Something occurred to me this morning.  At least i think it is morning.  I can’t really tell anymore.  I don’t have any windows, and the lights never change.  Well I should say the brightness never changes, since I can’t see any lights.  Everything just is this even whiteness that says florescent lights are somewhere here.  However, from what I can see, I don’t see any bulbs.  Or fixtures.  It is like everything just is bright.  Like the objects themselves emit light.  Wait, this isn’t what occurred to me.  I can’t remember if I have already talked about the light.  Regardless, it isn’t what I was thinking about while i lay here this morning.  Who is keeping me clean?  I realized that my skin for what I can feel of it, seems smooth and polished.  No rough edges, no dryness or cracked fingers.  Nothing seems out of place.  I don’t think i can smell myself, but I don’t have a good point of reference for what I would smell like.  So it seems that someone must be cleaning me in some way.  Someone must be here while I am dreaming and washing me right?

This makes me stop and think that there must be a crew in this place.  I have never seen a cobweb in my view.  I haven’t seen dust floating in the air.  I never smell any food or anything living.  Other than the single knock, I don’t feel like I have heard any sounds.  No clocks, no feet in the hall, nothing human or even machine.  Why can’t i hear the walls creaking, or the sounds of water flushing somewhere, or anything that would go with the sounds of a living building.  It seems that there would be some sound or smell that would give away something.  Could it be that all the maintenance happens while I am asleep?  Maybe that is the answer.

Could it be that while I am dreaming a whole cast of people come out and take care of the conditioning of the building and my body.  Maintain the building and dust and wash.  I haven’t really thought about that, but maybe that explains the quiet.  Maybe this isn’t the morning.  Maybe I wake up at night, when the quiet of the place jarred me awake and makes me try to figure things out. Maybe my dreams are the lulling sleep of the movement of all the life in the building and when everyone is here, i am gone.

Back to my hands, that is what makes me feel like there is something to this, my hands are too smooth.  The skin feels flawless. No roughness and no issues with my nails.  Nothing to make me think that they aren’t well cared for and clean.  But I know that I am not cleaning them, and I don’t remember the feeling of anyone washing my hands, or trimming my nails.  Wouldn’t that wake me up from my sleep?  Wouldn’t someone holding my hand while they cleaned it move me?  Maybe the movement is so gentle that i don’t notice it as I dream my dreams.

I dreamt of life and smells last night.  So many smells mixed together, but the one that stood out more than anything was the smell of wet earth and life.  It smelled like freshly tilled soil.  Something that is as much a part of the plant as the sun and the wind.  It was almost crawling with life.  But at the same time, it was sleeping.

My dreams seem to be streching out more and more.  The time frames of them are beyond what I remember from before.  From before I was here. I still think these are someone else’s dreams that have made their way into my mind.  I keep having flashes that my mind is this bank.  Not a bank of money or of a river, but something hard and unyeilding.  I know it is so hard to think of terms that pull in what it seems like.  Why can’t I remember what I look like anymore?

I know that something is present in these moments when i dream, some fragment of a memory.  Some bit of me is in these moments, but they always cut away before I can see myself.  When i try to catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror or a reflective surface, i see light.  Only a blurred light, and I don’t understand why.  How long has it been since I have seen my face.  Why don’t I remember what I look like?  What if i have seen reflections in the distance, but couldn’t tell it was me i was seeing.

The dream though.  The earth, the feeling of the soil, the sensation of my hands in the ground.  I can feel my hands plunging into it.  Reaching into the ground and the earth surrounding them.  It was cool, and warm at the same time.  Soothing, and rough.  And the smell that rose from the ground was something I can’t describe.  I read once that the smell is a bacteria.  That when it is disturbed it releases a chemical signal.  A warning alarm of some sort.  I can’t remember if that is true, or another dream.  Is that smell that comforts me so much a scream of the dirt.  It can’t be that our brains are tied into that smell so closely.  I still wonder if I was a farmer.  What did i do when i wasn’t here?  When i wasn’t dreaming all the time.  Dreaming in this room and this bed.  Stuck in this body.  I can’t have been a farmer could i?  I must have done something, but I can’t remember any of it.  I know i had a job to do, and work that was mine, but it isn’t something I dream about.  I can’t remember what it was anymore.  I can’t remember so much of what was happening before I got here.

Today was disjointed.  All the thoughts I had are tumbling around, working their way through my brain.  Like a scramble of thoughts, where each one is there as a picture or a thumbnail of the underlying idea.  Nothing major or themed in any way comes through, but each is trying to get free at the same moment.

I was so cold last night.  Beyond what I think cold can be.  A frozen feeling so deep, i could feel my marrow turn to crystal.  Some lattice formed in my veins, and moved through my blood.  a form of ice that moved into all parts of me.  I don’t know how to describe the feeling.  Knowing that each cell the lattice touched was a part of a chain, linking from cell to cell.  Everything becoming frozen.  What does that mean in a dream.  I know what the feeling of the crystal was.  What the feeling of resonance was, and in each cell the slow thrum.  Thrum is the word that comes to mind but it isn’t right.  It was something between a wave of a thrumming string, and a whirling motion of a whirlpool.

It started enough like everything else to seem so normal.  Normal i guess must be relative to me, since as long as i can remember I have been here in this room and this bed.  For me though, it started as most of my dreams do.  Just things happening like watching a movie.  Knowing that you are in a movie, but not able to stop the frames, or move the point of view.  Then something reached out from the dream and touched my hand.  Right behind the middle knuckle of my right hand.  That is when it happened.  The point of contact, i could feel it down to the atom.  The movement was like two spinning spheres going in opposite directions coming in contact.  The speed was the same, and they seemed to cancel themselves out.  It felt like a bike wheel stopping in space, and all the momentum moving back to the frame and throwing me forward.  Every bit of the energy from that stopped the next cell.

I remember gasping, pulling my breath in like it was the last thing that I would ever do.  Knowing that this can’t be happening.  Feeling this frozen cold spreading like sparks of electricity up from my hand.  I remember I looked down at my hand, and didn’t know what it was.  Looking at it, i could almost see the change happening.  Knowing that the spread was starting.  I could feel each piece of matter stop.  It felt like a clockwork gear that was only held together by the force of motion.  Then, the smallest gear stopped moving and fell out of place.  The next stopped because the first wasn’t there to push it.  It felt like a cascade of pieces moving out of place.

I felt this unknowing terror at this, and remember my left hand grabbing my right wrist and knowing that this was pointless.  Like a person bitten by a snake as they reached under a log.  You pull back and grab your hand, but there isn’t a way to stop what has started.  The poison was inside of me then, and would follow it’s course.  The body wasn’t meant to have parts stop.  The system had no way to deal with this, or a way to partition the frozen portions before the hazard spread and moved beyond the point of collision.  I can’t even remember who touched my hand, or what they were doing in my dreams.  Everything focused on the point and the feeling of danger.  Now I am awake again, and can’t look down to see what my body is doing.

I was walking this morning.  Walking around on the sidewalk.  So normal, just walking along.  It was cold out, and misty.  Not raining exactly, but not dry either.  Like tiny droplets that you can feel on your skin.  Not enough to feel like you are getting wet, but wet enough to know it isn’t dry.  The ground was foggy, and the air was so crisp.  So much sensory input.  How can someone process through all of this at the same time.  How many filters do we put into what we see.  How much into what we feel.  I know I was walking because my field of view was changing.  I know that much at least.

The thing I don’t understand is that I don’t seem to remember that my feet were on the ground.  I know they must have been, but I seemed to move with this steady force.  A gate that wasn’t a gate.  Like i had motion stabilization turned onto a video.  Everything seemed smooth in a way that seemed more and more normal to me, but I knew was wrong.  I can’t seem to understand why.  And why could i feel each bit of moisture touching my skin.  But only on my face.  The rest of my body was covered.  Everything was covered.  Just my face exposed to the air.

I know that I was moving, but my body seems to have forgotten what movement is.  What the feel of my feet on the ground is.  I don’t remember looking down while i walked, so how did i know i was on the sidewalk.  I guess i could see it in the distance and know as it disappeared before me, that I must have been moving towards it.

The trees, i wish i could put these into words.  Cold, and tired and sleeping trees.  No leaves really, or few left.  Framed by the light, and the fog.  The mist around them, and yet i can see them so clearly in my mind.  How is it that I can see them so clearly.  They don’t seem three dimensional, they seem to be some sort of cutout.  I remember looking at them, and walking, and looking again.  I almost thought I was trying to catch them turning on their access.  Like i would see these two dimensional frames pivoting on an center access.  Like a rendering of what trees were supposed to look like.  If i just turned my head quick enough I would see them.  Catch the edge of movement and know they weren’t really there.  I know i should have walked down and touched them.  Walked around them and seen.

Maybe i like this, this feeling of unreality.  Is that why I don’t make a move to prove this is a real image?  Or are these things stuck on a track, where I have these visions and they don’t let me move past them.  Where I am on as much of a track as a pre-recorded video.  And move along and view the scene as it passes.  I don’t know if that is even possible.

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This is a new day i think.  Or a new week if i am sleeping more than I should again.  I can’t remember, and there isn’t a way to tell.  I have become obsessed with the doorknob.  Not obsessed in a bad way.  Not like the doorknob had much to fear if i can’t get out of this bed it seems.  I am just confused by the shape of it.  For some reason I feel like i am in a medical setting.  Not really a hospital, but someplace with no germs.  Where viruses are stopped by gates in the pathways in.  Walls and filters, and doorways.  Maybe something with the pressure, higher inside than out to push the air out of the building.  Regardless, it is seems to me medical.  I don’t know though, if that is the case, shouldn’t i have seen a nurse?  Or a doctor?  Shouldn’t something in the room have shifted?

The knob, I almost forgot.  I thought most knobs in medical centers were the kind that were the long metal handle, so that it can be shoved down with your elbow or even your back without contaminating your hands.  This one seems like a normal house door.  Like a door that would lead to your bedroom, but fancier than most i have seen.  Like it looks like bronze, that sheen, but the patina of it as well.  I don’t know why i know what the patina of bronze looks like, why would that be something i have learned?  But i noticed that the door has a key hole below the knob.

Do you remember the old knobs on doors, do you remember skeleton keys?  No one does really remember them, but they pop into our minds when we think of keys.  What was the reason for that image to be stuck in my head.  I can see the round top of the hole, and the wide 35 degree arc of space below it where the teeth fit.  So many memories of cabin doors and old key chains.  So many things associated with that shape.  It makes me sad for some reason.  To know that our world has gone to a place where we have teeth on teeth on teeth in our keys now.  Each one an arms race against thieves.  Or is it a way to make use feel secure with our lock.  I guess it isn’t important overall, but it makes me wonder about this place.

How old does the room seem?  How dusty do the walls seem?  The door seems old, the lock seems out of date, and not really something meant to keep anyone inside.  But also, i know the room itself is part of something larger.  Something beyond the space i am in.  Are the sheets the lock?  Maybe the fact that I love being asleep more than awake.  Or i can’t seem to find a handle on how time works here.  All of those?  Maybe just a little of everything.  I wonder what happens when these thoughts stop.  What are the next steps of the thought itself.

I dreamed of blue and green.  It wasn’t water and it wasn’t air.  It was some sort of memory of both.  It was tranquil and still and at the same time full of motion.  I felt like i was in a pipe or a tube of light.  It was fluid and motion and stillness and access to all things.  I felt like there was something that was being spent and sent through the colors and the motion.  I think it was being sent through me.  Was i the medium.  What was the fluid.  Was it fluid?

The blue was the lightest, like a sky covered in clouds, somehow so blue, but still white.  Or robin’s eggs.  How do I remember what robins eggs look like.  Tiny, fragile blue eggs.  I remember them so well, but I can’t remember where I saw them before.  I don’t have a window, and I still don’t remember walking outside or seeing the sky.  And the green was like jade, or leaves with the sun shining through them.  More washed out than that.  It was amazing to see the colors both mix together, but so defined.  I could see the flows past each other.  Moving, and still, and together, yet defined.  I seemed to be moving on those pathways.  Both out and back, up and down.  I was everywhere in the colors, but also distinct.  Like I was having an out of body experience.

I need to check my body.  It seems like it has been months since I have paid it any mind at all.  How long can a body go without food?  I seem to remember a month, but only three days for one without water.  I don’t remember water either.  Even though it is on my mind so much.  If i can’t go a month without food, how am i still here?  How has nothing happened to me yet when so much time has gone by and nothing has changed in this room.  How much time has gone by?  Do i know what the frame of time is here.  Maybe it hasn’t been as long as I suppose it to be.

I find myself getting distracted by the colors.  It almost seems like maybe this is where my dreams are coming from.  Like I am plucking a strand of color out of the wash of light and reading it into existence.  Like a book where the words are colors and the language is the gradation of spectrum i can’t understand.  Like there are words coming into the patterns, and by existing here, i pull colors into the world and make them into some sort of memory.  I don’t know why this is popping into my mind.  What would dreams have to do with colors, and why am i floating in so many colors.

Back to my body for a moment, the sheet is still here, the bed is still here, I am still here.  I haven’t moved.  I haven’t heard the knock again.  I listened for so many days.  I strained and focused and waited. Nothing yet.  I still can’t see anything outside of my room.  I still can’t seem to move. I can’t feel my body moving even though I can’t stop myself from asking it too.

It’s all faded now.  Everything that seemed so sharp and clear.  Everything that seemed so real and true, and now I can’t remember anything.  I know that the dreams happened, and i remember the feeling of being there and being asleep and then awake.  Now though, there isn’t anything left that I can see or hear.

That noise, the knock.  I haven’t heard anything at all again.  Have you ever strained and listened for some sound, and every moment you aren’t focused on listening, it seems like you might miss it.  I was afraid to even try to move.  I can’t even remember when i last moved, but then every night when i’m sleeping I dream of so much movement.  Everything in my dreams are these snippets of movement.  Broken into pieces though, and scattered around.  Like someone has taking tiny pieces of home movies, and threw them into my brain.  I am having trouble lately knowing if I am out there or in here.

I saw something last night that made me pause.  I was in the middle of moving and running and I saw someone in a park.  They had something with them, and I know i should know what it was, what i was looking at, but there was something wrong.  I saw them sitting on a bench.  They just looked like a normal person, a man in a sweatshirt.  I don’t remember it being cold, but it must have been fall.  He was looking at something sitting on the bench beside him.  He had a bag, like a messanger bag, but larger.  Resting on the bag, was this thing.  He was staring at it, and reaching towards it.  The thing is, that I couldn’t see what it was.  It was like a cutout of the dream, a missing place, where something should be.  The more i stared, the odder it felt that I couldn’t see the thing that he was looking at.  Knowing that something so normal, and unimportant was blocked out.

The thing that scared me and drew me away from my memories, was that not only was the object missing, but it also seemed to glow.  How can something be black and void, but also give off light at the same time.  It seemed to pulse with light, white, and blue.  Like the light from an arc welder who forgot to cover the exposure.  Blinding, but clean and pure.  I don’t know how to put words onto the feeling.  Like seeing a blank space while out walking.  I remember everything in the dream slowing, almost crawling, as I tried to hold onto this object.  I discovered something else about these dreams, they won’t be held back.

I didn’t understand what it was, and then a feeling like being pushed from behind.  Like a strong wind that wouldn’t be resisted came up, and moved me forward.  I had always thought that these were my dreams.  That i was remembering something that had happened to me.  It always seemed so real and true.  This felt like a movie that someone else was watching.  Something that I was not able to stop.  Everything after that point seems so pale and washed out.  There wasn’t anything else that I remember, and can’t seem to forget that one moment.  And why was I not able to move myself in my own dream.

This morning i woke up and remembered dreams of pilings.  Dreams of thick dark wood soaked in creosote and oil.  Whole tree trunks, just sunk into the water.  Green water streaming around the pilings and sunlight flashing through the water.  I saw so much in the water that day.  In my eyes i was above the water looking down, and In the water looking up.  From above i saw the shafts of light flowing through the water, i could see the edges of the light and the  ripples in the water.  It almost seemed like you could cut a section of water directly.  Even though it seemed so clear where the water cut into the light, the edges got darker the farther away i looked, and I could almost make out shapes in the distance.  The water moved and flowed and was alive at the same time.

From below I saw so much more.  The thing that stood out to me the most was that I could see the swimming shapes in the water.  I saw shadows of fish floating and washing through the edges of the light.  Smaller shapes of dust glowing as it drifted into and out of the beams.  I remember being mystified about how the shapes seemed to loom so large and so small at the same time.  How they almost seemed to grow as they approached.  The distance seemed to almost be as fluid as the fish themselves.  I couldn’t tell how large or small they were, but i was there with them and they were around me on all sides.  I felt both a sense of fear, and a sense of deep peace.  I knew that nothing there would approach me, or hurt me.  I also knew that I wasn’t anywhere that I was born into, that I was a visitor in this world.  Somewhere that the space of time never wanted me to go.

I remember the most vivid image that still stays with me.  The water was dark, but still visible.  The light was dim, but even on all sides.  In the shape that i could see, dark fins and shapes like tear drops and glass, with tight fins on the top and bottom, and tails behind.  They looked like curved glass and vases.  But alive and moving.  I remember 4 shapes in front of me, moving with the water, but at the same time static.  They were working in the three dimensions of the water, and floating stationary where i could see them.  I felt a sense of peace wash over me.  I can see them now when i close my eyes.  And the same sense of peace and stillness fills my mind.  I see and feel warmth.

All things in this dreams seem so familiar.  I know i have stood here, looking down into the water and seeing these shapes.  I can’t imagine that I have made these thoughts up.  But no matter how vivid my memories are and how deep i dream, how far i go into the thoughts i have I am still hear.  I know that I haven’t moved an inch.  How long have I been here?  How many dreams have I had, how many have i forgotten to stay and remember.  I will dream more and find my way to move.

 

These dreams are dark.  I don’t know why when everything in the day seems so light.  This dream was of moles and animals digging huge tunnels and complexes beneath the ground.  It was a funny dream because i felt so safe under the ground, and I could see.  It was like bioluminescence and everything just seemed to ‘be’ it wasn’t that anything was lit up, but more like everything just was a source of light.

I found the entrance right here under my bed.  They must have been digging for years.  Holes and tunnels and groundwork pulled away.  The ground was solid, but loose, and full of dripping water.  I could hear the sounds of things moving far off into the distance, and the caverns were huge.  I am not sure if they were just expanding natural structures, and my room had these caverns beneath them.  It seems to me that they were all dug by mouth and hand.  The earth scooped aside.  The tunnels following some pattern that I don’t understand.  I know that there is a rhythm to the the spaces that have been dug out, and there must be an order and pace to where they dug and when.

There is water too, more than i would have thought was possible.  Running in streams everywhere and pooling into large ponds and small lakes.  There doesn’t seem to be much pattern here either.  Is this what they did with all the dirt they dug off the walls and floors?  Did they just let the water carry it away, and where did the water go?  Where was it coming from in the first place.  I can’t tell if this is rain water or from somewhere deep underground.  The smell of the water in the air mixed with the smell of damp earth is beyond description.  I know i have smelled this before, but never like this.  The water smells ancient and cold.  Like flat minerals and stillness.  I can’t describe it, but it makes me feel thirsty.  At the same time though I don’t need to drink.

Why do my dreams seem to pull me to earth and water.  They are tied together, and the minerals of one soak into the medium of the next.  They bring everything together it seems, and they show up so often in my mind.  This is the first time i have sunk into the floor in my sleep.  Is this place really here when i am awake? Do these creatures exist in the world around me, gnawing places in the earth. Am i supposed to explore below myself, into the ground and dig below where i am.  Or is that substructure already there?  Is there a basement below me that I haven’t seen yet, some hidden place where everything is illuminated but not seen.  What are the creatures that dug this out.  I didn’t see them in the dream.  I seem to be dreaming more and more.  I need to figure out some way to break the dream and wake up.

There was a thin black film spreading over everything today.  It started at my hands, and I couldn’t seem to stop it.  It was so dark, and smelled like almonds.  I can’t remember eating almonds, but I must have if i remember the smell when it is all over me.  At first I wasn’t worried, I had come here intentionally to spread this epoxy into a film.  I am trying to hold back so much and hold in so much.

It got onto my fingers and then spread up my arms. I backed up and it got on my back.  It fell down my leg. It was everywhere and spreading.  It was cool and smooth and spreading over my skin.  Cutting off the air, holding down the skin and filling my nose with fields of almonds.  I can’t get away from the smell and the hole i am in.  I can’t get the plastic from my skin and don’t know if i want to.  It can’t be something to get off.  Drips of it on my fingers keep me from rubbing the liquid off my arms.  I need out of here now that the work is done.  I can’t remember why i was sealing this hole, or how i was going to use it when i was done.

Then everything is back to here, and I remember I am not awake yet.  I can’t be filling anything and epoxy doesn’t make any sense.  How would i mix it, where would i get it.  Why am I here in this ground and who made the ground the way it is. The epoxy isn’t real and the ground isn’t real.  This is a dream and something folding into my mind.  Was this the feeling of the sheets around me?  Did something put down weights onto me.  Why are all the thoughts of anything outside this room so vivid and so disconnected.  Why does everything seem so real and so unconnected to a past or future.  I see these things like dreams or a movie i was in.  I know so much about it, but also I can’t remember when it happened.  I can’t remember what i was doing before each event, or my plans after they are done.

I seem to be a dream.  I must be a dream.  If i am not a dream, am i some fragment of an idea someone is having, am I some sort of memory someone is putting into place.  Plugging into me these small pieces of a real life, holding small fragments of life and feelings, and then disconnecting me from them.  I know this means something, but that seems to be part of what is missing.  I can’t seem to connect the what to the why.  I know that there must be some reason that more and more I seem like i am more awake and present in each of these memories, or dreams, and yet i can’t seem to get anything to fall into place.  They seem random and disconnected, but they mean something to someone.