The phone isn't ringing and no one is here. The silence of the place is hard to ignore but I'm doing it anyway. Waiting for something to distract me.

I'm going to bed.

Can't sleep. Tension keeps me clear of the covers. The tension is not what I think it is, though it's trying to masquerade as something obvious, something I'd pick first.

I can force sleep — this body is easily coaxed in that direction. Here is my arm stretched out toward the desk and window. It's one long hint of a body buried beneath the dense bed cover. The nails on that hand are too long and now pliant. I think I have to fix this.

When sleep comes it's a storm. I wake at every turn and memories are purple.

After the last waking I lie guessing how much time has passed, noticing the tumult left behind. It looks a tangle of color the shape of my body and the rest of the environment which I can sense is pale, if not pure: clean, and more accurately, simple.

I dreamt but it fled.

Now I'm sitting here invading the silence with activity. I'm not waiting around for distraction. But the question of why I'm dreaming again compiles possibilities as the day darkens.

Today I heard a man say that he'd tried something and it didn't work and now things are returning to normal. A wiser man replied, "Yes, that's how we cope with things. We think if we can be normal that everything is OK."

He said, "We see this happening with the nation right now. This far out from the disaster, we're all trying to return to normal — we're trying to act normal."

"Things aren't normal."

Yesterday came the news that the company I worked for, the company I just left, ceased operations earlier this week.

It's weird news.

Validating on the one hand: I jumped ship before the whole thing went down.

But sad too: All that work reduced to an impotent Web site.

And, unexpectedly, unsettling: That many more people jobless. How many more layoffs will occur before the media and government agree to a recession?

The level of tension equals the difference between confidence and fear.

But is the relative comfort I feel confidence or denial?

So, could the tension result from a denied subtext or is it stimulated by new information?

That last question is itself a source of tension. The mere idea of denying is scary — means you can't trust yourself.

What it really is: Home is a stable place yet. In all other areas, I'm un-tethered, proceeding without focus and with little agency.

What makes this nebulousness?

All of the above.

But what keeps me here? That is, what is the agent of this paralyzation, of normal appearances?

Compromise?

Yes. It's always that.