I am slowly hurtling toward a synthesis, out of depth and cross a white plain, led by impulses, lost and alone.

I'm mostly having trouble seeing things clearly. There's a knock at the door. I keep hearing voices on the other side. I go down the stairs, out the alleyway, across the courtyard; -- I keep grasping at nothing.

I finally have an approximation of a lab set up. 3 actual students, 1 volunteer who wants a job sometime soon, 1--Joe--who is Captain America, a supreme villain with the best disguise ever, or voidspace. But he's on my side, so I don't question it. Papers are being written, conference abstracts being done. Still mostly worried about grant funding. This year that I've been on this training grant, I haven't been able to apply for the usual awards a new investigator would be viable for. My technical title is post-doc. It was either this stupid shit for a year or lose out on 750,000 over 3 years. Fucking K99.

Not having an MRI scanner on campus also weirds my shit. The people at UPH in Des Moines have the equipment but they don't have the expertise to implement my paradigms. Got an applications specialist hopefully going in to get it all sorted. Sure it'll cost 3,500, but hopefully UPH will pony up some of the money. I put in that 3 million dollar grant for the university to get a new scanner. No idea how that'll go. I imagine it's got too much biomedical in it. Still, I sealed that in my sanity and blood, and now it's in the rear-view, and I need another trick from my hat.

I imagine myself sifting through, in the dark hours, plaster dust and muddied paint in an abandoned building, like the ones I skulked through in Detroit. The floorboards are rotted and cracked, creaking out groans because of the wind, walls ruined, paint chipped, rags in the corner since that's a leitmotif bums and drug addicts seem to dig.

Water pools in a thin membranous haze over the tile and brick. Small thin trees have eeked through the cracks and suck on sunlight through the openings that winter chips each year. It's still, deathly quiet, with whispering and lights and colors made so vivid by the mid-day sun. I'm on the rooftop, planters and atriums split open, and it's all green and vibrant and growing. The marble is broken mostly, but then there're these fine, minuscule black lines, too few to be webs but patterned.

I have come to see that the dreams hold deeper truths to them. That the waking world has joys and pains, but there's a hollow sound when tapping it.

Too much obsession.

Too much fear.

Too much planning and scheming and compromise and details and meaningless and things.

There is a singularity in the ruins. A clarity. It is frightening and mythical. It possesses. It makes me whole.

And I am running again. I am vaulting up stairways, down hallways, listening and thinking and planning and dodging around objects imagined and real. There are so many distractions, things that take my attention away from survival. I listened for 10 minutes today as J described in intricate detail how to make a teepee for G. I did not try to understand. I accepted. I went to Lowe's. I jumped around a banister, planting my feet, to avoid the sounds overhead.

I can barely catch my breath from boredom and dread.

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