Jökulhlaup

The wind rushed over the streets sweeping away litter and leaves that had gathered during the day, sanitizing loss with the whims of change. What is change if not a rustling? Peter didn't know why he chose to walk to work so early in the morning everyday. It had become a habit to him. He wondered if anyone recognized the formation of a habit before it became one. That's the thing about habits, he thought, they're invisible; until they're not. Existing on your periphery like stalking raccoons, wearing masks, small gloved hands and striped tails. It's only when a garbage can is knocked over or a strange shape scurries across the darkened road that you finally see it.

The sun rose like a giant glowing jack-o-lantern. It cast strange shadows on the clouds, coloring them brown and burnt orange. They took the inauspicious shape of a garish hollow mouth with crooked teeth. The dirt, made brave by the silence, crunched loudly under his feet and he wondered what was more quintessentially earthy than dirt. Water maybe, or rain. There was a bad storm two nights ago that had taken out power-lines and flooded streets - a reminder that nature reigns over man's mendacious dominion. We try to grasp it, pulling at wet and slippery reins. Never whetting our imperious desire to control, to impose our reality upon reality; to make the objective subjectively objective. 

Any objection to abject objectification? Okay, then onto the next subject. Peter mused that he has too much fun with the sound of words and their juxtapositions. Is that strange, he asked himself. No stranger than a deranged ranger on a range driving a Range Rover. He probably did have a problem.  

Walking along he thought of Madeline and he cursed himself for his mind's return to her. Round and round that cerebral carousel he spun, repeatedly greeted by her visage. A frenetic whirring oppressed him and he felt unsteady from the centrifugal force. He thought of the peculiarity of feeling such frenzied dizziness. On a merry-go-round, the reason you feel dizzy isn't because you're moving, it's because you're standing still. If you could move along the inner circle at the same speed it moved, there would be no sense of disorientation. Stillness then, is that which is to be feared. It is when we dwell that the world whirls around us, looping and repeating, inspiring a rolling nausea.

The ice of her memory was rapidly thawing, unleashing a gushing stream of feeling. A deluge of dysphoria and euphoria drowned him as he was carried away on a cold sea of memory, adrift. 

He missed her. Still.