Sleepless in Salt Lake City...

I'm sitting up in a bed that feels too foreign to offer me any amount of comfort. Though I am no stranger to travels, this room, perhaps this City feels particularly alien to me for some reason... I know one of my wise ass friends is going to blame it on the mormons...

I've left the light off as I type this so as not to disturb my brother who is in the adjacent bed, sound asleep. And so it is dark, and motionless and for a moment I can forget where I am entirely...

For a moment I imagine I am far from everything that I have come to know as reality... I imagine that I am lost in the truest sense of the word, lost from everyone and everything I know... I imagine that I am floating out in space, weightless, liberated from gravity...I am swimming among the countless stars and information hungry satellites... only my movements are not cumbersome at all, for I am not fighting against any water...just endless space...leading to more endless space... I am matter suspended mysteriously in non matter... I am changing without choice, I must change here, my body, my mind, my understanding won't do...I am questioning everything and I am relearning everything, I am wasting away....I am being born again. I am a supernova, and a nebula.

And out here in the cosmos, having been altered, reincarnated, somehow I have come to understand more, more about life and God and the universe... It is as though I am now physically closer to Truth, physically closer to God...not in my being, but in vicinity...and life, existence, and even death have regained a level of coherence...a level of objective meaning... and light has painted over every darkly shadow, washed over the enigmatic...

This peculiar fantasy of mine is interrupted by the noise of semi trucks, that pass by like a gust of wind outside my window... and I am jolted back into reality, and I remember again that I am in Utah, in a cheap motel room too close to the Interstate, I remember that I am caught between four walls, constrained by physical laws, I am in tension and at a loss for words, and limited in my cognitive finitude. I can't fathom much of anything or make heads from tails, I can't fly and I remain so painfully far from making any sense of this life, so far in fact from God...

most of all, I can't sleep.