June 17
A cusp-day, limning thing, drawn taut over its hours, the heart in me pierced & pounding heavy. Did little sleeping last night, up at 4:30 for work, my head & heart now muting after their screeching all afternoon. Slumping now.
***
At the airport in Anchorage five hours early; had to leave buffer time for the drive down from Denali just in case. Things tend to take a yawning bit of time along the roads up here, & I felt better about a solid window. Here, though, in this maelstrom of activity, coming & going, I wonder if I ought to have trusted the truck & sat longer in that silence. Slept, again, about four hours before getting up at 4:30, & this string of sleep-hollow days pits a growing weight in me, a feather-light sway, fragile to the touch. A complement I suppose to the essential surreality of everything still.
Everyone around me in this airport speaks with a southern accent. I find this imminently curious.
Almost midnight. Doing the math, I’ve slept a total of about ten hours over the last three nights. Tonight I board at 1:15 AK time & land at 7:30 PST, which doesn’t offer too substantial an addition to the tally. I find myself shuddering, the way you do when exhausted. Standing over the urinal nodding off. My bearings have completely slipped, trembled, let loose, & I seem now a part of the world but a part entirely other. I had my first panic attack in nine years yesterday, chest-heavy, doubled over, straining to breath while my head whirled heedless of reason. & afterwards I played Denali again in that little yellow cabin. I simply have no grasp on anything at this point, a kind of spiraling that I’ve seen hints of but never fully experienced; I can as soon collapse into tears as buckle over in sudden laughter. I believe I do not know myself at all anymore. Have lost the frequencies of heart & head. Have ruptured contact. & seem still to wake & walk it through & see this face in the mirror early in the morning & late at night, its heavy black bags, its vacant look, vaguely ghostly. I think in the end I am now utterly exhausted, all of these miles trampling over me & leaving me in this quiet that my voice alone cannot seem to fill. & just lately, I flounder. & so I take this with me to California, to my family, & put my heart on a table & ask aid in its mending. Stay me from falling apart.
***
At the airport in Anchorage five hours early; had to leave buffer time for the drive down from Denali just in case. Things tend to take a yawning bit of time along the roads up here, & I felt better about a solid window. Here, though, in this maelstrom of activity, coming & going, I wonder if I ought to have trusted the truck & sat longer in that silence. Slept, again, about four hours before getting up at 4:30, & this string of sleep-hollow days pits a growing weight in me, a feather-light sway, fragile to the touch. A complement I suppose to the essential surreality of everything still.
Everyone around me in this airport speaks with a southern accent. I find this imminently curious.
Almost midnight. Doing the math, I’ve slept a total of about ten hours over the last three nights. Tonight I board at 1:15 AK time & land at 7:30 PST, which doesn’t offer too substantial an addition to the tally. I find myself shuddering, the way you do when exhausted. Standing over the urinal nodding off. My bearings have completely slipped, trembled, let loose, & I seem now a part of the world but a part entirely other. I had my first panic attack in nine years yesterday, chest-heavy, doubled over, straining to breath while my head whirled heedless of reason. & afterwards I played Denali again in that little yellow cabin. I simply have no grasp on anything at this point, a kind of spiraling that I’ve seen hints of but never fully experienced; I can as soon collapse into tears as buckle over in sudden laughter. I believe I do not know myself at all anymore. Have lost the frequencies of heart & head. Have ruptured contact. & seem still to wake & walk it through & see this face in the mirror early in the morning & late at night, its heavy black bags, its vacant look, vaguely ghostly. I think in the end I am now utterly exhausted, all of these miles trampling over me & leaving me in this quiet that my voice alone cannot seem to fill. & just lately, I flounder. & so I take this with me to California, to my family, & put my heart on a table & ask aid in its mending. Stay me from falling apart.
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