Headspace

‘Excuse me?’
‘You didn’t just leave it all back in Vegas, did you?’
‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’
‘…uh sorry…’

I hated it when that little dialog in my head got the better of me. It seemed to be happening a lot lately. I suppose that is what happens when you live so much of your life inside your own mind. I had been on one of those phases lately. Too much reflection, and that took me completely out of reality.

‘’Sorry I was just thinking about something,…my mind ran away a little bit…uh…excuse me.’

It had been two weeks now and I still couldn’t give up on the thought that Aiyana wasn’t going to be around anymore. She had slipped out during our little trip to Vegas. Things had been a little strange lately, but I still didn’t really see it coming. It had been one of those weeks that I kept that mental scenario in my mind, how it was all going to work out. Just as soon as she showed up again. Deep inside I knew the truth though and I knew that I needed to let it go. She was one of those complex hard to please girls. She was the chili that was just plain too hot to handle. I knew I needed something with a little less spice, something a little friendlier, …con carne. The kind of chili I knew I could really enjoy, not the kind I had to place in Tupperware every other night till I could deal with it later. Some chili is only a nice can, some has nothing to offer and isn’t worth eating, and then there is the stuff that is just too hot to handle. It is always back burner’d, and more trouble than it is worth…

…I had been walking for quite a while and I really didn’t know where I wanted to go. When I got into these moods I usually ended up in the same place. I was approaching the bridge so I ran up to the left side and launched myself over the rail and landed on the little patch of snow on the hill below. I loved this place. It was one of those old bridges where you could scramble all over the truss system that held it up. I ran up one beam and wedged myself into the ladder shaft and made my way up to the platform that we had secured in place over the river.

The river had just broken up from the winter so it was pretty cold still in the shade of the bridge, but it was incredible watching all the ice break away and float down the river. Hmmm ice cold. Hot chili, Ice cold. It was a little bizarre. I just thought about the analogies I had always used to laugh about when describing Aiyana, they were so different from the scene in the river below me. It was so cold down there, and peaceful as well.

It reminded me of the sweat lodges we used to make when I was younger. We would store ourselves up in the hot house until it was too much to handle, when we would take off into the freezing water of the river. The shock was somehow the best part of the whole thing. The flush of lightheaded heat drained away with the sudden spastic shock and paralysis of the cold. Somehow as I warmed up I was filled with that giddy lightheaded feeling of intoxication, only I didn’t feel sick at all. It was all the incentive I needed to go back at it again.

Hmm just looking at those miniature icebergs in the river was fascinating. It brought back lots of better times to mind. The innocence that I always believe I had previously in life. Memories always tend to be that way. How was it that life was so sincere and warm back then? It didn’t seem like it at the time. In fact, I think I was still waiting for the next big thing. The one thing that was going to fix everything forever. The big thing that was going to start my life. That is when it would begin. My chili I guess, I could eat it forever.

Chili… why was everything good referred to as chili. As if one thing could heat up the rest of my life. Hmm so good. Nice warm and spicy. The same crazed elation as in the old sweat lodge. Oh just thinking of it now, it was so hot. Just like those fist few days in Vegas. I thought I was going to pass out, I was almost lightheaded, and weightless. The air around the platform felt a lot cooler than where I had been perched. A really calm, silent, cool air began to rush past me.

No you didn’t.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘You didn’t just leave it all back in Vegas, did you?’
‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’
‘…uh sorry…’

The water was even colder than it looked. As I broke the surface I opened my eyes and saw green everywhere, except for the bluish patches on the edges of the little icebergs. Well this was by far the furthest I had gone in a long time. I really needed to stay a little closer to reality in my mind. I slid up onto the icy banks and slowly picked myself up. There was nothing lightheaded or giddy about this. This was just cold. A little closer to reality perhaps, I’m going home.