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She reads a poem to me, 600 miles away. I open my eyes, briefly, not wanting to fall asleep, not yet, not until she’s spoken her last word to me, and I notice: her photo is open on my computer screen. It’s the closest I can come to where I imagine I am.

I think it would be worth anything to have her voice here instead of bouncing off a satellite.

I miss that ache.

So much running through my head, and I find myself carefully sifting through the thoughts. Careful not to � to what?

I�m thinking too much.

Stop thinking and just do.

Thoughts of leaving town have been floating around in my head all day long. And I finally pinpointed it, thanks largely to the temporal agoraphobia. It�s not that I dislike this place, Birmingham. I thought for a long time that I did, that I had problems with the conservatism, the religious oppression that runs rampant under the surface. The lack of cultural opportunities. The small town mentality. The limited potential, the glass ceiling. But as I got older, I began to realize that a lot of that is bullshit. Living in Birmingham is a macrocosmic parallel to living in Southside: I�m equidistant from big cities / the people in suburbs that I care to be close to; there is a great sense of familiarity and comfort; everything I want or need, while not within reach, is at least within driving distance.

I�ve gotten comfortable, settled, maybe even complacent.

Things are easy around here. Too easy, maybe. And I know that maybe that�s what people strive for, spend their lives working towards: being able to relax a little and knowing that things will come to them more simply and with less effort and thought. But is that what I want? At 34, no less?

I think I feel directionless because I�ve accomplished all I can in this town. All that I want to, I should say. And I wonder if there�s anything left here for me but the same things that I have now, maybe a little bigger or brighter, but still the same. I don�t feel the need to push myself, because there�s nothing to push for.

I�ve ended so many sentences with prepositions that I should probably turn in my writer�s card about now.

The thought of leaving scares me. I�ve been here so long that I�d be literally throwing myself into darkness on so many levels. And of course, there�s a fear of failure there, of having to return. But it�s more a fear of the unknown. Where do I even begin?

I don�t know. But I think it�s worth pondering, seriously and with all of my analytical skills. I�m afraid of what might lie ahead, but I think I�m more afraid of staying here and turning into what I�ve always wanted to avoid: a settler.

-

�This is not about love
‘Cause I am not in love
In fact I can’t stop falling out
I miss that stupid ache�

Fiona Apple, god bless her scrawny little self. I really like that last line.

-

Pieces of a jigsaw puzzle are scattered on the table in front of me, and no matter how many sections I manage to assemble, I can�t seem to figure out what the greater picture is supposed to be. I can see some trees, but I can�t make out the forest. Ha.

Confluence seems to be a word that keeps popping back up lately. Parallels. Coincidence? Possibly. Probably. But what if it�s not? What if it�s something more, a sign?

Schizophrenics see signs where there aren�t any. And whatever happened to those crazy old guys with sandwich boards proclaiming the end of the world and its nighness (yes, I know)? How many crazy people know they�re crazy?

How many sane people question things this much?

I feel like I�m stuck in the middle of the truth and absolute delusion. Somewhere between a satisfied sigh and an anguished groan. Between a breath and a scream, even. Though that�s a cheese metal lyric, so I guess I should be careful there.

I recognize part of this feeling though. It comes with being a part of something grander but future unknown. It�s the anguish that I tell myself to push away, to ignore, in order to avoid missing out on the memories that mean something down the line.

-

Jesus. It doesn�t matter how serious the thought in my head is if the Buckwheat Boyz start screaming �Peanut Butter Jelly Time� from my speakers.

Bastards.

-

In all honesty, the future is dark and scary and filled with unknown. And I like it that way. It�s exciting and filled with potential for the first time in a while � and the good that could be waiting out there is enough to spur me forward. I’m not sure where forward is yet, but I’m looking.

-

Oh, and before I forget, a word to the men out there: yeah, the tantalizing pictures of legs and backs and breasts and all the other appropriately mysterious body parts are nice. Wonderful even. But the true beauty, that stuff that kicks you in the gut with a leg that makes Beckham nervous, knocks the air out of you and leaves you begging for one more? That�s in the eyes. And in the smile, the one that you can connect with a laugh that makes you forget anything and everything.

At the end of the day, that�s what we should all be so lucky to see.

We live in four dimensions, right? Up/down; left/right; forward/backward; and then the one that doesn’t fit in so well, time. And they’re all related, says Einstein — space/time continuum and all that. Wormholes and gravity affecting the passage of time.

I think.

Actually, I really hope so, because otherwise the following train of thought transforms from nifty abstract conceptualization into just another sign that I should never have experimented with drugs.

I’m watching as everyone around me is moving somewhere. Mostly forward; some parallel; a few backward, maybe, and quite possibly one might be moving up or down. Plans are made and set in motion. Things are accomplished. Life is lived and goals are achieved, or at least approached.

And today, just like many days over the past year or so, I feel very detached from that. It’s not even a case of running to stand still; it’s more like being a bug trapped in amber.

Talking with Trix the other day about fears, and I remembered one that I don’t usually think about — I guess it’s not really a fear, but a situation guaranteed to induce anxiety and panic. I can’t stand being bound — not handcuffed, but losing mobility in my arms or legs. I’m not really claustrophobic in the classic sense, afraid of small areas or tunnels or caves, but on a very extreme level I am. The idea of being encased in concrete, waking up in a morgue drawer, or even being tied to a chair with enough rope that I can’t move my arms or legs — these are thoughts that can make me break out in a cold sweat if I give them enough time. And one more for that list: being frozen in amber.

But this day isn’t about not being to move. I had an “Aha!” moment earlier in the day, when the lack of change in my life first hit me, and called this temporal claustophobia. But that’s not really right, is it? If I’m being a stickler, that would really be more a sense of having too much to do and too little time — being bound by the hands of the clock, as it were. More accurately, this is temporal agoraphobia. I’m looking around me and there’s nothing but open time, for as far as the eye can see, and I’m frozen, unable to move, panicked and shut down.

2006 has been a year filled with false starts for me so far, a lot of promising beginnings and quick, sudden endings. That doesn’t really bother me — if nothing else, the false starts help me keep the bipolar shit at bay, tucked neatly in the back of my head. But what does bother me is that I’m starting to second-guess everything now, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’ve always said that I’m a cynical optimist: I hope for the best but expect the worst. Self-fulfilling prophecy, without the prophecy part; say you’re something long enough, and you become that. Stare long enough into the abyss, and the abyss stares back into you?

Okay, that’s just ridiculous (he says, totally aware of all the other shit that he thinks but doesn’t call himself on…). But maybe fair enough, in a sense.

I know that this feeling falls back to a lot of the thoughts that I was having last summer, when I had a really bad attack of hopelessness (not in a suicidal depressive sense, but a “life is meaningless” philosophical sense). I wonder what the whole point of all this is. And, again, to repeat and reinforce myself, I’m okay with that. I’m even okay with the idea that there is no point to all of this, that it’s what you see is what you get and we might as well enjoy all we can since it ends definitively at some point.

What’s bothering me, standing in this open field of ticking clocks, is that I’m not really doing anything to move in any direction. Not forward, left, up, or even backwards. I’m just sitting still — partly because as much as I crave change, leaving the familiarity I’ve constructed scares the shit out of me, and partly because I just don’t know which way I should be going. Nothing’s really calling me in any direction right now, and wandering got old a long time ago.

It’s not that I don’t want to grow up; I just wish I could figure out what I want to be before I start.