At times, I grow incredibly paranoid -- my eyes and brain are not connecting properly, and therefore I can never trust what I am seeing. If you are ever alone, in a dark room, and someone opens the door a bit, what happens? A sort of throbbing rectangle of gray cuts into the purity of the darkness, and you wonder, did I leave a light on? No, not really...your eyes have decided, without your consent, to switch to the nighttime palette of colors, a complex spectrum of rainbow-speckled black. If you are an ameteur control freak, this is exciting but threatening as well. The blood quickens and the mouth goes sour. Inevitably, if the eyes are unfaithful, what of the other senses? One is finally lost to the vertigo of one's own imagination, pitiful and blind, waiting for the double-cross to happen. But, there is a bud within me, waiting, waiting for a chance to open and flourish under the wide skies that I sense have always been there -- something that responds to the approval of the bright sunshine outside, despite the clouds within. Perhpas it is time to set myself loose from the beartrap inside my head, even if I have to gnaw away and leave some seemingly vital limb behind. Perhaps it's time to deceive myself, enough to catch a vision of the truth.

This (usually) unconscious thought is what compels me to run my hands over anything within reach, to move them in arcs and loops when I walk, fingers twitching like a baby's. I guess it's a reaction to my lack of trust from the usual senses of input -- the head, the heart, the gut -- I have been proved wrong so many times that I am reluctant to believe myself anymore, even if I have seen things with my own eyes, even if I have felt them under hand and tasted them on my tongue. Even if I receive another's assurance and benediction and blessing.