surrealism in a jar

My life has been too interesting lately in useful ways. I'm approaching normalcy. This situation cannot stand; I'm retreating into my box until--okay, actually, this feeling, this flavor of mundane surreality is absolutely useful. I just have to figure out how to channel it.

For example: "Dude--an ashtray. Look: I'm carrying an ashtray. C'mon! I know this is your brother's house, but seriously!" because my friend ashes on the effing floor. The effing floor! I can channel this "dudeness," as I'd call it: dudeness bubbling on the surface of a sea of mundane surreality is just the effect I think I'm looking for. It's a perfectly unexpected combination, like a dish with an unexpected pairing of salty and sweet.

About a week and a half, two weeks ago I was struck with a fleeting, beautifully whole and perfectly complete sense of the entirety of my story. It was majestic; there's no better way to describe that feeling. It took my breath away, left me paralyzed.

Now, returning to that memory, that moment, I can feel the tantalizing edges of it in my mind. It's absolutely a tactile, gut-level thing, a wafting scent, a memory of a taste I can't place in time or space because the food or drink it belongs to hasn't yet been presented to me. I feel I'll have to go into meditation, long, silent, and slow, to bring it back and flesh it out. It's a seance for a gnat--a life so brief that bringing it back is like striking in the dark in hopes of bringing back one's hand clasped around some invisible treasure, bit of intricately crafted jewelry. I feel like a blind man trying to smell his way back to a Monet in an art museum, except I still have to figure out how to break in at night despite daunting security.

Meanwhile, I've been writing so many "dudes" into my little "effed up-ness"-evoking project that when I went to visit my family the other day, to watch my middle brother graduate from high school, that I think I called just about every relative I interacted with "dude" at some point.