Last night I dreamed of the Higgs Boson. I'm not even sure how one can dream of such a thing with no knowledge of it. A description from an article on the internet must have stuck with me. I dreamed of particles moving through molasses. I could see them slowing, taking on mass. There was music. I regret to admit that it was Pink Floyd. I awoke and was immediately ashamed of my dream, the soundtrack anyway. The dream itself was a sublime vision of the process, I think. It was the Pink Floyd that had to go. How did my dreams turn into a laser light show. Why.
I blame my old friend, Bong-Swat.
This morning, walking the dog and Rhys, I began to realize what my life will become. I will have to start spending much more time managing others' lives, and Barkley. Rhys has gotten big enough to start grabbing Barkley's hair and kicking him when he gets excited as we're lying together on the bed. Barkley has responded in kind and has growled at Rhys twice and once took a warning snap towards him. It's a difficult position to be in. I'm having to scold the poor dog verbally while assuring him that I love him and he's still who he thinks he is on the local pecking order. But he's not. He knows it and so do I. He's probably thinking my spot's open. This is his big chance. He's reverting to his wolf instincts.
Nothing gets done any more. My imaginary list of things to do just keeps growing and growing. There are objects all around me that need tending to but they just pile up. They serve as reminders, I guess. But I don't want to be reminded. I want time to do things but when I get time I choose to do nothing, convincing myself that it is best to do nothing, that nothing is the one thing I haven't been doing enough of. It's all true, of course, the doing or not doing as a benefit or imaginary luxury. But the stuff piling up is maddening. Why can't I do nothing and also not be reminded of it.
I've been meaning to write more focused pieces. I want to have a modest body of work that I can submit to an editor in the hopes of getting some writing work. But I write these pieces while Rhys is sleeping. I never know how much time I'll have. Most days it never seems to be enough. Or, I'll write a piece very quickly and then Rhys will "sleep like a baby" for 2 hours. There is no way to know, to predict. So I write from paragraph to paragraph, always ready to wrap it up quickly. It is sloppy, giving rise to blurry, jumpy posts.
Every day I tell myself that I will do things differently that day but the sky will be overcast and that will be a good enough reason to just do things the way I did the day before. Any reason will suffice: my shoes are upstairs, the stroller will already be in the car, I can't find my keys, my t-shirt is dirty, etc. The next thing I know I'll be in the drive-thru at McDonald's, looking at the required calorie count on the menu, convincing myself that it's not as bad as it really is. Calories being such a poor reflection of what it is you're ingesting. It flattens life into one misleading quantitative judgement alone. It's like judging the value of a novel by how many words are in it - not even separating them into verbs, nouns or adjectives.
"Mr. Ford's new novel 'Canada' represents a sizable addition to the world of literature with a page count of 432, clocking in at a respectable 108,000 words... Quite impressive Mr. Ford, well done...."
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