Imagine getting out of bed in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, only to have both your legs plunged into a sticky substance with amazing holding power, up to your ankles. At first you try hard to escape, writhing and twisting your unencumbered upper body. You also try to use the bedframe as leverage to pull yourself out. You try every escape method you can think of, but soon learn it's to no avail.

You sit back on the bed, close your eyes and try to ignore your rising panic, hoping for a miraculous brainflash that will lead to your freedom. Unable to maintain this state for very long, you open your eyes and frantically scan the dark room for sources of inspiration. Your gaze falls on the dimly-lit walls opposite you. An idea strikes - if you make enough noise perhaps someone will come to help.

You even have a few heavy books within reach. Mentally cradling this idea, your single source of comfort in a bizarre and frightening situation, you relax slightly. After a few minutes, you've formed a great plan to make enough noise to rival a fire alarm.

Taking a deep breath, you begin a loud combination of shouts of "Fire!" and striking walls and objects in your room with your books. Possessions are worthless now, their only value in possibly creating enough noise to bring someone to your aid.

After a couple minutes, your book supply depleted and your voice hoarse from shouts and a few uncontrollable screams near the end, you stop. There's nothing more that can be done. All other options exhausted, you begin to pray. Not usually religious, you have trouble first finding the words to begin. Somewhat bewildered but repentant nonetheless, you softly beg the heavens to reveal what you have done wrong, and promise to right every wrong a thousandfold - if only you are given a single chance for redemption.

Hours pass without divine intervention. Light peeks through the blinds of your room. Having realized that no one will ever come, that you will die here alone, you reach your breaking point. Your quiet weeping falls on no ears but your own.

Maybe you curse whatever force led you to be captured and abandoned so cruelly. Maybe near the end you lose your mind and choose your own mind's confines over those of reality. Maybe you begin to pray again, wearily striving to believe in the possibility of a miracle enough to ask for one.

Eventually you die, of starvation, dehydration, or by your own hand and some means you could find within arms' reach - without ever knowing how you came to wake up to this nightmare, or any of the reasons why.

I think glue mouse traps are cruel. And you?

I looked into a stranger
And found my soul waiting there
It hit me like a siren
To see myself everywhere
And I saw that I knew him like the corners of my mind

 -Corners of My Mind, by Nikka Costa

As you walk along, lost in your own thoughts, without warning you slip and fall. You try to scramble up and prevent further damage to your bruised dignity (although perhaps at the expense of your bruised spine). But a hand appears in front of you. Seeing it first only as an anonymous source of assistance, you grasp it and accept its offer. Your gaze traces a path from hand, to arm, to neck, and finally, eyes. With a start, you realize that the good samaritan before you is not at all a stranger.

It's someone you know - whose name you know, anyway. Claims of more detailed familiarity would be innacurate, because although you might have seen this person before, all you did was perceive him or her. It took something like this - the unexpected context, a second impression that completely voids the first - for you to notice the person before you - to really pay attention in this way.

Maybe you reintroduce yourselves, learn some astounding information about each other. "You have posters of squirrels in your room, too? So do I..."

And from that moment on, the two of you look at each other in very different ways. Crossing the threshold from perception to attention, your interaction with this person becomes a fresh beginning.

So you stare, and you might forget to let go, because you're experiencing a deja-vu that, for once, you can explain.

It's an interesting experience: to find a friend in someone you assumed you'd never click with, or a potential lover in someone you'd never really looked at before. It's shifts like these that can let us meet new people even when those around us are always the same.

The only things that can hinder this process are preconceived notions that are entirely too rigid. If they persist even under novel situations, they quite possibly cross the line from bias...to prejudice. And that's certainly not good, right?

She can't exist by herself. Others summon her, and she comes like a ghost, though materializing all too soon. With most, she brings hope with her too: a belief that fantasy and reality will coincide someday. But for me, she travels alone. My hope's gone far away, is perhaps even dead. In my grief, I cling to her, possibility, even more tightly.

She is pure, innocent - the bliss of not knowing. Life never spoils or betrays her - only people, ideas, and memories. And hope, which has forsaken us both, although this doesn't bring her down. She is my stronghold, my comfort...when all else fails, she endures, even though I am constantly cruel to her, belittling her and trying to change her into something she can never be.

Stories are my only defense, the single excuse I have. "At least I know," I steadfastly declare, "Never knowing what would happen would have killed me. All that uncertainty." I claim them as my motivation and justification, and have credited them as my only source of comfort after everything inevitably turns sour.

But that isn't so. It isn't true, because without those stories I still would have had hope, had joy - in possibility. I still would have been able to lay back and daydream, toying with what "might be" like a piece of candy in my mouth. What do I have, with these stories? They aren't happy ones, any of them. Many have beautiful parts, yes, but on the whole the best has been merely bittersweet. Shallow, fleeting moments of delight - are these to somehow redeem the drawn-out, seemingly infinite sorrows?

But possibility is innocent of these crimes. She bears no fault for reality's failure to embody her existence, of course. Even more, she does not seem to resent me for always trying to take more than she can give. "If only you'd stuck with me," she gently chastises, "I'd never disappoint you." Life's reproval is enough; she faults me no more. She is a jealous one, though, despite her strange way of showing it.

I do my best to deny her knowledge of the people in my life who have evoked her - to keep them from my subconscious, and for the love of all that is holy, my dreams. If I ever managed to succeed at this, they might be alright. But I fail, and she is jealous, and she ravages everyone she touches after glorifying them first. The higher the heights from which you fall, the harder you hit. It's never a pretty sight.

But nothing wounds me more than her absence. When no one and nothing calls her, I don't know what to do with myself. Little piques my interest or wakens any enthusiasm in me. Her presence makes me feel more alive than, quite possibly, anything else.