variable time speed signatures

Dear K-

I hope you’ve found your car.

This weekend I went to the city. The purpose of the trip was to attend a mandatory meeting for all incoming professional students of my class. Imagine, if you will, the following situation: I eat breakfast at 6 and then drive 3 hours to the city. I check into my hotel, and a half-hour later I take a shuttle to the university and prepare for the seminar. Mistakenly, I thought a meal would be provided, but this proves not to be the case. Everyone else shows up with guests, whether they be significant others or a parent or two. They place all of us, approximately sixty people, in a relatively small room with nondescript pop music playing softly in the background. They hand us a nametag and tell us to socialize.

I hate mingling, especially in large groups. It really doesn’t play up my strong points. So I plaster on a pleasant expression and wander around the room, attempting to engage in conversations. It’s an endless execution of standard small-talk procedures, one conversation after another. Hi, I’m so-and-so, what’s your name? Nice to meet you. Where are you from? Oh, really? –Insert vague comment or observation about the town/region/state the person hails from-. What brings you here? Yeah, me too. Boy, this is awkward, isn’t it?

Yes, yes it is. And my dry demeanor doesn’t ever help. I really prefer to meet people in small groups, and with a specific purpose bringing us together, such as meeting for coffee, or a group assignment, or to watch a game on television. If you drop me into a crowded room and tell me to start mingling, I can only tread water for so long before my limbs get tired and I start to drown.

With the warmer weather my insomnia has returned. It gives me a lot of time to think, and it dulls me for the workday. I drift through patients and drudge through the weekdays without comprehending the passage of time. When my circadian rhythm is off, I don’t seem to register the passing of minutes, hours, days. Only when I finally catch a little glimpse of sleep do I realize the expanse of time that has elapsed.

When I do dream, the dreams have been pleasantly mundane. I dream of sitting in an airport, watching the people around me. They shuffle down the halls dragging their luggage in tow. They sit in cramped, connected chairs placed near the terminal gates, coughing into their fists and turning dry pages in beat up novels and wrinkled magazines. It makes me feel at ease to watch them, and I don’t seem to be at the airport to catch a flight. At least, I don’t feel any sense of urgency or anticipation, needing to check the departure board and find the correct gate. Instead I simply sit and watch the people there, stare out the window and watch as the planes take off and land. It’s very soothing to watch those great powerful mammoths of steel and gasoline hurl themselves into the air or swoop down to the landing strip but to not hear a single sound. The thick insulating glass lets me watch their maneuvers as if they were completely silent creatures, performing remarkable feats without even an audible whimper.

I like those dreams.

-K