Transcript of last night's nightmare

I was at my dad's house; I had brought D over there for some reason.

My dad and mom were there, in the dining room-- I think I was standing talking to them while D went upstairs to use the bathroom.

Through the back windows I saw a car plummet off a cliff (not there in real life) and then continue driving towards the house.

It stopped right before colliding with the house, and my dad ran out to check to see if the driver was okay, but I tried to stop him. I went upstairs to call the police or something. I told D to stay hidden in the bathroom.

As I was reaching for the phone in my old bedroom (on the 2nd floor) I saw a HUGE two-storey tall triple-segmented truck come around the corner onto the block.

It kept turning, about to hit the house, but it turned around the side of the house and that's when I realized that the cab (with 5 or 6 burly men) was at the height of my room, so when they crashed through the side of the house I dropped the phone and ran down the stairs, but both of my parents were gone.

Everyone (of my friends/family) were gone, and I started to realize that I should just go with the men rather than run and have the men tear apart the house and find D. And that's when I woke up.

This morning tears sat like stones in my throat, weighing down my head with sadness for the ugliness here. The hideous crush of concrete, smoke, and so many ugly buildings snuggled into each other's personal space. There is no personal space, no time to be alone, no wide open vistas.

Time breaks

I'm still recovering, although from something other than the five-week cold or the death cold. Those, thankfully, are over. Now it's one red, irritated, itchy eye, my lower back acting up (it only responds to red wine. Really.), and a sore throat. Will I ever be well again? I think it's been seven weeks total, and it has robbed me of some of my basest pleasures-- the taste of food, the sweetness of exhaustion from digging in the dirt, and the satisfying ring of words clicking into place.

Quite a few scenes have moved me recently-- the purple shock of first magnolia blossoms, rain seen flung like the sheerest silk scarf far across the Willamette Valley, the sweet solo of the first spring birdsong. But in experiencing these things with my senses so crippled, no words well up. I remember fewer details. Time rolls on without me. And that is why I started taking Airborne, EmergenC, a multivitamin, and some more targeted vitamins. I'm tired of a half-life, and ready for my synesthesia back.

The sound

With this cold I've had over the past four weeks, I have lost fluency with my words. The already tenuous tendrils between my everflowing mind and the outside world of reality were washed away in the tidal floods of mucus filling my sinuses. With my smell, taste, and hearing dulled, the whole sensory package seemed to take a break. It's been forever. I'm nearly there.

The story I've wanted to tell, for weeks now, is of awaking in bed one morning without opening my eyes. I had time to sleep in because it was one of those odd holidays that few people get, so I feigned sleep, deeply aware of my head on the pillow and the blankets holding in my sleep-heat. Because of this not-fully-conscious state, I was able to hear the sounds clearly-- the sounds I always hear in my ears, which normally I filter out enough to completely ignore. I listened and thought about it, as I haven't really ever tried to describe it.

They were metal sounds, only in my left ear-- the ear against the pillow. Quick and short, but in unhurried and random intervals. I think if I heard those sounds in real life they would grate, but the subtly shifting patterns were oddly comforting. I listened for twenty minutes before finally stirring and rising out of bed. I had previously described the sound as a wailing alarm, but that's not it at all. It comes and goes in endless layers, which give a siren-effect when hidden by the normal noise of everyday life. But with this cocooning cold I've been able to hear more details in the sound, to concentrate on its complexity. I'm familiarized with it, and that's something good that's come from this otherwise frustrating and drawn-out illness.

sleeping in

I had a strange morning-- something happened that is generally considered to be common, but which I have only experienced a few times in my life.

My alarm didn't go off. Actually, two alarms didn't go off.

One alarm clock is supposed to mimic the gradual brightening of the sunrise, and help to make waking up less painful. I don't always use that one, as the interface is particularly obscure and it runs fast. Right now it's nine minutes fast, and in another month it'll be up to ten. Even its speeding up is totally random, since it got up to quite a few minutes fast soon after I reset it, but now that it's at nine minutes fast, it seems almost set in its ways.

Given my basic understanding of this clock, it's no surprise that it didn't work-- regardless of the fact that I made sure to turn it on. And I'm sure that I turned it on, because when I went to bed last night I saw that my main clock was blank.

I've waited for this day for years. The clock was given to me by my mom, one of the times I visited her in England. She was appalled that I didn't have a travel clock, and it had been given to her uncle by my dad, apparently swag from a conference. So it had already passed through at least three hands before me, and it didn't seem to be a particularly well-made thing. But it was simple, with few features, and extremely reliable.

It was my main clock for the past nine years. Nine years, and who knows how many countries. If a dead battery doesn't seem like a big deal, that's because you assume it can be changed. This clock is so cheaply made that its watch battery is hidden deep inside, with no apparent access. This really feels like the end of an era, although maybe it's the dumbed-down-edness of my cold-addled brain.

Untitled Blog Entry #24

Skeletons of trees stand in a line,
a boneyard along the path.
Each points to the sky like unfurled paisley
and rocks slowly in their own time
As if the wind were merely a suggestion.

I can almost draw the lines

During my run today, plugged in and stripped down to a tshirt by the time I hit the Nature Park trail, I looked up and my tipped head seemed to slide my senses together. The sun, when it comes out here in winter, is dazzling and physical and disorienting and it hits everything at once. As I turned the corner on the path, I couldn't feel the headphones-- the music seemed internal. Sun struck through moss high in skinny trees and lichen abandoned on the ground-- a surrounding of great green glowing life. Even through slow-motion drips of slushy rain, the sun's touch made my skin warm and I had the sudden impulse to lift my arms for its embrace to wrap around my waist and pull me closer. I wanted to remove clothes to let the sun-touch in.

This is the effect of the return of forgotten sunlight. It floods your veins and shakes you loose from reality's one dimension.

After this run, walking back to my desk, a private song plays in my ears as my long earrings tinkle like a metallic brook with each step I take. I turn my ears and then eyes up to the heartbeat thump of wings pushing air aside as geese swoop overhead in a textbook V formation. Tattoos patch the wet concrete where leaves have given up their ghosts. Each ginger lift of a foot is a a sensation I can't dull on its path up my nervous system to my brain.

Am I a simpleton to be so stunned? These corporeal pleasures are the only stories I have to share. Everything else wilts in comparison.

a quiet dark place is all we need

The other day I kept driving through these themed scenes of exquisite beauty, the kind of trite urban images that catch on the edge of your consciousness until you see them, oddly, three times in a row and on the third time finally slow down to watch.

At the time I made a note of it, to write about later, here. But then I felt a little self-conscious-- after all, one of the repeated scenes was the trapped breeze-dance of a solitary plastic bag. Is everyone sick of that after the movie? It still affects me, although maybe it was just the particular day.

we'll cut our bodies free from the tethers of this scene

Listening to a favorite album from the year 2003, I began to feel restless deep inside as the music stirred body memories and made me painfully aware that I've lived here in the same zipcode for just over five years. Except for the house into which I was born, I haven't lived in any one place for more than a year and a half. A decade-long stretch of moving around suited me just fine; I always knew when it was time to leave.

oneaday

I've been writing much more often over at my everyday photo journal, but it's incredibly mundane. I feel like I've sunk deep into the couch cushions, snuggled close with my man and cats, and stuffed my face with plentiful, hot, home-cooked meals. It's the most cozy hibernation a hairless ape could hope for, but it's not been particularly good for my creative output. Rather, the seemingly minor task of taking one photo and writing one sentence each day has taken quite a lot more energy than I anticipated. I've written far more than one sentence most days, but it's more of a diary of daily goings-on; perhaps a separate, more creatively charged single sentence journal is a good idea.

nobody has to know

Crunch of gravel, and ice-rain falling through the bamboo rakes zen lines through the path in front of my footsteps. Walking across the wooden bridge at night, pink snow-sky overhead, I'm chanting the words I don't want to forget, unable to see passing faces for the back-lit glow from glass buildings.

This morning, dark mirror image, I chanted "Jabba the Hutt" to myself over and over, to try to remember the dream from which I awoke.

This morning it didn't work, but this evening it did.

Sound waves, star waves

There's a connection through radio, when you realize that someone in a distant location hears the same sounds as you at the same moment, experiences the same sensory input, reacts with a similar recognition. Thus radio transcends earthly broadcast to heavenly status-- it's a locale for lovers' trysts, like wishing on the same star or looking up at the same moon in the sky.

On the way to work, driving over the Hawthorne Bridge where it carries you over the train tracks (east side), and a small cloud puff rising from underneath gives a moment's warning before the whir of the horn, directly below, permeates the bridge structure, my car, my bones. The pleasing magic of the Doppler Effect as I swing past the tracks and over the water.

On the way home from work, small patches of low cloud break the unseasonably smooth blue, two lights in the sky send cylindrical beams ahead of an airplane that meanders ponderously onward like a friendly, celestial manta ray.

Cast vitriol and stones

(From a Vandaveer song I just heard on WOXY, a lovely turn of phrase that stuck to my mind's ear)

Watching drippy drops form and fall from skeletal branches just outside the odd, low window in the yoga room. Everything in that room darkened to my mind as the rain lines slowed into focus.

Oh leaf dreams

Stir in my chest, the ache in a short breeze plucks at the top. When I slowly turn to look, I will close my eyes and breathe deeply instead. The smell of earth, dark and heavy, waits for my hands and heart, waits for the collapse of leaf-veins and all of the between parts. With an ear to the ground, you can share the dark secret and giggle with the rest of the roots lifting their arms to the sky in supplicating green blades. I won't give up, but in my sleep I will dream of giving in and returning to the tree.

everything is soft and sweet

Three indelible images of Oregon's strange winter beauty.

Sunday night a few weeks ago, I walked through the sodden backyard to the alley, arms weighed down with two bags full of recyclables. We tend to take care of trash-night chores late, and it was a misty, quiet night lit with the eerie purple glow of city lights smothered in low clouds-- the kind of light that, to me, is a visual representation of saying the word "hush."

It's already a bit magical to have an alley behind the house. They're rare in this young-built city, a little dangerous and ragged, a semi-hidden no man's land. The alleys of my neighborhood are byways for local dog-walkers, feral cats, and homeless people trolling for redeemable cans. I imagine their unpaved potholed lengths and unkempt verdant thorny borders to be the modern equivalent of myth's shifting paths to faeryland.

At any rate, the view down our alley often mesmerizes me, but this evening went above. Bent over the bright yellow rain-slicked recycle bins, a sense of blooming movement made me raise my head. In the eerie purple sky-glow, great cottony cumulonimbus issued from just beyond the end of the alley. The birthplace of clouds, I thought, in awe. Then came the soft hoot of the special steam engine train, whose gentle lowing we had heard all evening from within the house. It's a much warmer sound than the other trains, and between that comforting sound, the hush of low-ceiling clouds, and the issuance of great clouds so nearby... I was reluctant to turn inside, despite the steady rain. Indeed, when I returned ten minutes later with the trash bag, no trace remained of the steam train.

***

My first day back at work after my illness, I was still a bit in that far-off headspace. I parked my car and walked through the parking lot. At the edge of the lot, the wind picked up for a moment, and the sound of winter surf poured through the bare tops of the stand of birch trees there. I stood stopped still, and gaped. The sound, the movement, the sway of waves. It was so beautiful in the barren grey of winter that I knew I would remember the moment for a long time to come.

***

Driving up the west hills on the day after xmas, on the way to work. Suddenly visible through the mist, the top spread branches of tall fir trees are dusted with snow. On up the hill, this snow cover creeps lower and lower down the trees, so that in effect there is a horizon of white, an altitude line past which everything is shouldered in white. A literal snow line.

Long winter holiday weekend

It has been such a relaxing weekend, despite social obligations. Friday night we went to Vault for a coworker-friend's birthday. We left after about two hours, using my recent stomach flu as an excuse. We walked to the video store and stopped on the way back for tea at Palio. Through miscommunication it was served in mugs, so we stayed and read the weekly papers while sipping tea. It was so relaxing and quite an enjoyable change of pace.

Saturday morning I went for breakfast with my brother, prepped the bathroom ceiling for painting, and tried to do all of the grocery shopping for xmas cooking. That night was a holiday party at a running buddy's house, at which we also stayed for two hours. We barely left the house on Sunday. Instead we stayed home, took care of chores, and ended up drinking tea and hanging out in the kitchen nook listening to jazz for a few hours. I read Veganomicon and Erik played WoW on the laptop, while Kenard lapped up affection. We dinner with Erik's parents at Lauro, now that they have a bit more time to themselves.

Monday I went out to buy sequins, and candy for gingerbread house-making. Fred Meyer was so parked up that I went all the way out to Target-- where no regular-sized candycanes were to be had. I also painted the bathroom ceiling (second coat) and made a pumpkin (not technically a pumpkin, but a winter squash, okay?) cheezcake with grahamcracker crust for xmas dessert. Erik and I went for a run, and I think we watched a movie or two. Maybe that was Sunday. It starts to blur together, doesn't it?

Tuesday we went over to Erik's brother's newly completed house for gift-opening at 9am. Our 4 year-old nephew had awoken at 4am to open all presents featuring his first initial on the gift tag, and when one of them had a note from Santa he woke up his visiting maternal grandmother to read it for him. Consequently, his mother had to wrap a number of gifts back up. Despite threats that he wouldn't have anything to open, however, there were tons of presents. I think everyone was pleasantly surprised. I really enjoyed seeing my one-year-old nephew hug the stuffed animal I bought for him at Crafty Wonderland.

Back home, of course, I finished making No Knead Bread (with oregano, lemon thyme and rosemary from the garden), roasted green beans with garlic and lemon zest, and a kindof sortof attempt at seitan wellington. Whatever it was, it turned out awesome. Onions, leeks, Italian tofurky, seitan, all sauteed in my biggest pot, with red wine to deglaze, soy sauce, parsley and herbs from the garden, and my spice trinity of coriander, cumin and powdered mustard, all wrapped up in puff pastry. Leave it to puff pastry to make everything _that_ much better.

Aspen came with us for dinner at Erik's brother's house, and then we went home to decide on gingerbread house plans, cut out and bake the pieces, and assemble the main frame. We got two sides candied up before tuckering out around 11pm, all bah-humbugged by thoughts of work the next day. I have to say, it was one of the most enjoyable winter holidays I've experienced, and I even have something to show for it.

belly of the beast

Ugh. I was up at 2am, tossing and turning until I finally got up half an hour later, took a bath, started to fall asleep on the couch, and then ran to the bathroom to puke my guts out. I eventually went back to bed, only to awake at 6am for more of the same. Luckily the second time there was nothing recognizable.

So I stayed home from work, and I've been resting on the couch all day, barely able to read. Is anything more miserable than having an entire bed-ridden day during which you can't really read?

I had an acupuncture appointment at 5pm, which I thought might help, especially since I hadn't had any incidents since the morning. I showed up, waited for my Chinese medicine specialist, Lisa, and when we sat down upstairs in her bright, cozy room, I started to sweat and feel uncomfortable. "Are you okay?" she asked, and I said, "I think I'd better go to the bathroom." There go the popsicles I had managed to keep down all afternoon.

I suspect this is a stomach flu from babysitting my nephews on Saturday night. The younger one was puking all night Friday, and his mother was reluctant to leave him into our babysitting care. The older one, who Erik put to bed, puked in his bed just after we left at 11:30pm that night.

My other suspicion is food poisoning-- Julie, Brian, Andres, Erik and I ate at Mama Mia last night, with a stop afterwards at Voodoo Donuts. My suggestion, of course. And I did eat too much.

Being such an over-committer of plans, being out today really threw a wrench into my week. I don't have any time off yet accrued at work, so I'll have to work an extra day next week while everyone is off. Assuming I am well tomorrow, I'll have to go in to the office for two hours in the morning before heading back to our holiday party, which is on a sternwheeler that boards right by my house. It's funny that for someone who doesn't like to plan-- particularly travel-- I have so many little intricate tasks and events that take a tumble as soon as one thing goes wrong.

In Thailand, I grew grateful for opportunities to exercise my patience. I wish that worked better here.

a preference

When a turn of phrase strikes an affectionate ear, where does that accord come from? What makes one tongue welcome pickled okra, and another abhor the same? Does the sound of one note strike the same conjunction against all eardrums?

Wherein lies affinity?

Is it chemical, or related to the rub of molecules as they move on their way? Do bacteria living on-site at the point of our senses filter experience for us? Is it animal, vegetable or mineral? Could a vaccine to make George Bush taste broccoli as it tastes to me be a future cure for obesity?

I want to know how and why preferences are formed.

Our Lady of the Starry Heaven

Another one kicked out the door, and in a way I'm disappointed with myself. It is the job of the storyteller to related a chain of events, to weave together ends, and to coax an amasses value from the details of lesser things.

The last two weeks have been a restless stream of small currents flowing fast right through my hands. Happy hours, birthday celebrations, a new job. Deadlines, overcommitments, races to show up on time.

So it goes.

Saturday night I made pho, went rollerskating, then to the new Green Dragon pub whose appearance is supposed to herald a new destination neighborhood: Libation Alley. Despite slate tabletops and half a dozen colors of chalk, it wasn't great. My fries never came, and there was a snippy parenthetical statement on the menu that one should by no means ask for ketchup to go with them. This, behind a misspelled aioli.

Monday night I was so exhausted from all-day orientation at work that I went home, went for a short run with Erik, made dinner, and passed out on the couch around 9pm. I think that's the earliest I have fallen asleep for years, since being very sick.

Tuesday, in the late afternoon, I plucked up the courage to use the shiny, shiny gym here at work, for the first time. It was mostly empty, quite luxurious, and the weight machines were mostly mysterious to me. Although I do have a fair amount of gym experience, nothing is as daunting as meeting a new machine like the "rotary lat" and not knowing how to adjust it for one's frame. Especially if you're smaller than the average bulky male weight-lifter.

I should go into more detail about later in the day, when Donna took me out to Siam Society for dinner and afterwards, when we ran into the girl with "So it goes" tattooed thrice around her wrist... I should, but I don't realistically have the time to delve into the layers. With Donna, there are always interesting layers and coincidences and facets lending sparkle. All of these things have been happening so fast and thick in the past few weeks; perhaps that's part of the overwhelmed feeling in which I'm immersed. At any rate, it's thought-food for later nourishment.

Wednesday. Oy. I forgot to pick up my brother at the airport. Only I didn't realize it until I was driving to work the next morning. Although I am almost always over-committed, it's rare for me to forget something that important. It's falling apart before there's time for me to rest.

untitled, unfinished

I still don't feel like writing, but there's only so much time one can go without using a limb or flexing a muscle, before the whole thing atrophies and falls off.

Today was my first day as a real, full-time employee at the place where I've worked for the past year and a quarter. The entire day was spent with other new-hires, filling out paperwork, hearing about benefits and resources, and meeting people. There were so many forms, packets, presentations and names