mymachinedream
I am still here. Still frozen in place in this bed. Something changed though. Something is different. It was tiny, and at first I didn’t know what was causing me this distress. What had changed in the room i have been in so long that I can’t imagine anything in the world beyond these walls. Nothing except the dreams that I seem to live half my life in. Although lately, it seems that more than half is in these dreams that I keep returning too.
A ringing came out of my head in my dream last night. It was this sound like someone had hit a crystal with an iron rod. Something large, and like a monolith. Something that stood to the sky, and then someone ran at it with a huge iron rod in their hands. They hit it and the sound started at the base and travelled up the length of the crystal.
I couldn’t see any of this, it wasn’t even a part of my dream. I remember parts of what was in my head, and then this sound. This ringing deep sound started. It was something like a force pushing into my whole body from the sound alone. It made my teeth hurt. My eyes felt full.
The thing about the sound is that I knew where it was coming from, and couldn’t tell you how i knew, or where it was coming from. It seemed to flood into the world. Like a noise that became all the world around me. Then something happened that hasn’t happened that I can remember. I knew i wasn’t awake. I knew i was in a dream, and i didn’t wake up. It was like waking up in a strange place, and not knowing how i got there. Knowing that I was asleep, i could see around myself and see the movement of the things around me.
Suddenly I knew i was a part of this dream, but apart from the dream. I need to find out what this crystal was. Who rang the thing, and what was it for. What was the reason for my waking up now. Why wasn’t i awake in the world, and still in the dream i was in before. I know this means something, and seem like right now i can’t focus to figure it out.
Like i know that I need to figure out why my brain seems to shudder and start. Why is my mind piecing this background information into my reality. Why is the dream becoming so much more real than anything else. When was i last awake, and why are my dreams becoming more vivid over time. I seem to be putting things together while my body sleeps. Frozen, but my mind moves.
I was asleep again. Asleep and awake in the pillows. I can’t be asleep in the pillows, because there is only one pillow. There isn’t pillows in the sense of multiple pillows that I could be inside of. I have one thin pillow behind my head. It has been the same place, and it has been the same pillow. My head feels about 5 degrees, above the plane of my body. I wonder sometimes, is this the amount that some medical book says a human body should rest at? Why not flat? Why not higher?
I dreamt of the woods again. Those are such happy and peaceful dreams. It seems like the rhythm and movements are slowed to an almost frozen state. The air itself seems slow and heavy. Not heavy in the way that burdens you, but just swaddles you into some careful warmth and presses gently into your skin. It was a sunny day, and everything was starting to wake up. It was a dream of spring, and a day of life warming up and beginning to come above ground.
The trees, the deciduous trees had started to get red at the tips, so you looked through the mass of branches, and the red hue lite up the tops of the trees but it was such a nice color. My eyes knew that this was the sign that the trees knew it was almost time. The world was getting ready to wake up and the trees were pushing into the air and testing the weather. Not ready for green, but shoving the red growth out. The reverse of fall, and the green turning to red, the red would turn to green.
It was focused on dreams of copper. It was everywhere, and kept showing up on surfaces. Shining and sharp in color, it showed on so many things that it must have meant something.
It made me think that I have noticed my dreams aren’t of gold and silver, but copper comes again and again. This one seemed to see plates built of copper, and pennies. Strange that something so common can stand out so clearly.
I have been spending the last few days trying to figure out what is going on. I can’t tell if this is a prison, or if the whole thing is just a dream that I can’t wake up from. I noticed that the dreams i do have never seem to show my face. Never seem to show a reflection in anything that you would normally expect. I know that I should see my face back in a reflection in a window or a car, or something, but there isn’t anything there at all.
My mind keeps going into itself. I keep returning to these same thoughts over and over. Like a note that keeps playing in my mind. Everything i do to distract myself from this thought seems to end up pulling me back. So maybe that is something. Is this what i am supposed to think about? Will it stay in my mind until i have looked at it from every angle? Smoothed out the rough edges and sanded it down to a sphere?
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.
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.
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.