sleeping in

I had a strange morning-- something happened that is generally considered to be common, but which I have only experienced a few times in my life.

My alarm didn't go off. Actually, two alarms didn't go off.

One alarm clock is supposed to mimic the gradual brightening of the sunrise, and help to make waking up less painful. I don't always use that one, as the interface is particularly obscure and it runs fast. Right now it's nine minutes fast, and in another month it'll be up to ten. Even its speeding up is totally random, since it got up to quite a few minutes fast soon after I reset it, but now that it's at nine minutes fast, it seems almost set in its ways.

Given my basic understanding of this clock, it's no surprise that it didn't work-- regardless of the fact that I made sure to turn it on. And I'm sure that I turned it on, because when I went to bed last night I saw that my main clock was blank.

I've waited for this day for years. The clock was given to me by my mom, one of the times I visited her in England. She was appalled that I didn't have a travel clock, and it had been given to her uncle by my dad, apparently swag from a conference. So it had already passed through at least three hands before me, and it didn't seem to be a particularly well-made thing. But it was simple, with few features, and extremely reliable.

It was my main clock for the past nine years. Nine years, and who knows how many countries. If a dead battery doesn't seem like a big deal, that's because you assume it can be changed. This clock is so cheaply made that its watch battery is hidden deep inside, with no apparent access. This really feels like the end of an era, although maybe it's the dumbed-down-edness of my cold-addled brain.

Untitled Blog Entry #24

Skeletons of trees stand in a line,
a boneyard along the path.
Each points to the sky like unfurled paisley
and rocks slowly in their own time
As if the wind were merely a suggestion.

I can almost draw the lines

During my run today, plugged in and stripped down to a tshirt by the time I hit the Nature Park trail, I looked up and my tipped head seemed to slide my senses together. The sun, when it comes out here in winter, is dazzling and physical and disorienting and it hits everything at once. As I turned the corner on the path, I couldn't feel the headphones-- the music seemed internal. Sun struck through moss high in skinny trees and lichen abandoned on the ground-- a surrounding of great green glowing life. Even through slow-motion drips of slushy rain, the sun's touch made my skin warm and I had the sudden impulse to lift my arms for its embrace to wrap around my waist and pull me closer. I wanted to remove clothes to let the sun-touch in.

This is the effect of the return of forgotten sunlight. It floods your veins and shakes you loose from reality's one dimension.

After this run, walking back to my desk, a private song plays in my ears as my long earrings tinkle like a metallic brook with each step I take. I turn my ears and then eyes up to the heartbeat thump of wings pushing air aside as geese swoop overhead in a textbook V formation. Tattoos patch the wet concrete where leaves have given up their ghosts. Each ginger lift of a foot is a a sensation I can't dull on its path up my nervous system to my brain.

Am I a simpleton to be so stunned? These corporeal pleasures are the only stories I have to share. Everything else wilts in comparison.