allodynia

I should be studying the diencephalon but I’m tired of that. My life is an endless series of tests and outlines and handouts. I’ve killed more trees than I’d like to admit. But their flesh and bones allow me to eek out the grade I need, the recognition necessary in a long progression towards some prestigious fucking title.

Autumn also brings me happiness. Stumbling bumble-fuck down the leaf-clogged side streets of the city, enjoying the brisk air and the crisp scent of dying foliage, I am at ease. Between mugs of coffee that disintegrate my insides and textbooks on neuroanatomy and clinical optical techniques, I walk absently through the lingering afternoons.

But how am I supposed to feel when I count off the hours by the tasks accomplished? It is my modus operandi, to be constantly at work, but can I really get much satisfaction out of endless regurgitation of factual data about the limbic system and the coagulation cascade?

Sometimes I get lonely. But I don’t think it would be fair to try to meet anyone right now. I’m too isolated, too selfishly consumed with my coursework. I get a total of perhaps 4 waking hours each day to myself, to spend at my leisure. Those moments are already so precious, usually spent pecking dejectedly at food or writing a letter or sipping coffee while staring at the fire escape with nothing but my thoughts to occupy me. Could I bear to sacrifice these moments and split them with another? I want a lover I don’t have to love. Or perhaps I am more like St. Augustine, and I am in love with the idea of loving, but have as yet no real determination or drive to be in love.

Do you know what allodynia is, my friend?

Oh God, I should get back to work.

-K

Home Again In My Autumn Palace

Dear K,

My season has come again, now is the time when I run underneath trees shedding leaves, and laugh at the ending of everything. I was built for setting suns and longer nights. I wear jackets and blow frost breath at the full full moon, and streetlights are reflected on my eyes as I race beneath them cackling in the dark.


I am well, my life goes well, things here are swell. The winds and rains are coming more swiftly now and everything is starting to be put into its place for winter. Shutters are shutting. Clutter starts cluttering, and nobody can stop uttering those simple omens of doom and portents of ill tidings.

But we all die each winter don't we? Just a little bit like the leaves? They come back faithfully in the spring, and are pretty when they lie broken on the ground.


None of this made sense, but that's September wine for you.

-K