i've been trying to find my emotional bearings.

i think a change of scene might help, or maybe helping others, or burning a white sage stick in my apartment, but i feel like something would still be left undone, something nettling i need to excavate right here under the surface. but maybe i'm just too morbidly self-preoccupied. maybe i'm hopelessly conflated.

lately i've been mentally bumping into things, or not seeing things coming. since i have no protection i dissociate in my surroundings. i have to do it to stay sane and marginally free, but it takes a psychic toll. this is old news.

i think about what i'd be like as a different animal. would i function better? would i have a normal life, be more integrated with my fellow beings? how i'd process this umwelt, if i'd find a different umwelt, if i'd find an english word for it, like the uncanny, whether i'd realize we're all in our own umwelt, feeling the unconscious sea, wishing for connection.

do other creatures think about the same things, like, for decades? i look at the figures hanging about in the park, and i'm curious what they think about, in the same spot, like they just stopped there, like they're just pausing, but they stopped, like they just couldn't go on yet here they are, waiting. is that what they'd say? i know it would be rude and indiscreet to ask. 

it's not just stray figures in a landscape. there's an air of resignation. a miasma say. it seems they want something but words have stopped in them, or in the air. hovering unsaid. there's something like old news in the air these days.

and fear. a lady leapt backwards, falling down when we approached, as if under attack. mister smiling and greeting the world, and i felt attacked by her fear. 

some people just come to an end without ending, their time run out, with time remaining. am i one of them? knowing time is precious, even wasted, even run out, and remaining.

the people look at their feet, trying to remember, or they look at you like, has it always been this way? is this the way it's supposed to be, or the way it is? do you know me?