A word of explanation shouted into the void

I get up at 5:45 a.m. weekdays. For half an hour I sip coffee while the cat twines himself around my ankles. Then days like this, I put in three days work in nine hours.

Twelve hours after the alarm goes off, I’m home. I’ve made it through ceaseless interruptions at work, a parade of other people’s problems and questions, computer freezes, software malfunctions and several hours of sheer, deadening mental factory work. I’ve smiled. Over and over. I’ve survived the number twenty bus, once again – but I confess, by the end of the trip when the seat next to me opened up, I stood up, preferring to be flung gracelessly back and forth with each break and acceleration of the bus than to have one more person sit next to me. Touching me.

Closing the apartment door, I slam the radio off, kick my shoes off, pour a glass of red wine and sit down to listen to the cat sing throat songs celebrating my arrival. It’s all the activity and noise I can tolerate.

I think about not writing. To anyone. But the need to speak is so strong and what needs to be spoken has become too large and formless to get out. It has become a vortex in my throat and chest, sucking words away.

I think I’m waiting to be heard in a way the human ear and heart is not equipped to handle. I think I’m waiting for whatever universal awareness might be out there to hear me. Or maybe it does. Thing is about the Universe, it doesn’t communicate in exactly the way I’d like it to…

An email would be nice. A phone call. Or a sign – spelled, let’s say, in flaming letters against the sky.

I’m voiceless, I mention to the Universe. And, totally in character, the universe says nothing and the girl with the cell phone who is seated immediately behind me begins a loud conversation about nothing. That’s it? I ask.

I can’t feel anything much – except annoyance, sadness, I add, I’m wondering if that’s going to change sometime soon? I imagine the Universe shrugging. Do galaxies die when the Universe does that?

Soon, for no logical reason, I’ll crawl out of the funk. I might not write when that happens, but for a while, I’ll project a benevolent face on the Universe. Things will make sense. I will stop disintegrating, or at least stop fighting disintegration and imagine I see the wisdom of the whole thing. For a while.

Maybe, if the Universe is feeling generous, I’ll regain my sense of humor.

Meanwhile, to those of you I haven’t written – insert platitude here.

I would write you. If I could.