by ·Comments Off on The birth and the scent

It is fading.  Already it is fading and falling away.  So strange how the moments like this fall away.  The sounds and the smells seem like the would never leave my mind.  Like I would spend the rest of my time on earth thinking of this one thing.  Over and over, and repeating in my mind that moment. But it washes away.  Sooner than I think it would go.  Where does it go, when it falls away from my mind.  What falls away first.

I keep wondering what i lose first.  What part of the dream, what part of the memory fades first.  It seems the first thing i lose is the sound.  I remember so many memories, and find myself filling in the sounds around what I know the sound must have been. I remember what rain sounds like, and my brain just puts the sound of rain into my dreams.  But this, the first thing going is the feeling.  The touch and the sense of pressure.  I remember from just a moment back that I could feel the pressure of my stomach and the feeling of tightness and skin.  Now though, i can’t remember the exact feeling.

The smell though, i remember the smell.  It was coming from this white spread across his skin.  He smelled like new bread.  Yeasty and fresh.  The smell of all growing things, of a health i can’t remember anything in the world smelling like.  If this was a smell of the beginning and the smell of all wholesome thing.  It is so hard to explain.  So hard to put some basic things into words. How to explain something so pure and unique.  It wasn’t like yeast and bread, but my brain thought that was the smell.  It reminded me of earth, but that wasn’t the smell.  It smelled clean, but also not clean.  How can one thing have so many different descriptors.

This memory like everything else is receding.  Falling away and slowly becoming background.  Memory that will still be tucked away, but like a silent movie.  No sound or feeling or connection, just this thing there sitting in my mind.  I remember reading a book somewhere that tells that the more that you think about something, the more it isn’t real.  Your mind can’t remember all the details and starts to replace things.  The sounds weren’t right.  Then your mind goes about convincing you that they were that way the whole time.  Then you can’t remember anything but what you inserted into the memory.

I know this is what is happening to me.  As i speak, my mind is filing away all these moments, and is replacing them with things that are false.  And then my brain can’t remember that they are false, and goes about rebuilding them and convincing itself it is true.

Will i forget my son?  Will i forget the smell of new bread that came off his skin so clearly?  What happens to this, and was this real in the first place?  Can someone bring this back to me to remember.

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Into the Mind

This was a dream that stood up on it’s own.  Like something out of someone’s life that wasn’t mine.  It must have been someone else, but It is harder and harder to tell the difference.  I saw it all so clearly, so perfect.  I almost felt the emotions, but there was this wall of glass between what was happening and what I was feeling.  Like looking in on something in a fishtank.  Swimming and living, and distinct.  I remember the feelings though, and the smell.  Like a list of characters, and words.  Symbols of what I was seeing and what was attached to each event.

I have to remember this, and start to put it into some form that stays in my mind.  Things seem to slip away sometimes, and they should be there, but they aren’t.  I know that I need to remember this, but at the same time if it fades like the other memories, i feel like i will still have it with me.  It needs to remain, it has to feel burnt into place.

I remember the feeling of the birth, the body and the pain.  I remember the feelings of my stomach pulling itself inward.  Pain was so sharp, but after so long, it was like the pain was who i was.  I couldn’t remember a time when i didn’t hurt, and it was now just a core part of me.  I remember also this sense of peace.  Like this was right and this was human.  Something that was beyond my understanding and also so pure that it didn’t even need to be understood.

I remember the feeling that somehow I was a string, and i was in the process of tying another piece of string to mine.  Like I needed to badly tie a knot between us, and let this string start to unwind from me.  But at the same time, it was connected to me.  It threw my mind back, and I realized that I was connected to a thread, and so was that thread.  We were the warp, the woof was everyone passing along the thread to hold it in place.  The warp was unending and timeless.

But then the pain, the feeling of being too tight.  My whole body felt too tight.  Like the skin couldn’t hold what I was doing in any longer.  Something was bursting out, and needing to be freed or I would rip apart.  Come apart at the seams and fall to pieces.  This feeling was something so new, and so primal.  I couldn’t tell you how long each burst last.  It seemed timeless and too short at the same moment.  Something so much a part of me that I knew i couldn’t forget.  At the same time though I knew that my brain was washing itself in a way to make this pain fall away.  Something to keep the moment at bay.

My son was being born.  I remember that moment.  The moment it came back to me what was happening.  What was being done.  What was going on, and what it meant for me and every thread going back down the line above me.  Every line that would be held in place by his.  Something was happening, and I could feel it so clearly.

This memory seems so real.  I just need a moment to think, a moment to reflect.  Maybe if I close my eyes for a minute, the details will be clear.  The moment will seem real, or i will know if that was me.  Did I have this memory?

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 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 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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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.

 

by ·Comments Off on Water on walls

All night dreams about water falling over rocks.  Fast washing of water of the tops of rocks, everything falling to a lower state of energy.  Each fall coming after the next, and each slowing the fall of water till it rests in stillness on the river below.  It can’t be falling and falling and the moss absorbs the energy.  The moss on the rocks is part of the gravity well of the water.  Slowly the water gives it’s movement and energy to the rock and moss.  The moss grows strong from the weight and pressure, while the rock is ground down.  Generations of moss come and go, flourish and die and are reborn from single spores carried in the wind.  The movement of the water is all stored and passed beyond itself.  The water carries the movement, and the movement carries the power.

Then the water fell from the rocks to the pond and everything stopped.  The world stopped and the water stopped and the dream seemed to stop.  It wasn’t over though with the water, it wasn’t done when the movement froze.  Everything kept going in the dream.  It spooled out like someone forgot to shut a camera down after a scene had ended.  The characters had left, and the motion had stopped, but the film kept recording everything that happened.  I watched and watched the water for hours.  Waiting to see something happen, anything to move again and nothing changed.  Was I the water, was the movement me, was I paused now?  That is the funny things about water, and about dreams I guess.  They seem still, but are always moving.  Even when the current seems stopped, the water is moving.  The changes in flow might be small, but something is always happening.  Water isn’t the resting state.  The water slowly is pulled into the air, tiny bits falling up into the sky.  And the ground pulls it away too.  The water is always moving somewhere.

That is what I dreamed, and where my memories were stored, locked into a waterfall i heard all night.  Maybe the dream is something from when i was not in this bed, not frozen in place.  Maybe it was some sound coming through the walls from somewhere else.  Maybe a noise or a remembered dream.  Did someone come in while i was sleeping, while my mind was on other things.  Could someone have been in the room, and made a noise like water?  Did someone wash into the room and leave, or was i alone all night?  I should be able to remember, but my thoughts at night seem to be still and silent.  I remember being awake, and I remember my dreams, but I can’t remember anything between the two.  There are these holes that open up and nothing is there when i try to think of them.  Blank spaces of midnight and silence.  Nothing moving or changing, and then i go from that to a dream of water and sound.  Then back to this bed and the place i am now.

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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.

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Staircase

Grey Staircase Up or Down?

So I have to ask myself, if I am pulling away filters from each step as I wake up, what do I start with?  What is the first filter you need to move? What would that look like, is it pulling a rod attached to blinds?  Pulling a cloth across a window? Is it slipping lens before your eyes and losing the color blue.  I always imagine our filters are woven fabric used to filter water.  Giant black tendrels weaving in and out of each other.  Small enough, and you could live on the threads, and grow your whole life on one section of the filter.  Large enough and you are forced into the weave.  You push up against the cloth and are pinned as everything flows around you.  How many smaller things are flowing around the obstruction in the way, and do they notice anything different in the way they see the world?  Do they seem faster than those next to them?  Do they rush forward towards something, away from something?  Filters are odd things to think about.

So does my day start out with me remembering nothing? Or everything.  Am I removing all of the filters I’ve learned how to remove or add to make my life what it seems to be about.  Or is the day started like a saved game or started movie, taken off pause or reloaded.  I’ve gone off track, as I tend to do.  I’m sure I was going somewhere with that thought, but I don’t know exactly where it was going.

One thing that I know that I am in love with is the feeling of stretching out my legs when I wake up.  Something about that intense first feeling of everything pulling out.  It is like potential, something building.  They are often sore, and weary from the day before, but always energized for that first moment.  I’ve started the day with so many stretches, they are all blending together.  What goes into the thought that remembers that my body needs to move? Is it just basic biology.  Is my body just knowing that moving the legs first thing is the best way to keep myself safe?  Like baby deer or giraffe that are born and start walking.  You know the first thing your day may call for is to run.  Or to jump or dance. Or just to lay in peace and happiness and just rest and stretch.  What if we are pulling our legs out to pull the vessels in our legs longer so that the negative pressure caused blood to pull faster into the extremities.  What if this life was that much of a machine.  What if it is all pressure gradients and volumes.  What if we are a math problem, what is the equation that we would write out to explain each movement in our day.  How would we wrap our mind around the variables?  Can we take each moment and wake each portion of our body and mind at such a speed that we can see each letter and number etched out to pull the equation together.  Another day is beginning, and I think I could lay here a few more minutes if I need to.

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I’ve noticed that every morning I seem to be waking up with new pieces. I notice new things. So many thoughts that up until now I must have turned a blind eye to. Was i noticing them at all? Were they there in any form, or was I seeing them and looking through them. That is a bad path to start your brain off with first thing in the morning. If I never noticed or thought about something before that moment, was it always there and I just never noticed it? I am sure that must be the case. However, that means that we have perceptive filters on our awareness. Only when we start removing those filters to we start noticing new things. But, there must be a mechanism for doing this, for removing these filters.

Filters seem like the right word for them as well. We use filters for only one thing, to block out one thing from going to another location. We filter out light with cloth or solids, stop the waves of light from passing through, or being altered in some way to dim them. What would the anti-filter for a light wave be? If we assume that the light is already being filtered. Would it be moving beyond our atmosphere? The vacuum of space though has a large volume of molecules blocking some amount of the light. What would happen if those were pushed to one side or another in the same way blinds are parted in my bedroom when i wake up?

What would someone see looking through that vacancy? What would raw unfiltered sunlight look like? But in the same way the more interesting idea is that of ideas themselves. What is the filter we have in place of a new idea. When you are a child and first think of a novel idea, one you have never been exposed to, what was the filter in that idea’s way? The filter exists in some form since the idea you thought of has already been thought of before. (Most likely) But you have never thought of the idea before this very moment, so what was in it’s way. Since I’ve already thought about it before you, it existed, but not for you. You found the idea, and realized it existed, but the idea itself existed before now. So is the source of idea’s the person who tells you the idea? In that case, to find new ideas, we have to go to the people who are telling things to us that no one has ever said. Those people are the ones with ideas. Maybe they are right, maybe they are wrong, but they are new. New to you and new to other people as well. Removing a filter (right or wrong) is still a filter moved out of the way. It still brings us closer to the raw sunlight.