...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfbCLwNlGwU&ab_channel=AlexGar00

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I've let go the artificial calm -

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Fifteen days

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And it was gone.

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Everything feels so different now,

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Different, and yet exactly the same.

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It's a dangerous thing;

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There's this sensation that can creep in -

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As if you're wandering through a dream

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And that the whole world becomes naught 

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But a seam in the dream's setting.

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There's a reason I fixate on certain images:

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The heartbeat

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And the ground -

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The drum-anchor,

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And the security of its sound.

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I've heard it said once, 

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When I was reading Vonnegut, in Beijing,

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That as soon as you stop paying attention

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To the temperature of your feet,

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That you're lost - and that your being lost

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Has than become complete.

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It's been in my experience 

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That insanity doesn't work like that at all.

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It's instead, a lot like if you're in a hot air balloon,

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And it suddenly dawns upon you 

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That you must've been in a balloon all of your life.

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And in so doing, you notice these cords,

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These strings, keeping your hot air hitched to the ground -

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And in the revelry of realization, you inadvertently

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Begin letting go the rope, and one by one

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You loosen all these little attachments, these things 

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That've kept your feet planted firmly to the floor,

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And gradually, if not momentarily, 

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You find yourself beginning to lift, 

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And next to suddenly soar.

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There's a liberty in it that's hard for me to describe -

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The sensation that nothing is required

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And that nothing matters anymore.

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And you wander through life in this dream sequence

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Wondering somehow if you've been here before.

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And in these skies, 

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You hear the clouds speak

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And the overcast and rain

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Whisper these secret warnings.

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And you tumble and turn

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Laughing at the prow

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With soft drugs and sweat

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Seeping from the pores in your brow.

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And you float, and you listen

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And you smoke and imbibe 

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And you twist and you cry,

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And you laugh, and you...

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And you...

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And,

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Losing your mind is more like that, than it is forgetting cold feet,

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I've had both, and forgetting your feet is easy -

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But as I also know, there's something undeniably terrifying,

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Something scary, about waking from the sensation

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And realizing

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That you want desperately,

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Defeatedly, 

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Not to be away from the ground anymore.

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Author's Note

An exercise in fiction.