David Bronson

I’m trying to remember the feeling. It was so clear and it was only a few hours ago, but it might as well be a lifetime ago with everything that’s happened in between. Not that any of it was so monumental or particularly out of the ordinary, but the feeling is completely different.

I was just coming out of some kind of mental-emotional cocoon after a few solid days of being entrenched – wait, it’s starting to come back now – and it seems logical to me that a lot of it had to do with the fact that I haven’t gotten more than 3 hours of sleep for more than a few day’s at this point. 
So anyway, on the train this morning I decided to crack a new Bukowski book of short pieces, to kind of treat myself, take it easy. And man did it do the trick.

Within the first page of the first piece I was struck – no, a much better word would be caressed, by this unbelievably comforting feeling. Of connection, truly. I mean serious inhabitance, or, not sure how to convey this accurately, but it was a feeling like I was perfectly situated within a real state of human mutuality, a togetherness of some kind, of being here, safe and alive with all of the other living humans, but it wasn’t heavy at all. It was completely easy, natural, completely comfortable. (I laughed to myself when it occurred to me that the short story I was reading was called ‘Loneliness’). The only feeling I can compare it to was a memory I have of being about 7 or 8, having just come home from a trip to the comic book store with my father and brothers on a Saturday afternoon in the spring or summer, and not having anything to do for the next 2 days (I guess it couldn’t have been summer) but relax in my comfortable room, on my bed, with my bunch of new comics. Utter lack of stress, the opposite of anxiety. It was like coming home in the best possible way.

And then it became addressed in my own mind, this feeling I had been experiencing, and I thought about it, and it was over. I won’t tell you the thought that this just about perfect feeling was momentarily replaced with, it’s too depressing. But thankfully that didn’t last for more than a few seconds. And then things were just normal.