Have you ever wondered whether all this is real?
Over the course of my life, I have gone through several periods where it seemed as if my life were just a movie I was watching – a not very interesting movie, in fact, where I spent most of my time idly wondering if the hero would make it all the way through to the credits and the rest of the time thinking about other things. Sometimes, as I sit there in the audience, I wonder if the hero is actually me or whether I’ve got a bit part in my own life. That wouldn’t surprise me at all, really.
Generally those periods have happened when I was about to move out of one house or apartment and into another one, but not always. It’s a very strange feeling.
I’ve had this feeling for weeks now.
I get up and try to figure out what needs to happen today, what should have happened yesterday, and how to prioritize my world so that the key events from both of those lists get checked off. I spend the days and nights beating back the alligators in the fond hopes that eventually the swamp will drain. And the next day the process starts again.
There is a lot of typing involved. An awful lot of typing. And driving. Not much sleep. A fair amount of reading, most of it from textbooks and other academic sources but occasional bits of fun stuff at stolen moments. I’m sure there’s food – there must be food – but that is no longer as interesting as it used to be and so tends to be quickly forgotten. I'm glad it's cool enough for tea now.
But mostly driving and typing.
And those two things just don’t make for an interesting movie.
It will be good to see the end of this semester.
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6 comments:
I wonder all the time. I just wondered if anyone else wondered. Now I know.
You and me, Rufus. You and me.
I don't get that feeling much at big moves, then I mostly just get melancholy. But I do wonder when the other shoe is going to drop. I've narrowly missed getting caught up in a lot of crazy stuff, and eventually my luck is going to run out. I was involved in this, I was in Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001, I walked over this about an hour before the Earth-shattering ka-boom, and I was crossing from Jordna to Israel via Palestine when this crap went down. This doesn't happen every time I travel, but a lot of people in our mutal circle of friends don't want to travel with me. I think I'm cursed to live in interesting places.
Yeah, I can see why people might take a pass on you as a traveling companion! That's quite a list of near misses.
"Melancholy" is just another word for "normal" for me. That I'm used to. The current feeling is just an odd sense of detachment from the world that creeps up on me during stressful times (which generally includes moving).
It's very strange to feel like you're watching your own life from afar and it isn't all that compelling.
Most of my life has seemed a little unreal to me. When I was rather young I used to wonder if my waking hours were actually someone else's dream. And while I feel more connected with my life the older I get, there are still moments where it feels like I'm an outsider looking at myself from a distance, where I'm not quite in my own body. Or I'm involved in a melancholy music video.
'Tis a weird feeling, to be sure.
It is indeed.
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