full of herself, literally as she keeps spouting her highbrow nonsense, trying to teach everyone around how to paint, how to act, how to walk, how to think, how to pray

the sight of me must have triggered something within the murky depths of her self, called to life some past iteration, lying dormant on the bottom for most of the time she now spends talking to her artistic minions, and she cast the highbrow shell away for the day we went out

as we sat on the beach with the sun warming up our backs, unusually kindly for the overall cold september, she complained that she couldn’t make herself paint anymore, as if she had gone deaf or blind, as if she was unable to look directly at the matter at hand and could only perceive the blurry outline of it with her side vision

five years ago I would’ve already jumped the gun with my incessant desire to make her feel better, would’ve burst with my uncontrollable stream of consciousness on such topics as self-reflection, rational perception of the role of an artist in the eyes of their art,

would’ve mentioned the fact that you can’t hear while speaking, so perhaps this sensation of deafness is a sign to shut your mouth finally and at least try to listen

more than five years ago I was indeed very different and not quite familiar with the sense of utter isolation from within myself. I basked in the luxury of clarity and precision, felt like a trigger-happy sniper with his rifle always at hand, always ready to do my thing whenever I had the time or energy, never mute or lost or disjointed or shattered

or numbed by the muteness and suspended in silence my love had condemned me to five years ago,

That was the exact same time when she started avoiding me altogether as well. Because heartbroken people are no fun, apparently. they can hardly contribute to your artistic inspiration, or provide any curious metaphysical discoveries, as they are not enthusiastic about taking part in long philosophical conversations about quantum physics or ancient religions. how deaf and blind and mute I was when she left me for half a year, only the walls in our common room know, soaked with my tears and other demons so thoroughly they might just ooze out of those cement walls like from a sponge upon some innocent soul that rents this room now. and she just left and didn’t bother until I cared to resufrace myself, and she never wondered about the time she missed, or the exact way I got out of that fatal ditch the stream of impulses had driven me into after all. so she never learned that it doesn’t quite come back to you, that blessed precision and purity of your camera lens. that you have to rewire yourself and reinvent some substitute for sensitivity if you mean to perceive the world somehow at all. because dissociation is a guillotine, not a grand drape, there’s no point in lifting it back once it fell because the severed head won’t grow back together with the body by some cheerful rewinding spell. i learned it the hard way and managed to work my way around it at least partially because the diverse variety of my past traumas had made me adaptable, and you can’t recommend someone to be adaptable just like that and hope they’ll just follow your advice and be fine. besides, ignorance is only a bliss for as long as you’re self-aware.

so here you are, deaf and blind and waiting for it to pass. still not bothering to shut your mouth for a second and try to listen. the wood-grouse tactics are infamous for getting the birds killed because they get so consumed with their clicky mating calls they fail to hear the danger approaching. and this is not a premonition, neither a curse, it’s just a conclusion obvious from the outside. have you forgotten how to look at yourself from the outside. has the guilty pleasure of being in control made its way into your good judgment. or is it some lame age-related crisis, how do you think. the thing i really feel about your goddamn absence at the time when i needed you the most is gratitude because without you nearby i died back then as completely as i only could, and in the name of that gratitude i’m not bothering with a word in response to your call now. in return for the imbecile grin of the cosmic balance i can’t take my eyes off