Caffeine at 8pm

I feel self-destructive in only the way a Tuesday in December can make you feel. I want to eat things full of sugar and drink gallons of soda, rotting the teeth right out of my head. I want to stay up late and watch mindless, soul-killing infomercials about products that lie. I want to commit sloth over and over, curl up under the covers until a spiralling line of drool stains my pillow grey.

After indulging in sugar and a diet soda, I feel mildly jumpy. Like my eyes are propped against their will, dry, threatening to fold. My tongue is coated in stale caramel flavoring. And a cat suddenly finds the space in my lap appealing, her head resting in the crook of my typing arm. She stretches against my side, purring and demanding I scratch her chin. So I bleed energy from my fingers and type-pet-type-scratch-type until she loses interest and uses my bladder as a vertical trampoline.

But that comes later. For now, she purrrrrs.

I taste the potential for change as a disconcerting melody. So I grab on to moments with a death grip and say to my brain, pay attention, it's shifting. Flash bulb this one... I've decided in my unscientific analysis (AKA my opinion) that Alzheimer's is the brain's inability to shift back from sleep state to waking state. In my dreams I accept anything as possible. I construct elaborate stories about impossible things and I believe them completely. When I wake, sometimes there's a moment of disorientation, and I think, "This is what it is to not know who I am."

Maybe Alzheimer's is when the brain can't distinguish between the disorientation of dreams and the ephemeral structure of memory. Fffppppt. Shuffle the cards. Shoe matches shoe. Hat matches hat. Or maybe I'm just writing out of my ass. Wouldn't be the first time.

Not even early risers at a yard sale would buy what I'm selling.