it was very nice

Last night I lay awake in bed, the street lamps coming through the window in a soft, orange glow, and I felt calm. I thought about all the reading I have to do and papers I have to write, but it didn't seem to matter. I spent more time thinking about grilled cheese sandwiches and how tasty they were. The stereo was playing Death Cab for Cutie, "Crooked Teeth": "I'm a war, of head versus heart, and it's always this way. My head is weak, my heart always speaks, before I know what it will say. And you can't find nothing at all, if there was nothing there all along. There were churches, theme parks and malls, but there was nothing there all along."

And I was wrapped up in my sheets, but I didn't feel trapped at all. I kind of felt like I was floating along in a big wave that was carrying me to a place of quiet and peace and rest. I could hear the cars outside on Assiniboine Avenue, revving their engines at the stop sign, and trying to find a place to parallel park. I would peek my head out from the covers and look at the snow-covered trees, dark and bare, stretching across the street. Dozens of apartment buildings all around, all with dozens of people falling asleep, next to a frozen river that still channeled water under its crusty top to the Forks, and then north to a wide open lake, surrounded by wide and empty land. And it all felt so still. Despite all the chaos around, all the nothing that is everything to us, it all seemed to fade away in my mind, and my heart didn't feel like it was being devoured. It felt like it was suddenly very free.