You Fill Up My Senses

When I woke up this morning, there was an unusual intensity to my perceptions.

My senses were on fire.

Back in my younger days, I occasionally used psychedelic drugs. In a way, that's how I felt. Colors were beautiful and vivid, sounds were deeper and brighter. When I reached out to pet Warden, I didn't want to stop. He was so soft!

And then I had to go to work.

And work was great! I mean, my state of being made everything okay. I worked extra hard, and when I got caught up, I closed my eyes, and just listened.

I heard the sounds of silverware being brilliantly clanged together. I heard inane conversations, but with the melodic rise and fall in the voices, the words didn't matter. It was like hearing a symphony.

When Belle Star said, "Jimenez, if you got some good s**t you better f**kin' share it!", I just kept my eyes closed and smiled. I might have been swaying a little.

There were songs coming from Belle Star's little radio, songs that I had always thought were kind of terrible but today they soothed me, excited me, filled me with the passion that the singers must have felt when they were singing their songs.

I asked Raymond to describe the most beautiful moment he had ever experienced.

"Curt," he said, "I drove through Ohio once."

"Ohio is beautiful," I said.

"Yes, well, it's very flat out there. I was actually driving east, coming home. I had driven through Iowa, Illinois, Indiana. Lots of fields, lots of soybeans and corn. Beautiful, but kind of samey, you know?"

I knew. I told him so.

"But I had just driven past Columbus, I had stopped and gotten a sandwich. It wasn't a good sandwich, but I ate it. Tuna, I think."

It might sound cheesy, but his attention to detail made me feel like I was in the passenger seat.

"I was out of the suburbs and surrounded by fields again," he continued, "when something leaped out of the landscape, something huge and beautiful."

I thought he might be talking about the giant basket. He was.

When I asked Belle Star about her most beautiful moment, she responded with a sexual story that I will not revisit here. It was a bit of a buzz kill.

I wondered if the world would present itself to me like this for the rest of my days. I wondered if everything I experienced were always this intense, if I would get used to it. Maybe then it wouldn't seem so intense anymore. Maybe I would take it for granted. I wondered if all my life I'd been seeing less in the world than there really was. In spite of myself--in spite of the pure joy that had filled up my day until this point--I started to feel a little down. I followed those thoughts around in my head until I was jarred back to reality by Belle Star.

"Your getting backed up you f**kstick," she said. "And I was just thinking about giving you a raise. Hope you weren't fantasizing about me, you goddamn psychopath!"

I turned back to the three bowl sink. The burned oats at the bottom of the first pot looked vividly brown and disgusting. I picked up my scrubby and went back to work.