wordsalad

Dreaming wide awake

I had a dream last night that makes letting go of all that is bothering me seem easy, simply because it illuminated the alternative as something so horrifying that no halfway sane person would knowingly pursue it.

I woke up feeling humiliated, actually, for something I'd done in the dream, but would absolutely never do in real life. It's something that someone in a movie would do, pushed to a place where they felt a need for expression or connection or whatever it is that keeps us from offing ourselves. I guess that's where our subconscious comes into play - filtering out all of those "things we'd never do" so we never, actually, have to do them.

I collided with several people I know, last night in my sleep. They weren't nice to me, and I was definitely in a weakened position, for some reason. This is especially odd because in real life, I don't have this kind of relationship with these people. It's egalitarian all the way. It's interesting to be reminded that it hurts almost as much to be humiliated when you're sleeping by yourself as it does when you're wide awake in front of other people. 

I'm not even sure where I was, but obviously I wasn't invited. A friend I trust very much found me there, and very cruelly (in tone and words), let me know that I needed to leave immediately. There were other people there who I didn't recognize. Of course I left wherever this was, as a fear of intruding is one of my basic anxieties, along with staying somewhere where my presence isn't wanted. I don't know where I went, because if there's one thing consistent about even the dreams I do remember, it's that they never have an ending. They tend to drift on until morning, making it hard to wake up, especially when it's a weekend and I'm not motivated by an alarm. I sort of lay there, forcing myself into sleep, trying to catch the end, or some resolution, but not quite being able to...It's elusive. And the more fragmented and lighter sleep becomes, the more the pictures change, and become something else entirely - I'm shopping in Target instead of having that intense conversation my mind was trying to finish.

This is like my life in a way, come to think of it. Scary.

No matter what I can't remember from last night, I can just sense, still, a feeling of such loss and  sadness that it's colored my morning. I think it's because I rarely remember my dreams that when I do they have such an impact. I know I dream, but almost as soon as I wake up, someone turns the kaleidoscope in my brain, and discrete, specific images splinter into a million different colors and shapes, most of it blurry. Occasionally I'll grab onto a face, or a location. More rarely, I'll remember a few words that someone said, but that's it.

I've had people close to me tell me their dreams off and on over the years, and I think I've been sort of jealous that they can remember them in such detail - that somehow I lack the mental clarity that allows one to track internal dialogue to the letter, and locations down to street signs and paint colors. I just don't have it. And I don't understand enough about the neurological processes of dreaming to know what makes the pictures sharper, the retention better, or the meaning more clear. I don't think there is a scientific means of explaining that last bit, but I could be wrong.

Anyway, this morning is cloudy. And although I went to sleep feeling good, I didn't consent to the ticket to wherever that horror show was I attended involuntarily last night. I really didn't need it. But I guess it's better that it's out of wherever it was trapped in my brain, and it's been released.

Tired and contemplative

It's funny, how you can live in one place one day, and in another the next. It occurred to me the other day, as I was getting out of the shower (if it weren't for the shower, what genius thoughts would pass me by), that all the places I'd lived were still there, and life continued there as it had when I was breathing its air - I just wasn't there anymore. The comings and goings only affect the people coming and going, and anyone left behind who may particularly care about them, and how few of those types there are, when it comes down to it. The place itself basically remains unaltered. There were still people walking up and down the sidewalk in my Centerville neighborhood, going to class in the building where I worked at UD, driving by the Riggs Road house. 

I'm not sure why this strikes me as particularly profound today, considering that when I had the original thought, I looked at myself in the steamy mirror and thought, "Pretentious, existential git. Go find a problem worth solving. Suck it." because I annoy myself when I start thinking like this. But maybe I'm just suddenly struck by the concept of our ephemeral impact on the world, because my physical space has been shifting so rapidly. It alternately makes me feel free and desperate to grasp onto some railing or an arm or someONE, for God's sake, who cares. I don't know. It's what drives us to take photographs, I imagine, or to save ticket stubs or shells or magazines or concert programs or restaurant napkins - to make things and experiences more permanent. But what good is a shell without the ocean?

Having moved both my home and work life this month (the longest month in my existence, I swear), I've touched literally every physical belonging that I have, and realized that none of it really means much, and some of it I just couldn't abide and had to discard. I was able to take carloads of stuff to the Salvation Army, dump it off, and almost skip back to the car with happiness, lighter, somehow. When your life comes down to the manipulatives, the towels and bedsheets, the Christmas cards and colanders, it does remind you of what scant few of these things really matter all that much. I've found:

*Many, many cards I should have sent, including one today in the back of my drawer here at work that's no longer appropriate but so awesome. Kicked myself for that one. 

*Pictures of myself in an apartment, with a person I barely remember, much less can believe having lived with. In other photos of myself with Ohio friends as I was getting ready to leave town, I look like a different woman entirely. I purely loved those people. Now, all have scattered to the winds as well, across the country, into the fray (and occasional rubble) of relationships and jobs and homes from which we fashion a modern life. Some I don't talk to any more. A few are part of my occasional electronic universe. Only one is physically present in my life on a regular basis. But they were so important at the time. It bewildered me, as I put them in the new photo boxes I bought for this occasion, to think of them that way. I wasn't sure where to file it in my mind or in my heart. There aren't files for people. "Sometimes we cut a wide swath," one of those friends, Cindy, said to me when I was moving, and bemoaning leaving my state, quitting my job and my boyfriend at the time. Then she took a drag of her cigarette (people in Ohio actually have cigarette CASES, still...) and repeated, "a WIDE swath."

*Several hundred pens. I apparently do not like to throw away pens, no pens of any kind.

*Many reminders of my planful, hopeful spirit. I own hundreds of dollars worth of craft supplies just waiting to make the pretty things I envisioned when I snatched them up, not to mention hundreds of torn out recipes that I fully intended to make at the time I tore them out, guitar tabs, flyers and brochures for programs I knew would change my life, event calendars, gardening guides for the apartment dweller, and yes, more craft supplies.

*A couple of pairs of earrings Ithought I lost, and lots of single earrings, whose partner was long gone.

*Several songs I'd forgotten about.

*Some things that I made myself throw away, that I never dreamed I could ever make myself throw away. You reach a point sometimes where you realize that certain things only exist as talismans of pain, as reminders of impossible dreams, and who needs that kind of trouble?

*Two fortunes from cookies - "You have an active mind and a keen imagination", and "You will have a pleasant trip."

*A lot of really bad poetry, reams of e-mails that made me laugh out loud and made me cry, eulogies for my friend Bruce and my grandfather, notes to myself about things I've forgotten, letters I never finished, essays and article drafts - a million words, at least.

I've found all kinds of - too much - stuff. I'm exhausted from it. And today, I'm especially exhausted, cause I'm feeling a little bit jerked around by life and by people, but I know I'll get over it. More time will pass and the disorientation and occasional emptiness will cycle back around to centeredness, and fullness, and clarity. The inner reserves just need to get built up a little more, because they're running low. It'd be nice if there were more short cuts to this, but I know there aren't any, really. You just have to sit back and let it roll.

dinner with the fam

BLANCA24: how is dinner going?
BLANCA24 signed on at 8:18:09 PM.
LWhite2756: jimmy just called me mark twain.
BLANCA24: for what?
LWhite2756: beats me
BLANCA24: although I am happy to hear he has heard of mark twain
LWhite2756: perhaps it's the only author he remembers
LWhite2756: which i suppose is getting off
BLANCA24: how were the shish kabobs?
LWhite2756: easy
LWhite2756: considering how he used to read those louis l'amour joints.
LWhite2756: know what i'm saying
BLANCA24: huh?
LWhite2756: i got cut off
LWhite2756: i was telling you i got off easy with mark twain
LWhite2756: i need to go eat now.
BLANCA24: oh I thought you had eaten
BLANCA24: ok
LWhite2756: no
LWhite2756: should be so lucky
LWhite2756: he just called the plum
LWhite2756: tomatoes
LWhite2756: pear tomatoes.
BLANCA24: good luck
BLANCA24: he's so sweet
LWhite2756: there is no luck involved.
LWhite2756: somebody.
LWhite2756: save.
LWhite2756: me.
BLANCA24: no luck, no luck of any kind
LWhite2756: SOMEBODY SAAAAAAAAAAAVE ME
LWhite2756: that's a cinderella song.
LWhite2756: oh lord make me into a bird so i can fly far far away from here.
LWhite2756: any parting words of wisdom?
LWhite2756: oh, btw i had a great book idea
LWhite2756: danielle and i thought of it today
BLANCA24: I know, you were singing it the night of kelly's bachelorette party
LWhite2756: was i? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
LWhite2756: I WAS!
LWhite2756: wwksd
LWhite2756: what would kelli stewart do?
LWhite2756: okay i have been absent long enough.
LWhite2756: will tell about book genius idea later.

Would you spend the time with me, she said, some good time...Nothing remaining of the other, unfortunate, uncomfortable, unnecessary stuff?

I don't know, you know? I don't know what's good from bad anymore, it seems. It's too hard to distinguish. Life seems like a dart game, lately, where the bullseye keeps moving, there's no power in my throw, and when I try to point and shoot, my line of vision is even more unclear than usual. You know how it is with darts - and I don't even like darts, necessarily - when you don't throw them right. They don't go far, and even if they do, they wobble and fall in this sad spiral, to the ground. It's all in the wrist, I'm told. That's too bad.

I don't care about darts. I was just talking about taking a walk somewhere, maybe, by the water. You know, it's gotten nicer out. There's nothing too hard about walking, not thinking, necessarily, not feeling compelled to talk. You know, the way it was before it got complicated.

Honestly, if I thought there was a way to reduce it to that, maybe I'd try. But I don't trust it. I'm surprised you do.

Yes, I am too. But really, I'm not sure there's an alternative. Or, at least, that I'm satisfied with what they are.

The truth is, I don't want to think anymore, or do anything about anything, to be quite honest. I dream of water, and easier times, and sand, and wind. There are splashes of color, moments of happiness. I think of those, mostly. I dream quite practically, not fantastically at all, because you can't really dream about things that were real. It's just retracing steps...going back over lines that were apparently written first in pencil, however etched it may have felt. Not so much. Now your heart, like a chisel, makes itself own the memory, again, against your conscious will. The heart lacks sense. So you've always been told. It grabs everything - unbidden, uninvited - close to itself...talks nice to it, tells it it's welcome, when it's not. It's really not. It would be better to go away. It would be better to have a drink and watch a movie. But it's not ever satisfied that way. It wants blood. It wants whatever it wants when it wants it, like the infant that it is.

Stop it. It's easy enough to say. "I'd like very much to erase it from my memory," he said, last night. "to go back to how I was before. But I can't. Actually, I don't know how." He said it more simply than he says most things, a flatter tone, a weakened resolve. He'd never before reached that place of responding involuntarily to things that his conscious, intellectual mind had no interest in, the impulses that scratch at the door. They pace the floor like a latenight mother, waiting for the child who has no interest, no earthly plan, to call. It makes you YOU, and for that reason alone it's sacred. But it's evil. And insidious. And it has nothing of your best interests at heart. If it were your friend it would take you out for coffee and then leave you to an afternoon of meandering through shops with a blank check.