Daymares 9

Breathing.  I concentrate on the simple art of breathing.  I count my breaths.  I listen to them intently.  Each one making its slow passage in and out.  I work on varying the rhythm and then the pitch by changing how deep I let the air go from flow to flow.  I do not want to hear anything else.

I do not want to hear, see or feel anything else.  Breathing seems safe enough.  Anything else is terrifying.  The trickle that drips down my tubes seems to alternate patterns as I alternate the rhythms of my breathing.  Faster and the drip picks up, slower and it becomes methodical again.  It is as if it is feeding me according to my heart rate, which accelerates as I let myself listen to the clattering outside.

The click, click, click of heels has been joined by a smart tap, heel-toe, heel-toe of what sounds like a man's dress shoe.  Or at least what I imagine a man's dress shoe must sound like.  How am I to know?  Indeed, the clicking rap may not even be heels at all.  But, I can't shake the feeling that these sounds are tied to people and they keep pace outside my walls. 

Can they see through them?  It is this thought that has kept me glued here in one position, eyes closed, mind deliberately bent on my breathing.  Every now and then a color flicks under my eye lids, a random association that I cannot place.  Magenta, beige, teal, no color that is not tainted by the touch of another - like a painter's brush that never quite gets clean enough before it touces the next source. 

I am loosing the game I know.  The sounds outside are interfering with my counting and I am breathing too fast.  I take a long measured sigh and try another path.  I concentrate on the blades.  The light is strong right now in the room.  Strong enough that I know they will not harvest for some hours yet.  I let my eyes wander the shape of the blades.  I take in the mechanism that houses them at its core, its twists of thick cables and odd clear tubes.  Funny I have never paid attention to the tubes before.  I wonder what they are there for?  I suppose as I have never seen how the fragments are collected, they must have something to do with that process, though I can't quite figure out how.  I would feel suction, wouldn't I?  Perhaps not, the blades make me numb after a time each night, maybe that is all it takes. 

Cut anyone long enough they are likely to stop feeling soft touches easily.  I suppose I have lost that and more to the blades.

They are rather beautiful in their own way.  Clean, and sharp, almost pure in function - at least they only have one that I know of.  I may not appreciate it, but surely someone thinks they are doing something good? And pure can have so many definitions.  Like almost anything, it is really up to the individual to determine the meaning.

The click and tap are separating it seems.  Each drifting away  from my wall and from each other, and none too soon.  I am exhausted with the effort to be catatonic for them.  I hope I have given them exactly what they want.  Though it does occur to me to wonder why I should care?

Daymares 8

The cracks seems to mock me with their slit-faced grins. Yawning wide with mirth as they note I have succumbed to the frame about my head and the tubes that feed me. I try to twist my head - to swivel from side to side and see what this room may have to offer that beyond the haughty glare of my foes.  But I am locked tight in place, a tilt of the eye is the best I can do. Peering down my nose gets me nowhere,  not even a bump in the sheets that I could concievably recognize as toes.

What I can see all too clearly are the blades rotating over my head.  The twisted sets of scissors carefully pointed and shaped for the harvesting.  Who the hell came up with this demented plan anyway?  Why do they need the images I carry?  Why do they need those I create?  Who else are they doing this to?  Are there acres of rooms here?  Is this like a farm, just beds and tubes and blades, and of course us, the people suspended waiting for the light to fade and the harvesting to begin?

I wish I could say I remember when I wasn't here.  I suppose at times I do.  I just can't be sure if that is real anymore.  I can't be sure that anything is real.  For all I know the syrup world is reality and this is just a nightmare.  Though I am fairly certain that this thought is far too good to be true. 

For the moment I bathe myself in the scent of tiger's tea.

A grinding noise catches my attention, if for no other reason than there are no noises like that here in this place.  Everything runs smooth.  Even the thunderstorms are surprisingly calm, I think perhaps they pipe them in and flicker the lights outside to amuse me, or us, depending on how many there really are.  The grinding noise has not stopped.  I can here the sound of shoes slapping on tile.  Perhaps I am not alone?
Another pair, this set heavier, followed by a click, click, click. Perhaps heels? 

The grinding continues, I must admit it is beginning to become annoying.  It was rather a pleasant surprise at first.  A bit of a change of pace.  But frankly it is making my headache.  I hope all the running feet will make it stop soon.  Something with wheels that squeak rumbles by with low mumbles.  More people?  Perhaps.  My stomach is beginning to do flips.  I had always rather wished for there to be actual people here with me.  Preferably not slung up like I am.  People with the freedom to move. And now here they are, running about after that horrible noise.  I am somewhat elated.

The noise comes to an abrupt halt.  I count the shoes, the heavy pace, the mumblers with wheels, the first light runner.  Each one a little blessing.  They are here. But, where are the heels?  Where are the heels?  It begins to dawn on me that the people out there, the ones I had hoped for,  they are probably the ones that keep me in here.  The ones responsible for making the blades whirl and the tubes drip.  What if my stomach flipping and heart pounding or day-tripping has flipped some switch of jiggered some dial?  What if I caused the grinding?  What if the heels are coming her?.  I can hear them  now, walking slowly this time. Click, click, click, for some reason the sound is just not as endearing this time.

Daymares 7

Thick like syrup gone stale on the plate.  I can feel my feet sticking.  I can FEEL my feet.  The bubble of joy that rises up threatens to overflow into giggles. I clap my hand to my mouth to trap them, and stop there, amazed that I am mobile enough to do this.  The simple things seem to be the most befuddling, feet, hands, giggling.  What must it have been like before? Before I was put into the room?

My eyes are adjusting to this space now.  So very different from where I left, yet happily so very different from my room. It is hazed with odd shades of green, flecked with browns and little stripes of what could be grey or possibly even blue.  The occasional flash of brillance flickers catching me from the side and blinding me as if casually reminding me that "there is more than meets the eye" here.

I stagger-start-step in the syrup that binds me up-right.  This place is dense with scent. It smells in one moment like bergamot laced with vanilla, cinnamon and cardoman which brings a tiger to mind.  I have a sudden spark of memory - kitchen windows, light from the french doors and plants spilling from their pots. A box of Bengal Spice tea on sits on the edge of the light pine table and a\ I have a feeling that comes as close to contentment as I can recall.  It flashes past as the scent changes, becoming strong with cumin and black pepper.  I pull back.  I have never liked black pepper.  It appears I have not grown fond of it here either.

I snap-and-pop to the side wishing I had figured out the way to move silkily through this goop and find suddenly that I can.  It is still thick as mollasses in winter, yet now it has grown ankle deep and holds me upright like stout boots as I ski through it rather than pull at it to move.  Would that the rest of my existence would modify itself so readily to my wishes.

I move about scenting after the tiger's tea again, but find myself led along a trail of lemon grass, Greek seasoning, soy and garlic, though fresh basil and oregano, to crushed rosemary and on toward dried lavendar and rosehips.  Each lovely in its way, and yet none quite as fabulous as that kiss of vanilla and cardoman that held the tiger's visage.

The flickers of light begin to persist in attacking my pupils. At last I give way in a patch of green flecked brown, striated with enough of that greyed blue that it would defy most anyone to define a color for it.   It is a place so full of colors that it defies color.  I am entranced.  At last the tiger-tea scent settles around me again as I close my eyes to shut out the daggers of light that keep slicing through the comfort of this place.  I can only hope that I will remain with it or that it will remain with me as I block out the shoots of light.  If nothing else I have found a bit of comfort here.  With something so rare, who am I to begrudge its loss even if so briefly found? 

Perhaps in its brevity lies my best chance to keep it to myself. When the blades return, as I assume they must, this small piece of me can only be but a tiny sliver.  Perhaps it will be among the last to go?  That is assuming that this is real.  And of course I must always assume -- that I assume too much.  I  determine that I will not open my eyes unless I hear the blades.  For when I do, then I will know that this is only  daywalking and I belong solely to the nighmares that are the reality of my life.

Daymares 6

I am floating.  The world has gone quite white.  I shift a bit to the left and I find myself drifting several feet on the soft currents that hold me aloft. There are no greys here.  Not a single one.  Nothing that whispers of shadow.  Only the whiteness that surrounds me.  Or is me, I can't really tell.  Have I mentioned, the world has gone white?

At least in this absence of color there is also an absence of temperature.  This here is neither hot nor cold.  It cannot be described as temperate either.  It is simply none of the above.  I suspect that if this were a food or a drink it would have no flavor either.  As I think of it, there has been not a sound.  Well, no sound other then those in my own head.  Those of course are consistently loud.  I can't get rid of them I fear.  They go with me everywhere. 

Even here in the quite white world, where everything that was is absent.  Except, I guess, me.  My floating comes to a rather abrupt halt with that thought.  I hover.  I now know what it feels like to be "thunderstuck".  I am what is here.  Imagine that.  Everything else is what is not here.  I suppose that makes me as real as I will ever be.  In this time and space that is.  Slowly I feel the smile stretch across my face.  I am grinning like a gap-toothed kid at the county fair staring at the cotton candy.  I let myself spin.  Not a good idea, spinning sets me darting in one direction then zipping off in another.  Floating is much less pleasant at higher speeds in a world where everything is absent and there is nothing to stop you.  Well, come to think of it, at least I am not likely to break my neck.  Am I?

I pull back from the spin and set about trying to right myself, attempting to find that comfortable float again.  I over adjust several times before I finally give in to the zip and dip, assuming that at some point my velocity will wear down and I will reach "float point" again. I would close my eyes, but all I would trade is a world of white for the darkness behind my eyelids, a world of black, the darkness formed from the absence of light.  Not much of a difference.  Most people think of them both as the absence of color.  I suppose they are, in one way or another.  But for now I just float.  Besides, I fear that closing my eyes will close this world to me and I am not prepared to go.

It takes awhile, but I realize, as much as I prefer not being restricted to my bed, not fearing the movement of the light in the window as it passes the time between the blades, I am dreadfully bored.  This is not quite what I had hoped for in a window of escape.  But then, how am I to know if I have escaped?

I have been told I have a vivid imagination.  It is one of the reasons they value me so.  Why they harvest my images.  Perhaps this is just another set of images that will fall prey to the blades.  I let my eyes flutter closed and settle into the ease of floating.  There is really only one way to find out afterall.  Isn't there?

Transitions

Went to the movies with my boys the other day.  As we sat through the previews we watched as a book we had all read about 4 years ago unfolded on the screen.  Amazingly enough we all recognized it almost from the first scene of the trailer.  The Life of PI.    We have agreed to make the time to go see this together.

If you haven't read this book, I think you can tell that my family as whole would definitely recommend it.  It is very intricately woven and full of humor.  Yet you cannot escape the underlying philosophical core.  Which is probably what makes the book so worth reading.  I am not going to try to explain its essence to you.  I want you to read it.  Just know that it will lift you in ways you are not even aware of, until you find you need something that you learned from its passages.  Perhaps even years later.

In that regard, I find myself confronting a time in my life and that of my children's that is replete with transitions.  My youngest is moving from his teenage angst to that phase where he is almost a "man".  My oldest is starting to let go of the "almost" and take on the charge of being a "man" with no hesitation.  I am not only learning to fend for myself, but also considering pretty significant life changes.

I have also gone through some personal transitions that have been, well, not so pleasant.  I have learned from them - but I have not enjoyed my lessons.  I momentarily regained a sister.  That is until she realized she was talking to her sister.  Then, as the wind blows, so did the course of that momentary and imaginary rekindling on a relationship I have not really had since I was in 3rd grade.  Guess there are some things that just never re-bloom, no matter the wishing.  I have also lost a dear friend.  I am not sure if it was due to my work schedule or due to internal struggles on her part or both.  But whatever the case, there is only silence where there was once a great deal of chatter, value and warmth.  I miss her.  I have tried to bridge the gap, but there is a wall there I cannot climb (short of quitting my job - which is something I just morally, ethically and economically cannot do - I am a single Mom - I sort of have to work).

So what have I found through all of this?  Some how I am caught between yearning for more change and wishing for none.  Trapped betwixt and between the aspects of myself.  Components of my past and present that I wish to retain and components that the shredder would not get rid of thoroughly enough.  Funny that they are separated in ways I would never have anticipated now that I am really sorting through them.

Still what I find is the hardest part is coming to terms with the idea of transitioning.  Change is so much easier when it just crashes down on you and you have to deal with it.  Walking bravely toward it - well that is another matter.  No wonder senior's in college get rather crazed and peri-menopausal women are perhaps more whacked out then those in menopause straight up.  It is just easier to deal with things head-on - then the slow slide into them. 

I think I have finally figured out why no one in my house wants to decide what to have for dinner.  Once the choice is made, well - then you are stuck with having made it.  If it gets made for you, then you can hardly be called to task for making a bad choice.  So if the take-out is just horrible - You may have to eat it.  But you don't have to own the decision.  So it goes with the slow moving transition.  Too many decisions. too many opportunities to get hung up, make a turn that could perhaps lead if not to a bad place, then to one that is less satisfying than an alternate choice.

It is hard to keep in mind that you will likely never know if the alternate choice would have been better.  You won't be living that timeline.  So second guessing yourself is hardly worth the time.  Is it?

And yet.......................

Daymares 5

I realize that I have been swimming in daydreams.  I have let the light slip away from me and soon very soon, the blades will be swiping at me again.

I wonder if by some small miracle the memory of the first hard fought fragment might have been real.  I dismiss as pure imagination the moment where my hand moved freely.  It has been such a long time since I have had the strength or the dexterity to move with even that much grace.

Grace, now that is a word to ponder at length.  Amazing Grace.  Strange that we use this word to describe spiritual essence and transcendance and also to describe movement and elegance.  Rather tawdry use of the language to trivialize the word in such a fashion after elevating it to such a lofty station.  I think it has more appeal with regard to its spiritual nature.  And yes, it has been a long time since I have felt lifted with Grace.

I let my eyes drift toward the slats that mark the fall of the sun.  I have perhaps two hours before the light begins to truly fail.  Time enough perhaps to find out if it was a dream afterall.  I begin the dragging effort of positioning my arm and hand where I can view what may or may not be there.  If I were capable of perspiring I would be drenched in sweat by the time I complete this manuever.  But, the coolness of the room and the lack of fluids keeps me dry.  Dry as bone and as brittle too, I have little doubt.

There it is, my lost appendage, coming into view.  I let my eyelids drift shut.  I am suddenly not sure I wamt to know if it was just a figment of my imagination.  Summoning my strength of will - it is all the strength left me now - I force my eyes open and focus on my hand.  I am startled by what I see.  I shift my gaze in an effort to assure myself that my focus is clear.  But they remain, two small shards.  Two fragments of my being.  One in my palm and one stuck just below my index finger on the pad of my hand.  They are difficult to understand.  One is shaped with a slight curve to one edge as if it might have been an oval if it had not been sliced through.  It is a deep brown, no I think perhaps it is actually black, with a small rectangle of brownish white obscured but present running through it.  The other is blue.  A patch  blue in a strange sliver slice almost like a piece of pie, if one could be cut that thin.  I can almost make out faint line in it.  But the piece is so small I am not quite sure if they are there or not. 

I fold my hand carefully around the scraps of myself.  Protecting them from the blades that will challenge my grip on them soon enough.  Questing through my random thoughts I search for the image of the fragment from before,  That piece of white and blue.  I realize that the change that I have found pieces that go together is wildly impossible, but I  cannot help myself,  I begin to try to link the images together.  Like working a jigsaw puzzle.  What would they make if they came together as a whole?

I cannot shake the feeling of hope that rise in me at the prospect of finding a whole image.  It is as if there might be a window out of this place if only I can find it.  Strange as that may seem, I hold onto that thought as the shadows grow and the blades begin their knife-like dance, sending showers of fragments to fall like raindrops around me.  Little pieces of myself harvested to no known purpose raining down across my carcass.  I think perhaps I will someday give them something to root in.  If I can't find a way out of here soon, it will be the only thing I am good for.

Daymares 4

In the darknesss I feel almost whole.  It is as if the black void gives weight to my life-depleted carcass, filling it with functional mass.  Without the light to confirm that I am strapped to this bed, my head hung on the rack that suspends it (cushioned though the rack may be), I am free to imagine a body less tortured. I find myself willing my hands to move, the arms to curve inward, to lift higher and am completely nonplussed when I realize that I am touching my belly.  Or at least I am imagining that I am doing so.  I cannot confirm this as the room is far too dark and I have gone far too long in my current state to be assured that I would know what this actually feels like.  I probe a bit with my fingers which seem to have gained tensile strength. 

It appears that my stomach muscles have gone weak.  They are rubbery and soft under the pressure of my touch.  My bellybutton is pushed in, farther than I remember.  Have I lost weight?  Of course I have, one would hardly gain weight in these circumstances despite the sugared drip that keeps me alive.  I smack my lips, I am thirsty.  This surprises me.  I can't remember the last time I thought about something as simple as the desire for feel of liquid running down my throat, bathing my mouth like silk.  I am almost frantic with the desire to drink something.  Almost, but not quite, as I still have not determined if this is just a game I am playing with my own mind.  I let my hand wander, trailing along the folds of fabric and the occasional breach where skin is revealed.  Up and over the ridges, down to the smooth plains, it is rather hypnotic.  The new-ness and yet the same-ness all at once, I wonder if a cat feels a bit like this chasing a favored toy.  My fingers rip over something not skin and not fabric and I stop.  My heart races and I feel my temperature drop.  It is a fragment not caught up by the wind from the blades overhead.  A fragment caught in the folds of my fabric. One held here for me to find, if only I imagined I had the strength.

I run it along the folds with a fingertip. It moves more easily than the one I lifted this afternoon.  It slides up the curl of the bedding and drops into my palm with what seems like little effort.  I am shocked into awe.  I hold another scrap of myself in the palm of my hand.  Of course, I cannot view it.  It is far too dark.  And for some reason, the casual movement afforded thus far in my black enclave seems to have dissapated.  Every effort to put my arm back where it belongs, listing to the side of me is resisted.  It rests on top of me, where it does not belong.  I grow uncomfortable with the new position.  It feels twisted and contrived.  My shoulder aches from holding my arm at this angle.  I concentrate on wriggling the offending limb up and over the thrust of my hip bone.  Every inch takes all of my strength and focus, especially as I am trying to maintain my hold on the fragment, which at this point feels like an anchor draggin my hand backward.

Eventually the arm rolls off of the hip to land hap-hazardly on the bed.  My fingers curved inward making the best protective device that I can.  I would like to peer at my palm to ensure that the scrap has survived its tossing onto the bed but the darknesss is too great.  Its once welcome warm embrace now a hindrance to my purpose. 

I wait, head suspended, my bag below offering  its bellows-like prayer for morning to come and an oportunity to view the precious offering to avail itself to me.