It can’t be more than a moment since my eyes closed.  I was trying to move my feet. A sound like a drip of water in a pond sounded and I was gone.  I woke up after another long dream.  A dream of long dark hallways.  There were doors on each side.  Dark wood doors.  The light was grey and blue, everything was illuminated, but there was no light.  I don’t know how to explain the shade of the light, it was the color of moonlight in the mountain, but with the white color removed and the blues left in place.  I remember the carpet on the floor, and not having shoes on. I could feel the fabric against my feet, and the feeling of the stiff cheap fibers.  How can i remember that feeling if i can’t remember what the place was.

It reminded me of a hallway of a friends house when i was younger. It was the longest hallway i had ever seen, and i remembered thinking that the house on the outside didn’t seem long enough to have that much room inside.  The rooms and house were always dark.  The blinds always closed.  Maybe i was back there in my dreams, remembering houses from my childhood.  What if all of this remembering is me just thinking back.  Why do these dreams keep coming, why don’t I ever seem to be all the way awake?  I can’t be only dreaming of things and remembering things.  It seems like i am stuttering awake over days and weeks and months.  I seem like a series of random events.  Like someone took a bucket of pictures or slides.  Why do i remember slides.  Slide shows, pictures of other peoples trips.  I remember a barrel that someone had filled with old slides.  Dead peoples memories, old photos of weddings and vacations.  I looked through them for hours.  Pulling up handfuls of someones most important moments.  I remember that they were selling them by the pound.  I stood for hours looking at slide after slide, and trying to piece together what they meant for the person who took them.  Remember that this was once someones life.

What if this place is where I will be forever.  Locked in place in this bed.  Dreaming every night of things that have happened.  What if this is the place where everything happens.  I know i will wake up at some point, and jump out of bed.  Jump into the day like i have so many times.  But for now I just know that I am stuck walking down this dark hallway.  So many doors to open, and so many that are already stuck closed.  I know that this door and hallway dream is a clumsy way for my thoughts to resolve, and to know what I have passed by and already seen.  My mind doesn’t care though, and doesn’t stop the dreams from coming.  I can’t think that this is my world, and this bed and these dreams are the place where I live.  I will wake up.  I will find the things that bind me in place, and find a way past them.

I remember sleeping and fading to the sound of thunder rolling.  It sounded like it was in the room with me, hidden beside the bed.  Sound slowly moving towards the bed, towards me, then rolling over me and passing along.  The sound was both lonely and comforting.  I could almost feel the pressure of the sound pushing me down into my bed, keeping me in place.  I slept with the sound coming and going, fading and getting louder as the storm moved.  I dreamt of the sound, and saw the air move and get deeper and darker.

Could the sound have changed the rhythm of my dream, and the nature of my thoughts?  Can sound change our thoughts without us being aware?  What if the sound of thunder was what made my mind so calm while my body didn’t move. How did the movement of the pressure waves and the pulse of my body merge into one.  All i know is that there is a peace in a storm in the distance.  The sound of thunder moving along in the distance, wrapped up in the clouds and hills.  It passed so close and seemed to remain all night and never really fade away.  It moved and moved and seemed to still live under my bed and by my floor.

Still though it helped my mind freeze into place at night and drift into my body more than it seems like it could at any time before.  I still don’t see how I am going to get into a place where I can ever get out of this bed.  The sheets must weigh more than my body, and the more i try to move them, the more that I feel like they are not something i can take off alone.  Like i am shackled into the bed by cloth.  I know that can’t be the way it is though because i can’t feel any links on my arms or legs.  I can feel my skin free under the sheets, and feel the hairs on my arms and legs loose and touching the fabric.

Is this the first time i have felt hair on my arms and legs?  Did i notice that before, or have i taken for granted that I have hairs.  Hairs on my legs down to my feet, and on my arms to my shoulders.  Tiny fine hairs on my arms, and heavier ones on my legs.  Were the hairs there the whole time, or did they just show up now that i am noticing them. I have to keep my mind on the sound of thunder.  On the rolling pressure that comes from the distance and pushes over the bed and passes by.  Nothing should distract me from this if i can.  I seem to fade in and out and want to drift back into the night and darkness that I was locked in last night.  Fade with the muted sound of thunder that rolls over my hills and keeps my mind at peace.

I am not sure what has happened to me.  I was just here one minute and the next I am still here, but different.  I know something has changed, some time frame has shifted.  Like a large space of time has gone by, and nothing happened while i wasn’t there.  Was i awake?  Was I asleep this whole time.  It seems that so much has happened, but I am still in the same spot that i was in a moment ago.  How can I still be here, but not still in the same time.  I am so disorganized and tired still.  Still fighting with my own mind to try to find out where and when i am.  I can’t imagine that no time has passed, but It can’t be as large of a moment as it seems.

The first thing i noticed that made me think that something had happened was when i closed my eyes the walls around me in this room were white.  The bedspread over me was tan.  I opened them and the walls seem tan and the bedspread is grey.  It can’t be that they changed, or did i just remember the colors wrong.  Maybe they were backwards the whole time.  I know i have never been any good at remembering colors.  I am pretty sure I can only see in primary colors, and there isn’t anything but red, green, blue.  That doesn’t seem right though.  There are more colors than that.  I remember once while travelling seeing a tv commercial for testing for color blindness in kids.  The people on the screen were holding up cards to show you the tests they use and talking about numbers i couldn’t see.  Was the tv screen not showing the numbers?  Was I not able to see them there because I was color blind?  Was i really travelling?

I am having trouble telling the real world from what I have dreamt.  I know that I have vivid dreams that seem so real and so close to my waking mind.  But sometimes it seems like they bleed over into the real world, and I wonder if the things I saw happened.  Is there some chance that I am here, and then gone?  How can I be here in this bed, laying here trying to sort my thoughts, and also in those dreams not knowing which is real.  If i dream i am digging up dirt, and wake up with dirt under my nails.  Did I bring that with me?  Did i go to sleep with dirt under my nails last night?  I can’t seem to really remember last night.  I just seem to remember this morning.

The funny thing is that I can lay here and feel things moving.  I can feel my skin moving against the sheets, I can feel my air through my throat.  My hair rubbing against the pillow.  But at the same time, i feel like I can’t move at all.  Like I can’t move beyond the slight motion that is happening all the time.  I know I can move my legs, I have done it so many times.  But I can’t seem to find the energy to move them now.