It's the time of the afternoon when I watch the sun's scribblings cruise across the walls, climbing upwards and inwards until the sun paints the ceilings instead of the floors and threatens to raise the roof to the sky. No matter how slow the clouds are moving, staring at them for a second or two -- no more -- is enough for me to feel their immense mass and nearly drown in their roiling motion, like watching a pot of water boil on every side instead of just the top.

If I'm in the mountains, I can stand on glaciers and feel them moving beneath me like a skateboard or a surfboard. I can feel the mountains getting smaller under my feet with erosion or getting higher with geokinetic uplift.

If I'm standing on an island, I can feel it drifting and bobbing along on the tectonic currents, dwindling and dissolving into seawater, like when a retreating wave pulls the sand out from under your feet.

Even now I feel the motion of the earth around the sun and the sun around the galactic core, et cetera, et cetera, like the teacup ride at a carnival. I feel time and distance opening up as massive objects twirl up and stretch out space-time like a taffy-pulling machine, like a spinning fork in oiled spaghetti.

This is my illness. I am dizzy all the time. Even when nearly dead from boredom. I feel the chemistry that propels me like I'm an opened can of soda on the table, fizzing noisily for now, but eventually flat and inert and undrinkable.

And sometimes I feel the slippage.

You know what I'm talking about. Those tiny moments when you feel you just missed something, possibly something important. Almost certainly something important. Something happened somewhere right then -- and you missed it. You look around and ask, "What was that?" and no one can answer you. Or they look at you like you're crazy. And maybe they're right, but, hey, they missed it, too.

What was that last one? The passing of the year?

Probably not. 2007 is dead, though not quite so long dead that it's beginning to stink yet. But, see, not everyone numbers the years the same way we do. Around a quarter of the population of the planet, at least traditionally, feel that we are still winding up year 4704 and won't be done with it really until January 7. Other people seem to feel strongly that it's now year 5767 and has been since October of last year. A growing number of people believe that not quite two weeks after January 1 it will become the year 1429.

Surely whatever that was was more universal, or at least more objective. Surely not something based on something as weak as mere numerology.

Here's what it's like.

Do you remember one of those dreams where you were falling, and then you wake up, and then you hit the bed from a height of about three inches -- just enough to bounce a bit? Like that, only more subtle. Maybe half an inch. Maybe no inches, even, like maybe gravity just flickered off briefly and back on again. Only the lurch wasn't quite physical. Almost, but not quite.

You know I'm making this up, right? I'm not feeling those occasional little whole-body funny-bone twinges. At least not anymore.

You are. You know I'm right.

But what about me? What is it that I'm feeling? They're not twinges. It's the same thing, but it's constant. And maddening.

There's a gear somewhere that isn't meshing. There's a high-pitched whine of some wheel spinning like mad that should just be humming along pushing this or pulling that or winding the other, and it never stops.

It's probably nothing. Right?

Right. What it is is the border between the normal world and Heck itself. If you can hear it whining, if you can feel it spinning, you're here with me in Heck. Otherwise you're just glimpsing a flash on the horizon. Or a glimmer under the door. Depending on how close you are to the door. Maybe cracks in the ice is more apt....

If you can hear it, if you can feel it, you're here with me. And you can't get out until you can figure out what the hell that is and how to make it stop.

Can I hear an “amen”?

Please?

Ah, well. Suit yourself. Congratulations on your good fortune. And, if appropriate, Happy New Year.