i've been pretty tired at work...  my mind has been preoccupied with family issues.  there is a deep schism in the family at the moment, and it looks to be permanent.  i, for my part, cannot see any way to resolve it, except to hold to the vague promise of time healing all wounds...

i keep wanting to sleep forever...  it seems like rest doesn't come when the world is unsettled like this.  i feel so sad for my parents, for the crap that they have to put up with...  as my father somewhat snidely remarked: kodomo wa sonna mon da ne...  which roughly translates to: "kids...  what can you do?"  my mother, meanwhile, has clung to her recent (at least in my book) faith.  i'm glad she has that, even if, in my somewhat jaded perspective, it seems kind of like a hypocritical clutch of the good book...  no matter what, my parents deserve to be happy, and, failing that, a modicum of psychological comfort...

***

there are large moths that visit the eaves of our house regularly.  far from a sense of foreboding, i like to think that they are ancestors, come to check on us.  when i am on the verge of sleep, i like to imagine their wings, fluttering the dust of their wisdom upon me.  i like to hope that one of them, my grandmother perhaps, will come to me in my dreams and have a chat with me, as they did when we were all in the same living moment together...

if anything, i need the solidity and comfort of their presence now.

***

winter is coming.  in recent nights, it has gone from cool to cold, and it has become harder and harder to wake up and get the day started.  winter is the season of quiescence and a beckoning kind of sleep...  it is the season of seeds frozen in the hard earth.

i recall the white mantle, how it smothered all time, in other places and other lives.  i recall how it seemed to last forever.  i recall walking cold and empty hallways, hearing the echoes of other lives, occupying the space left behind by other people like air within a frozen bubble, probing the boundaries of myself, yearning to be free...

now in this other life that i now lead, i am undeniably content.  there are real lives that love me, and that fill me up with a gratitude and a sense of connection to this world...  and yet, at odd moments, that old lonely meandering returns, like some ghost restless within an empty husk.

i suppose we cannot entirely kill who we were.  who we are.