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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Shhhhh…. did i hear that?  I think i heard something.  It sounded like something i think.  I swear the sound was a knock.  Like a single knock on a door.  Like someone was asking or announcing themselves to a room they were getting ready to come into.  Like a Dr, getting ready to come in to see a patient.  Maybe a parent coming into a child’s room and letting them know as a courtesy.  Did i really hear that?

It happened so fast that I wasn’t sure.  It is the first sound I have heard in this place, and the first sound that didn’t seem to come from inside myself, or from the room itself.  Something, outside.  That is such a weird thing that I think sounds from outside are not normal.  Isn’t there a world out there?  Where are my thoughts and memories from if not outside.  Why is this so startling.  Like when you are in an empty house and hear the floorboards creak in a way they only do when someone walks on them, but no one is home but you.  It was that kind of sound.  A lonely sound in a quiet place.  But also, not lonely.  Its was a knock of authority.  Someone who wasn’t waiting for a response. Or someone who didn’t think one was coming.  Someone who was doing it as a courtesy that they didn’t really need to make, but did almost out of habit or routine.  I didn’t move, but my whole body felt like it constricted and got taller.  Can you move without movement?  Is this what animals feel when they feel eyes upon them in the woods?  Something that is seeing me, but i don’t know what it is.

I also keep thinking that the form of this thought, of the way that I am sharing this isn’t structured the way it should be.  I seem to remember seeing how others share thoughts, how they put their structure together, and it seems to be that the form is much more concise and structured.  Like everything is run by an editor and someone makes the form of the words and the intent of the thoughts more cohesive.  I don’t know why, but the way i am thinking makes sense to me, and I don’t want to change it.  At the same time, I want anyone who is trying to see what i am saying, and know the things that I am seeing and thinking and remembering, sees them the right way as well.  In my mind, my thoughts are a runon sentence.  Just a large wall of busy thoughts.  Visual ideas and stories pressed together.

This knock was everything new in the world today.  It shook free a dream.  I have so many dreams of water and woods.  I have dreams of plants, and so many dreams of trees.  Nothing dark or in any color but greens, browns, blues.  Colors of nature of a sort.  Life and growth.  Calm and movement.  But the knock.  That sound shook something loose.  A dream I had last night.  Different from everything I have dreamed before.  But also so familiar, i must have been there before.  If not in life then when sleeping.  The dream.  I don’t know how to put what it is into words.  It was dreams of building, of harsh lines and putting pieces together.  It was a dream of deep holes.  Fire and red heat.  It was a dream of fighting off demons and spirits that only wanted to escape.  Buildings that were abandoned and lost in places, but found and repopulated.  I need to share this, but can’t think of how to do so.

I need to go for now to listen again to see if i hear the knock again.

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.

 

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.