sanity and other tenuous concepts

This is supposed to be about everyday life. The mundane and how it becomes holy and symbolic and metaphoric. And sometimes there are days and there are experiences that defy such categories, and sometimes reality shifts and loses focus and distorts and who is the sane one and who is the insane?

And tonight I watched my worst fears come true: I watched a friend lose control, laughing until what seemed like sobs began, laughing at what, I'm not sure, lost in an internal, self-contained world, laughing at personal not-funny jokes, at the sound of her own voice, 6-year-old jokes, and reality bent a little, shifted a bit off-center, the colors became iridescent and the planes of existence warped just a bit; the center dropped out and there was only the margins;

tonight I watched a friend lose control and I reverted to my oldest coping mechanism: I checked out. Dissociated. Picked at my tiramisu, walked out of the room and made my bed, considered taking a walk;

and then she was back and she was asking me how I felt and if I thought she was crazy and what the hell was I supposed to say? Oh my god, I've only ever seen people do this in movies. You mean people actually behave like this? What were you thinking, I wanted to ask her, what was going through your mind when you were acting like that? But is that really a question she can answer? I knew what was going through her mind; it was exactly what she was saying; and it wasn't communication, exactly, not entertainment, exactly, self-entertainment, maybe. Maybe.

and when the colors returned to those of the rainbow, the axes returned to right angles, the vertigo subsided, what in this great universe do I say? are you okay?

is insanity the only sane response to an insane world? why did that scare me so? would it have scared you?