I woke up to seven missed calls at 1pm. This is how I usually operate, minus the calls. I fell asleep late, or rather, collapsed into sleep like I’d been sedated by an entity. Something had a hold of me last night. I was possessed by an opportunist, a monk, and a hungry spider. The little creature spun his web on my mirror like a hoarder and refused to stop even when I threatened him with eviction. I think we switched souls for a second, or an hour. I began by pulling splinters out of my hand to Finnish ballads in the background. I came up with 10 commandments for my own religion and wrote them down. It couldn’t be established and I became fearful of my own doctrine. I called a friend to talk about my feelings; they asked if I was drunk. I wasn’t. Not on alcohol, but I couldn’t have been sober either. I came up with a genius idea and had a brief affair with it. I say affair, because a lover would’ve stayed and made something out of itself. I think I sang and drew small hearts on the mirror next to my soon-to-be evicted friend. The rest was a blur.
I slept like an old dog. Like a dead creature. Woke up to the neighbour yelling in drunk and realised drunkenness is only a state of mind. I skipped work and went to the gym instead, just to feel the throb in my forehead and the iron on my tongue. The iron comes in still moments, like a vampire, and leaves me drained. It sweeps in and pulls me out of my body whenever the body is unable to comprehend itself anymore. Passion can cause this, but so can physical pain. It’s not unpleasant.
I wrote a poem about it called A Caravaggio. Because Caravaggio knew how lovely the shade of falling could be. How a beautiful face, if illuminated, needs the contradiction of a hard shadow. One could be so stricken that one collapses; Iron defficiency. The poem describes the human flailing off the edge. This is a metaphor – if it wasn’t obvious. But I like to think of this image, this scene, as a representation of losing one’s footing. As in, what happens when one is possessed by something internal and cosmic. It began with the splinter, I think, and was woven by the spider into something catatonic. It was the blackout of a flow state. It was a few brush strokes on the brain.
*
I’ve been writing a lot lately. Some of it makes sense, even to me. Some of it remains incomprehensible. That’s just how it lands when language isn’t enough. It builds like a volcano, then explodes out of you in one night. I listen to familial ballads to remember where it all comes from. I’m the last bearer of my lineage, and I think this makes me mad. As if I carry ten people within, who are all in conflict with each other’s ideologies. But I also think it makes the excavation worthwhile. It makes life incomprehensible in a good way. In a way of constant awe.