there are two very different places i am living, it's not a break in reality or some sort of mental breakdown

though it feels as if one part is bleeding into the other, normal mundane working part.

i am reading and writing feverishly these last few days, i have become wrapped in it, as if wrapped in bedsheets, or gauze, or ace bandages

mostly, it feels as if my eyes have been tainted, as if someone drugged me and performed some sort of laser surgery wherein my eyes are altered so that everything looks as if it is covered in a film, a placenta of sorts, as if the world is about to be born for me, as if what i have been doing until now, the life i have been living until now, was the dream

that i am going to wake up and the film will be gone, the world will be new, raw, screaming for my attention, for everyone's attention.

can gin make you crazy? can writing make you crazy?

is this why i avoided it until now, writing only dry (and quite mediocre) philosophical text, always excited by the ideas but thankfully reined in by the constraints of your classic western philosophy program? did i somehow know i would become wrapped up in it like this? why is it coming at me like this, i don't know how to rationalize it, though i try very hard. this desire to write is obsessing me.

i worry that reading this will distress her, or that i will listen to clucks of tongues and brandings of 'manic'. i don't necessarily think she's wrong, but to be called on my lack of a calm sea can be frustrating. but that is unfair, because i love her so much, and i know the clucks and brands are because she loves me back.

i think the worry comes, too, because the obsession, the mania that has begun to follow me into my sleep, feels really good, even in the painfulness of it, the desire of it. i told her last night that i think i am coming out of my shell. i think this is not the right way to say it; i feel as if i am blasting out of my shell, removing it like being blasted out of a cannon, excited, disoriented, fearing the inevitable slam into the ground.

everything is amplified, music is more, sweetness is more, hunger is more, water is more, the rain bites into my face on the way to my car, the feeling of everything, every single thing, feels as if it is marking my skin

scent, too, has become hyper sensitive, i have become obsessive about applying lotion and perfume, i have become fixated on the smell of my hair, how it feels as it falls across my face, or tickles my back while i wash it, the smoothness of it as i rinse it clean; on the smell and softness of my hands, i massage in lotions and emollients, i rub my cuticles smooth, the backs of my knuckles, my palms which are firm but the skin is very smooth and soft.

i am obsessing on myself, on what i hear on what i see on what i feel.

everything feels as if it is the first time.

i have been eating less than usual, and drinking more; i've started smoking cigarettes again, though i will not buy another pack after i finish this one, the one i bought on friday.

i have until thursday to decide whether i will write a 50000 word novel by nov 30th.