The Night Goose

Obviously there's something about every feeling. But the rare one that a crisp dusk sometimes brings is definitely classifiable as one of the feelings that has something about it.

Or dawn. I don't know. Whichever one is at the end of the day is the one. And it's even better if you can't tell that it's the one at the end of the day. The confusion adds to it if not too heavy.

It feels cool (and cool) to be outside at night.

Alexithymia is a cruel world to not know you exist in. Allegedly one in ten people have this, the mental condition where one's emotions don't translate well into understanding. I don't know what percentage of us alexithymiacs do or don't know that we have it. I imagine that in turn for understanding the source of confusion, the unaware just think they are bad people.

If your core is muddled and you communicate everything wrong because of that, and the world treats you poorly for it, you gotta place blame somewhere. Probably either on yourself or on others. But if you know you have alexithymia, then you can blame a chemical imbalance or something.

The only real classifiably bad people here are the alexithymiacs blaming others, some might say, although these blamers still probably have some sort of logic going into that. There are a few more combinations of knowing and not knowing and blaming, and things that make a bad person, etcetera.

I don't think any of us are bad people, except for those who don't have alexithymia yet lack any empathy for the confused. Ungrateful privilege keeps an oppressive machine oiled up so nubile. The night goose told me.

To feel a moment.

I was nine and soccer practice was over early on a Tuesday. It wasn't much of a soccer practice. Usually we kicked the thing around long long into the night but this time the sprinklers had turned against us. The referees let us fuck around in the water for half an hour before someone slipped and started crying. I saw it happen. Annise was the one who fell. I didn't really know her so it doesn't matter.

The refs transformed back into parents, some bashful socialites some frantic fleers. The only difference between them was the speed at which everyone left, and their willingness to dance. My dad was a bashful socialite so I had to wait for him to make nice with the other bashful socialites.

I laid in a puddle next to Naomi. I did know him, very well. And his parents, also bashful socialites obviously, knew my dad. And so Naomi and me were surely bound to grow up and be bashful socialites too. But I'll probably be the one who gets mad and yells because my kid fell. Nature versus nurture or something, we'll see who I am when we all get there.

Naomi was laying on his back playing with a family of frogs above his head, whom had recently been evicted by the great tsunamis programmed by school gardeners. I was laying on my back gutturally screaming at the sky because I was trapped in a snow globe. I regret it now. My vocal cords are fried forever.

My dad didn't say anything about my screaming. Only Naomi's parents gave me the attention I so violently demanded, in the social moment. They took a break from being bashful to snap at me this time.

Boredom has always been my worst fear. I don't know why. What's a kid supposed to put in that space of nothing but time? I never found out, so I just invented emotions to feel. I absorbed the colors around me as if they were free pills from a high school drug dealer. The temperature of the air could be an energy so _(extreme adjective to be felt)_. (increasingly various and I don't remember).

Naomi started doing weird things with the frogs and his parents switched to frantic fleers. I watched my dad be confused about not knowing what to do for a second after they left. He looked around at the other groups of bashful socialites that had conglomerated, innocent and excitable, not aware of his cue to leave now.

"Can we go now?" I probably said.

"In a sec. I have to say bye to Jerry," He said, probably.

He walked around for a second, not quite able to get into any of the circles, trying to bid a farewell to literally anyone. Jerry was really tall and very bald and drove a boring sports car. An exotic dream for the socialite mothers. The mothers, like a flock of birds with long necks would, pretended not to notice my dad. I hate them forever for it. Forgive me.

Or maybe I hate Jerry. Forgive me.

Jerry eventually noticed my dad and did the whole "Oh hi! Good to see you!" act, and pretended to be interested in whatever my dad was doing there for.

"Hey there Jerry! I'm gonna take Lionel home now, just wanted to say hi before I left!" said my dad, probably. And he definitely chuckled a lot like in the tone of leaving a voicemail.

"Alright, well it's good to see you Ben! Have a good night. As I was saying ladies..."

My dad smiled and walked away, back to me, satisfied like it was some sort of positive and genuine social interaction. We walked through the settling fog to the car and my dad probably did small talk to me.

"Did you have fun at soccer practice?"

It wasn't him getting the rest of his socialization needs out of his system, I could tell. He was tired. But he never could tell. He was a nice guy, and this was him being nice to me now. I appreciated it. I wasn't bored anymore.

We drove home after a few minutes of me talking about Naomi and the frogs and my dad making fun of one of the rich moms picking her nose. I rolled my window down to feel the fog on my face and look directly at the streetlights through it.

No sounds were happening out there. Just the wind on my eardrums, the car engine, mainly the wind on my eardrums, and my dad starting conversation sometimes. I felt so contemplative, and the air was so specific.

I don't know if anyone would appreciate these details if I told them. It would probably just sound like any other right well moment in time. But I was present within it. A nine year old accidentally pretending to practice mindfulness.

The car slowed to a stop at a stop light, I rested my head on the window sill and watched the exhaust coagulate with the fog in the rear view mirror. I was tired too. The cold air almost had a way of preventing me from knowing this.

I listened to the nothingness at this stoplight. There were no cars in the cross traffic, so it doesn't make sense that the light was red for us. With my eyes only, I briefly observed my dad. He wasn't upset about the light, he was content. Maybe he was feeling the same night that I was.

My dad wanted to look at me, but had to think of a joke about the delayed light first.

Then I sensed a motion through the fog. It wasn't audible, but it should have been.

Right when my dad was about to get the joke out of his mouth- the thing that I had sensed, the movement in the fog above, purred at us. It called at the moon. It maybe moaned for a mating partner, I don't know who it was talking to but it was damn reverberant. And I looked in its direction to see a vivid bird swoosh over us. Then it was gone, swooshing into the fog again.

I became energetic again and nearly jumped out the window in seek of more.

"Dad! That's a night goose!"

He did a very hearty laugh involving stomping his (left) foot and clapping his hand. His first genuine one of the night. It made me happy. I don't know when I ever finally put it together that it was an owl.

I had never seen an owl before. What a feeling to see something so exotic! Strong enough to surpass a chemical into a present moment.

I've been chasing that feeling ever since, but it can't be replicated on purpose. I've only ever appreciated the night goose when it stumbled upon me at random. It is wrong to chase the night goose. Is it wrong to want to feel special?

I think that's what the bashful socialites do.

My dad still calls owls night geese, and will forever. I own more than a shelf-full of gifted goose and owl figurines now. I did not ask for this.