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  The door seems old, the lock seems out of date, and not really something meant to keep anyone inside.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.

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.

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.

I have archived all my memories.  That must be it.  The time i have spent in this room must be an interrupted restoration of some type of installation of my dreams.  Like I was mid rewrite and something woke me up.  Now i am coming into and out of these dreams.  They are so peaceful and soothing, i dream of water and soil.  Nothing but calm and cool air.  I know this is a good sign that whatever I am recovering is a good thing, but it seems like the memories may not come back until I can carry the dreams into my waking life and move forward.

I am awake now, and i know that this is real.  I can see the ceiling above me.  I can remember painting the ceilings and walls, even though i can’t remember what holding a paint brush feels like.  Did i use a paint brush?  Did i use a roller.  I don’t think that matters, but at the same time I can’t help but wonder if the details are actually all that do matter.  I feel like i am making a record or a recording of all the things that happened.  I know this isn’t right, but it is the closest i feel to what this feels like.

The other thing that seems more and more odd is the vividness of the dreams, and the clarity of what i remember.  It is like someone zoomed into the moment and focused so clearly there is a blinding quality to what i am seeing.  Like if my eyes could focus farther I could see the individual molecules of matter in the scene.  I remember staring at water reflecting on a brown river.  Even though the water was brown, the water seemed clear and fresh.  I stared at the reflection for so long it seemed like my eyes would go blind from the light.  I stood there and stared.

How can i remember standing if i can’t remember what it feels like to be anywhere than this bed.  If i am here, and also i was there, where am i really?  I know this seems odd, but it is one of the only things in my mind.  Am I here now in this bed, staring at this ceiling, or am I standing by the river, or am I anywhere else.

It can’t be both can it?  Can i be the sum of all those parts.  It seems like maybe this isn’t all that there is, and I need to find a way to live in both places.  Was i reflecting on this bed when i was at the waters edge?  What did i stop when i was interrupted, and what memory was i in the middle of when my dreams were stopped.  I know that can’t be good for anyone trapped in that moment.  Are they stuck, repeating over and over in time.  What would that look like.  I don’t know if that means that they are waiting in that moment for everything to start back up while they stutter back and forth in that final moment before my memory stopped.

Cords that bind and tie[AMAZONPRODUCTS asin=”B00VH84L5E”]

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.

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.

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.