There's a certain combination of standard temperature and pressure, environmental factors, and internal dissatisfaction that lead to a dangerous signature monstre state.
Take one part lack of sleep, going to bed at three in the morning after running away from bad men and searching for cabs after the open-air showing of the original Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde last night...
(incidentally, who was the blonde? It's not fair. There she is, Ingrid Bergman, the first time I've ever seen her on a big screen, and she is powerful and glorious and full of life. And what does Daniel do just as I am imagining myself shaking my fist with all of her grace and some of my own fury? Compares me to the blonde. Hah. But the compliment was appreciated nonetheless, even though I'd never fit into that dress.)
In any case, we marched for blocks searching for a cab, I wandered into a hotel to ask them to call one and instead the clerk was all too happy to hit on me but refused to help me get the hell out of a nasty neighbourhood.
I ended up running for a happenstance cab at the same time as some other girl, who offered to share. We chattered about the movie and Paris and stupid immigrants (that would be me) all the way, and I wandered up my stairs chilled, tired, on the verge of clambering onto a jagged-edge wire.
The conductive wire that monstres seem to spend so much time flirting with the wind on.
This morning, Mr. Pyke's melodic voice easing me out of dreams rife with flesh-toned imagery, wandering into the bath and staring disconnectedly at the little alcove with the perfume bottles and bath salts against fat blue tiles, helped me up that last rung, allowing some part of my brain to step free of the bell tower with it's tolling insistance.
Perched on a spire, the world is different from up here. I am at my desk, documents and files and lines of code scattered about me, ready to be cleaned, archived, packaged, the boys up to their usual antics, people walking by to stare at my chest to decipher the logo on my casual-friday t-shirt, but I am so far away.
I am juggling decisions, leaning into the hurricane gathering at the tip of the lightning rod upon which I perch, leaning precariously and all too ready to hurl all my eggshells to the gale and dive into the roiling clouds surrounding me.
I have this beating, pounding urge to jump from this haven, parachute trailing. I have this urge to stop trying so hard to define the necessary conditions for responsible living, I want to do as I've done so many times before and lose myself to the adrenaline of throwing myself to the squall.
I want to say fuck it, stop planning, go with my gut and trust to what skills I have so far, call my landlords and work swiftly and urgently down the list of things that need to be done before I can leave, and then bound into a new city, into Toronto and a new life and square my shoulders against all the threatening shadows, throw myself to the wolverine doubts, work, life, home, house, fear, fear, fear.
I feed on fear. It is the butterfly beating its wings into my own personal tornado. I have it tattooed on my arm. Change. Butterfly. Run, charging, and lift off into the torrent from sheer momentum.
I feel the most alive that way, clutching with raw fingers at sheer challenge, sheer change, flaming; ebullient.
And right now, teetering on this balance of gathering electricity, physically tired enough to be awake and feeding off adrenaline (and addictive sensation), emotionally explosive enough to be obliged to intellectually will my arms to continue their cascading pattern, to keep juggling.
Keep making the motions until either the riot reaches its peak and I jump with it, or the frenetic hysteria abates and I carry off the last bolt of lightning as the spear with which I will dig my next highway.
This excitement is dangerous, but this coursing of unquelled potential is worth so many risks.
Beyond awake. Part of the storm.