I'm sprawled on one of the many couches in the basement, chain-writing key signatures on a 12-stave sheet of staff paper when they enter, two girls, wearing striped socks with slippers, and they turn their heads over their shoulders and ask, "Hey, do y'all mind if we play some Enya?"

There are so many things I could say, most of them going something along the lines of, how could I mind? Enya was my idol. Enya was a goddess. Enya was the familiarity of my childhood, of the memories I couldn't recall till I heard her music and it all flooded back to me, a wash of sound. 

I'd been in the car coming back from a ski trip with one of my friends and I was overloading him with Enya, and he told me sarcastically, "The lyrics are very creative," to which I asked, "What?" "They're the most repetitive thing I've ever heard, the same thing over and over" and I just looked at him. Because that was the magic of Enya, a ceaseless repetition that made the words spin over you in circles, pulled you into the music and warmth of an abstract vision made only of dreams. 

Enya was powerful, and spiritual, and showed me glimpses of stopping clocks and the thoughts of trees and the moonlight of the Caribbean ocean all through the medium of sound. She was genius. 

But you wouldn't say of any of those things to someone you've just met, so I said, "Of course not, I love Enya!" Understatement of the century. 

But really, it made my night. 

simple observations

The first time I saw it, it was a withered thing left forgotten on the cobblestone in the stark, cold sunshine of the early morning, and I wondered at its presence on the pathway, where it had no doubt been subjected to a large amount of foot traffic.

Of course it was only a flower, and most people don't think about flowers having a story, even if they'd noticed its discarded shape in the first place.

But it was there the second day, maybe twenty feet from where it'd been before, a knarled, discolored thing that I noticed fleetingly as I hurriedly chained my bike to the rails.

It wasn't there on the third day, or if it was, I can't say that I saw it.

through a certain shakiness of sleep

The room is dark and hot, but it is not the room that is hot, for the fans are running full-blast, and I am sweating.

I am once again on that brink of sleep, (as always seems the writing calls) but this time is different. This time I am on that brink because the lack of sleep has taken over and made the decision that I need rest, while the chemical pounding of my heart and my own unbalanced internal clock have determined otherwise.

So it could be called a dream, I guess, but maybe not. We are all four in a car, the four of us sitting hours before watching the telly on that lazy couch, but for some reason we're transported to a parking lot in a car, and we're trying to close all the doors. Three closed. And then there's a deflection where real and unreal meet; the car door begins closing, but then the door of the dark room rushes open and my caretaker enters to grab a pencil or book or whatever it is as I mentally fumble.

I sometimes wonder at the irony of time, and timing, and why things happen when they do.