portentous

stress manifests itself differently in different people. tight shoulders, tense neck muscles, back pain, nervous spasms . . .
I get a twitchy eyelid.
my right eyelid has been twitching this week. and then my left joined in today.
it only happens once in a while, maybe 8 or 10 times a day, and it doesn't last long. just long enough to remind me that something's a bit off, that something is bothering me.
I don't know what it is; I often don't know.
but apparently my body is reacting as if a stressor exists in my life.

I was thinking about this as I was riding today underneath an alternately dark and pleasant sky. thick gray clouds hung about, leaving plentiful blue sky visible, and the clouds moved constantly across the sky so that I would cast a shadow for mere moments before it disappeared, leaving me in the windy cold.
the clouds to the northeast, up ahead of me, loomed dark and heavy, and the word portentous leapt to mind.
my right eyelid twitched, and I immediately connected the clouds, my twitch, and the word portentous to whatever it is that must be causing me stress: there was a portentous feeling hanging over me.

not necessarily a good thing. so I tried to trick myself by running through a list of other words, attempting to take my mind off the thought of something portentous confronting me.
hemophiliac, ethereal, esoteric, parsimonious, pusillanimous, gargantuan, geometrical, ephemeral . . . all this during oxygen depletion, no less. I kept repeating every word I could thing of, using them as shields to protect me from fixating on the word portentous and bringing doom and gloom to my future.

my left eyelid twitched.

and I gave up the word game, as rain sprinkled my jersey, my helmet, and the asphalt in front of me. the clouds let go a bit of their heaviness, and I decided to do the same.

haven't had an eyelid twitch in a good 5 hours now.

aeonian, mythical, gelatinous, gossamer, extraordinary, onomatopoeia, genuflect, titillate . . .