My Five Senses, back on 1/3/2015

Sound: Intermittent noise of cars traveling down nearby streets. Low hum that must be the house's heater. Somewhere else in the house, Emily runs the water, and I hear the pipes. Clacks as she organizes the kitchen. I hear the tearing sound of a plane, we're not far from the airport.

Touch: I'm sitting on a hardwood chair, with a pillow on top. It's lumpy against my butt. The pen grip is hard, smooth, not like some rubbery grips. I feel the edge of the table against my arm. My hand against my forehead, the skin drags on both surfaces.

Smell: I smell absolutely nothing. Yesterday I was sick, constantly sniffling, and no energy. Now I have my energy back, but I can't smell a goddamn thing.

Taste: I still have a teensy bit of breakfast flavor in my mouth. The sauteed mushrooms, the cheese, the thyme. There was also Kale, eggs, butter, and oregano, but I don't taste those anymore.

Sight: Two things strike me. The Rodin replica. I remember it in my Grandfather's library – dark green, but detailed. It didn't quite make it through the plane trip. The head is crushed, and only the head. Shattered into a million pieces, like a premeditated act of violence. Next are the two aloe plants left on a desk with no direct sun. They're growing straight up, totally pale, in a life or death struggle to find the light.

Update 3/8/2015:

I guess if this blog is anything, it's a chronicle of me teaching myself to write, so I may as well post this kind of stuff. I never took an English class in college (I got out of it by cross referencing with a poli-sci class on Eastern European protest novels from the Soviet era), so this is a fun adventure.

I moved the aloe plants to a window, they're doing better now. At least, they're green now, so that means something.

Cold Water

The lake stays frigid cold well into the hot part of May. It's the mountains, really. The Ozarks aren't exactly what you'd call snow-capped, but they're colder than they should be, and the deep forest canopy keeps the sun from ever touching the streams.

Those brooks run down the mountains' hips, and down into the hot valleys below. It's the kind of water that'll stop you on your run, make you take a cool sip and stand there, panting and drinking.

It's also the kind of water that'll shock you when you jump in. You'll be laughing and joking with your friends, going down to the water and generally having a great time pretending you're all a decade younger than you really are. Then, you'll feel all bold and decide you really need to stop being such a sissy about how you get into the water – toes, then feet, then calves and knees.

You'll walk right onto the dock thinking that makes you a badass. You'll drop your towel right there on the wood and grin that stupid grin, and you'll do some sort of half flip into the chest deep water.

When you plunge in, the first thing you'll feel is the encapsulation. There's that sound of the water closing in over your ears and face. Halfway between a lover's whisper and a threat. Your toes brush against the silty mud, and for a split second you don't even notice the tiny blood vessels at the surface of your skin shutting down.

Summetime cold doesn't come down and nestle inside your bones like Winter cold does. It reaches inside you and stabs your heart before you even know it's there, so when your friends watch you jump in off the dock, they won't notice a thing until you explode back up from it, staggering like you just took a punch. You'll thrash and collapse back under, trying to claw your way back to the shore, and when make it you'll holler something inane, like

“FUCK!”

That's when your friends will all decide to go play volleyball instead.