gold

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

Watchers

What's in the box?

I did not so much wake, as phase out of sleep, fully lucid at zero dark thirty. Algid night air fraught with the promise of a storm. Distant heels clicking on the pavement, the odd murmur of a night bus. Thunderbolts at 3 AM. One of those rare occasions when you cheat the circadian rhythm, doing a U-turn from REM to NREM1. 

No point in going back to bed, I brewed the usual quadruple espresso con leche, lit up and watched the storm bloom through the night. Electric tendrils of lightning inscribing the sky with chevrons of a primal, ineffable tongue. Raindrops like radio static. Random memories, like phantom images on a dead channel coursing through the mind. 

Ten hours later, mid commute on a sidewalk of boiling asphalt, the sky radiating heat at what felt like five hundred degrees, I almost got beat up. Not got into a fight. The outcome would have been singular from the start. If not for my glib tongue and the happenstance presence of a stranger. Wrong place, wrong time. Benevolent quantum states.

Right now, the adrenaline rush long abated, I'm thinking gulags, pogroms, IQ-based mass genocide. Frank Herbert's quote ringing in my ears.
“Ever sift sand through a screen? We Bene Gesserit sift people to find the humans.”

Hypnopompic

I take my first breath after the transition. The air tastes foreign. Exhaled carbon dioxide flows out of my lungs, dissolving in the air like ink in water. Alien, infused with different probabilities. I get my bearings, desperately clinging to the feeling of disorientation, but the neocortex is merciless. Attuning itself, and myself, to reality. Hacking away at the grogginess. The last strands of those otherworldly perceptions dissipate despite my protest. Leaving a faint patina on the sieve of memory. Already completely exposed to the blaring, stolid realities of this dimension. I am awake.

My dreams have returned.

Heart of the swarm

Mari inquired regarding my status, so here's a brief status update. A colony of Indianmeal Moths decided to descend upon my kitchen like an Egyptian plague. I deployed moderate chemical warfare implements as a counterstrike. Current outlook: all bets are off. My network connection is seemingly possessed, by some vengeful poltergeist of interference (second router - same bullshit, measurements with inssider and other software show no overlaying networks which could cause interference, no network intrusions detected, no weird traffic, yada yada..). Backache, itchy eyelids, red from rubbing with all the allergens floating around. I don't remember when was the last time I read a book. Could've been February. But probably more like sometime last year. At the same time I'm completely bored with everything. Not existentialist ennui, mind you. Plain old, mind numbing stupor. Alcohol helps.So, instead of dragging on this tirade, here's a nice photo I shot a couple years back.

And how is your Summer going?

The nights of wonder

"Encumbered forever by desire and ambition..."