Maybe it's in the sitting, blithering, browsing the internet.
Maybe it's the flitting through iTunes until something catches my ear.
Maybe it's the reading famous last words or epitaphs for a half hour at 1:30 am.
Maybe it's just being tired WHO CARES.
The point is, I don't even have to use the lightning anymore. It's enough for me to know it's there.
It's still there, if I need it.
Like I'm nervously reopening a safe full of jewels, I guess, just to make sure they haven't gone anywhere.
And so sudden, too! The feeling steals over you. One moment you're sitting aimlessly, wondering why on earth you haven't gone to bed yet, and the next you're in complete, precise, steely control of the universe. It's instantly there.
I assume drugs are like this, because I haven't done enough of them to conclusively compare.
What is it. Hrm.
Describing a feeling is impossible. It's inchoate. Yeah, fuck you, I know that word. It's impalpable. You cannot palp it. It's intangible. You cannot tang it.
And you damn sure can't explain it to somebody who hasn't seen it. Colors. Blind people. Etc.
I reference drugs because
All of this. Everything on this site and the other, especially the good bits a while back when I was doing this all the time, was a product of this brain lightning.
One thing it lets me do is compact anything into a specific abstract neon colored box that I can manipulate. For example. Take this blog. Compact it. Take everything in it, all the writing and rumination and ruination and roomba-nations and put it in one box. That's a thing now, that's designated thing 1 and we can insert it into any equation we build during the rest of the lightning.
It's also, especially in the early onset, an incredible rush. In that it produces good feelings. It is the equivalent of cocking the pump action of a shotgun, for your brain. You feel instantly confident that you can fully understand something. Utterly. It is a glimpse of the reassurance of omniscience.
If it turns out there is a drug out there somewhere that delivers a lengthier version of this lie, I am a dead man.
Earlier I'd rush, you know.
Well, earlier than that I'd take it for granted, but that was my way for all things.
But later, when I'd learned to appreciate, it would be accompanied by a sense of urgency.
Like I had an essay to write.
I mean, I still do some of this when I have an essay to write.
It's trawling for your brain.
Or, more like, trying to find the right spot that turns your brain on.
So I flip randomly through iTunes, through any source of music, finding the right thing that will turn every other part of my brain off, and then I'll listen to it for three hours while I write.
It can't be too GOOD a sound or I'll focus only on it and that isn't what we're trying to accomplish here. We're only trying to target the cancer cells but we haven't quite got the technology to do so.
Second wind. I've probably called it that before.
Strange. It acknowledges that I can't make it on my first wind alone, regardless.
I suppose this is sounding obtuse, or rambling. Possibly even smug.
The illusion of understanding, whether brought on by fatigue or drugs or whatever external source you choose, has long confounded and interested me. Alluring. Allured me.
You know. Is it real, are we actually smarter. It is an indisputable fact that my best work happens past midnight. It is also a mentionable fact that it's uncontrollable and completely random.
I have to assume you come here with the express purpose of listening to me write about thinking about myself thinking. It's the sort of self aggrandizing, masturbatory sarcastrobatic entertainment I specialize in and hey, sometimes I come back and read it too.
One of the aftereffects of lightning strikes is fuzzy memory.
Another is the proud exhaustion coupled with immediate creeping doubt.
I'm sure that's vaguely sexual somehow, but I'm no longer an avatar for my wittier, Wilde-er self so the sex puns will have to wait for another day. Night.
