by ·Comments Off on Tin and the hallowed ground

It is here again.  I heard it.  Farther away this time.  Down the hall?  Why do i feel like the sound is in a hallway.  I was laying here on my back.  Always on my back.  I heard a knock.  Again a single knock.  It echoed down a long room, or a hallway of some kind.  The sound was bouncing in the quiet, and something like that seems so much deeper and significant when it is the only sound you hear.  I remember exactly what i was doing.  Normally this would have taken all my concentration.

I was noticing my fingers.  I could feel the edge of a nail catching on the sheets over my hands.  I had never noticed something like this before.  It seemed rough, like a nail was cut wrong, and the edge was sharp.  This gentle tugging of fabric against my nail.  Just enough of an annoyance that I can’t get it out of my mind.  Like a tiny splinter in your finger that keeps snagging against your pocket.  But this one was in my nail.  The thing that I can’t figure out is how the pressure against the sheets changed if my hands never move.  Did my hand move while i slept?  And how did my nail get a rough edge.  Were did that come from?  How did it get cut.

Then that knock.  That sound.  It sounded like a hand on wood, but my door doesn’t look like wood.  Are there more doors of materials that are different than mine.  Maybe mine is wood too and I just am not seeing it correctly.  It would be so much easier if i could stand and open the door.  See what lies beyond this place, see what is in the hallway at least.  See something beyond the walls and the ceiling.  To escape dreaming for a moment of movement and freedom.  Can a sound really die down.  Is the sound moved from the source into the objects it touches.  Slight vibrations shifting the outer layers of atoms, moving them slightly faster as they absorb the kinetic energy of the sound.

If the atoms of my walls speed up enough, maybe they will shatter away, or slowly dissolve into gas, or vibrate into nothingness.  I don’t know what would happen.  How many knocks would that take, how many hands on doors would it take till the walls themselves have enough energy to open up.

That nail though.  Is that something i can keep track of.  If i remember it today, but after waking don’t feel the pull of the sheet, does that mean my hand moved?  Does that mean someone moved the sheet?  Cleaned and trimmed my nails?  Removed the nails all together.  Would it be a sign that I am changing in this place, or that the place around me is changing and I can change with it.  The nail might be everything I need to change where I am, or at least move my hands.  I know that or the nail will pick at me, and i will feel the sheet pulling against me forever.

by ·Comments Off on Refractory and splintered images

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.

by ·Comments Off on Dank and fertile

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.

by ·Comments Off on Far over, all things cold.

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.

by ·Comments Off on Fog and light

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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by ·Comments Off on And the windows moved

I had a dream.  Another dream and another dream.  Who is this for.  Who are those folks seeing these dreams.  I was driving.  Everything seemed real and normal.  How can something so boring as driving be so captivating that it is what i remember.  I Remember looking to my right.  I remember the feeling of my head moving and pivoting on my neck.  I can’t remember what that feels like now, but it seemed so fluid and normal and basic when i dreamed it.  Like nothing happened and my head looked right.

I was moving so fast when i looked.  I saw this soft yellow glow.  It was glowing in these squares.  Huge squares of light, only lite around the edges.  In the center were seats.  Folks were sitting in the seats, and all facing the same direction.  A lot of the seats were empty and the whole thing was like a row of these large windows, all lite up with this soft yellow light.  Nothing odd about that, except I was moving forward, and the windows were even with me and not moving forward or backwards.  I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t moving away from these windows.  The people looked so calm.  Faces slack and neutral, and not even thinking that anything odd was happening.  They were just sitting there.

I had to look away, and I remember my brain couldn’t understand what I was seeing.  I didn’t get the point of what i was seeing.  Why were these windows moving along with my car.  I was so confused.  I knew I had to look back, but I was so scared.  What if this wasn’t real.  What if I wasn’t seeing anything really happening, and this was the first break where my brain couldn’t accept what was happening.  At the same time, i couldn’t not look.  It was like something was controlling the muscles in my neck.  I hoped that when I looked back, the windows would be gone.  Or maybe still there.  What happened to all the folks sitting in the windows?

I looked back, and then the motion was slightly off, and the windows were falling behind where i was.  Suddenly, the lights made sense, I understood what I was seeing.  It was like a card stock fell into place, and overlaid on top of my reality.  It was such a mental change.  Like everything fell into a different frame rate, or a different place was put on top of my base reality.  The windows were on a train.  In the dark, I couldn’t see the train, and only saw the windows outlined by the light from inside the train.  I was keeping perfect pace with it, and it was moving like a solid object directly next to where I was driving.

All those people though, those faces.  The slack look as they moved.  I wondered about all of those faces.  They seemed so unreal.  I knew i couldn’t look back.  I had to drive away and not think any more about those people on the train.  The faces watching themselves move forward into somewhere down a track.

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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.

by ·Comments Off on Blue and green

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.

by ·Comments Off on Sundered and washed away

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.

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How can something so real and sharp in my mind fade away so quickly.  I remember the dreams edges, the corners and sharp moments stand out still.  I remember a building, like an abandoned restaurant, or a food hall.  Chairs and chairs stacked against the wall.  The place looked like it was brand new, and abandoned forever.  It had tables around the center of the large open room, and non of them had any signs of being used.  They were so old though, and worn looking, but not worn from use.  The building seemed like it was slumping over, and yet, it didn’t look like anything was out of place.  It didn’t visibly slump.  It only looked like it had given up, and was almost sloped downward.

The people, i can’t remember them.  I know there were people there, shapes or fabric.  Forms moving.  At the time i thought they were deamons, or some sort of creation of fire and smoke.  Now though I can’t remember at all what they were.  What they looked like, or sounded like.  I remember the smell though.  Funny that would linger in my mind when so much faded away so quickly.  It reminded me of dry books, the paper smell of a bookstore, but not a good bookstore where the paper is moved, and the books are loved and used.  This reminded me of a place where books were heaped up and left to dry rot away.  But the smell was also too hot.  Hot in a way that didn’t make sense.  Like the books were about to catch fire.  Something like that and dust.  Dust and heat.

So how exactly can this be, where i see something that is so real one moment, and fades away into the distance the next.  It doesn’t make any sense to me.  I know it means something.  I can’t remember the holes, even though they seemed so critical at the time.  When i woke up, i could see the holes, and the deep dark, and the fire.  Now i can’t remember if they were really there.  If i remembered them, and then forgot them, do i still remember them?  Or were they never there to remember in the first place.

I guess all of this is just a way to distract myself that the knock never happened again.  One single human sound is so much more painful than silence.  It means maybe someone is here?  Outside these walls, away from my bed.  Out in the world beyond here that I can’t seem to see or gain any access to.  Why one knock?  What were they signalling.  Why didn’t i hear anything other than that single noise, and then where did it go from there.  How long have I been listening as hard as i have.  How long have i laid here waiting for the sound to repeat.  It makes me think of a rabbit in the woods, frozen in place when it hears a crack of a breaking branch.  Straining to hear something, anything, that will let it know what is coming.  The odd thing is though that I don’t feel any fear.  No fear of the sound, or whatever made it.  Just wonder and curiosity.  I just need to see what it was and where it came from.  Something to break up the dreaming.