I'll Just Sit with You for a Little While

“Rest easy, sleep well my brothers.
Know the line has held, your job is done.
Rest easy, sleep well.
Others have taken up where you fell,
the line has held.
Peace, peace, and farewell...”

The Cleaning Dream

I had another odd dream last night, not necessarily odd in its content, but odd in the fact that I once again started doing things while still asleep.

This one at 4 AM made it seem necessary that I clean my room--tidy tidy. I don't remember why or anything that was happening in my dream but I awoke as I was sorting out papers into the trash can.

I saw I had picked up all of my books from around my bed (about nine books that I've wanted to start or started or re-started or half-way finished or fully finished but want to linger over for a bit longer) and had beautifully stacked them in descending size on the chair next to my bed. I suppose this is good as the likes of Homer, Fitzgerald and Widler don't belong on the floor, constantly underfoot like some gentleman's magazine at a house of ill repute.

Today I found my "saved papers" on my dresser, half way across the room. They were all papers of importance or with notes on them. Surprising I was able to make cognitive decisions and still remain asleep. Hmm...maybe I can use this talent. Must look into that.

Moving Forward, Moving Backward

I've been trying to keep up with my New York City people.

Perhaps even more difficult than with Chicago people, as Chicago friends had for the most part years of relationship history to step off with. I also left Chicago with a bit of a spring in my step. I imagined that everything would be better in New York. I thought I was off on another great adventure just like when I left Garland originally. When I left New York, I was retreating back to a safe place.

In the days following, in the first few weeks, I eagerly awaited every phone call, e-mail, every Facebook comment. I desired them to come more frequently, with more passion, with more urgency. I wanted them immediately. I needed them. And when they came—if they came—they were never enough, never enough emotions or telling or anything. I wanted to know them with the same intensity that I did when we sat next to each other on the couch, at the bar, in the lunch room. I wanted to know them in the way we knew each other as fellow people living in New York City, not as the girl in the rags looking in the window on the family eating a large a luxurious turkey dinner.

And it pains me when they don’t understand what those extra few moments, or days, or weeks, between responses mean to me. I want them to know my need. I need them to know my need. I want them to constantly stretch their hand to mine. I want them to yearn in the painful manner I feel. I want them to thrash and have horrid dreams and utter loneliness. I want their life to be as drastically different as my life has become, so that we can mourn together over the change, over the misery, over the utter need to have them nearly you, over the need for communication.

But that’s the final clue. Their life isn’t drastically different. They still wake up at the same time. They still take the R to the A and zoom to work. They still drink at the Dram Shop and watch Lost. They still walk over a gangway to get to work. They love and fuck and talk and dance and work and dream, all the same. The difference?

The lack of me.

And not to be self-deprecating, but that’s not much.

While they still complete those tasks above, I do not follow any of them. While they had everything the same, save me, nothing was the same for me, save (I thought hopefully) them.

Suddenly I was unemployed living with my parents in a city I hadn’t lived in in six years. I was driving again. I was going to unfamiliar places and doing unfamiliar things constantly. I was living in an alien world, drastically wanting for a familiar foothold to arise so that I could keep myself alive.

So I looked backwards. I looked back to New York for a constant. A constant that would cement the months I lived there in reality and make my current reality (an absurd mix of new and old) something with more breathable air. Something I could look at and assess and move on into. As I left New York behind, I needed to know that it would still be there with the same structures and life and people that I cohabitated with before I departed.

This looking backwards, this desire made those phone calls that much more important. And it made me that much angrier when those left behind did not reciprocate. They did not understand the urging and fear I was feeling. They did not comprehend the dire need I had for a link back. For a constant. They didn’t need a constant. Their lives were constant.

Their lives = the same - Me.


This is the inevitable problem with leaving like I did, with a smudge of woe and a distinct look backwards. Had I triumphantly marched into the distance, I think I would have wanted to keep in touch with those left behind because I wanted to still have them in my life, not because I needed their presence.

It’s abating now. The realization of the innate changes in the dynamic of our relationships (and perhaps the notion that the those left behind have no idea of the vapid wasteland I am sometimes part of) made it easier to calm. But its still there looming in the corner, an ever-present search and miss. A yearning that will not fully ever subside. The water stain the hides under the carpet after all of the flood has subsided.


A step forward,
a look backward,
an inverted fall,
a climb back up
and continuing on.


And a crazed need to be connected to what was.

A Comment on the Street

Yesterday, when I was getting into my car at my parents house, one of the original neighbors* on our street was nearby and he hollered at me, "Didn't think we'd ever see you back!" I kinda smiled, and nodded at him. I've never really spoken to him for anything beyond a greeting. I got into my car and felt exposed and violated.

I don't know what bothered me the most, that he said it* or that it was true.

I wonder what his smiling face would have changed to if I'd said, "Yeah. Me neither."

Hmm.



*If you've ever been to my house, I point out his house on the tour of our street. He is a strange man with an immaculate yard that he works on every single day. He was also shot by his live-in girlfriend, who then called the police to tell them what she did. The police came and shot her to death since she was wandering the street with a gun. Her blood stains was on my friend's sidewalk for weeks. This all happened one year I was at Girl Scout camp.

The Saving Dream

So for the last few nights I’ve been having nightmares. Not particularly horrid ones but just ones that make it nearly impossible to sleep. The ones that you wake up afterward not scared but serverly confused and/or angry. I never remember much of them, but I do remember the uncomfortableness of them all. This was probably the most absurd one.


I was in my bedroom—with all the mess and darkness. 100% realistic looking. I was in bed. Next to me, near my closet was a man and woman, they were fighting. Vicious punches and tearing at each other. There is no clear winner. They are just fighting. I didn’t do anything. I just watched. They weren’t hurting anything in the room (which is impossible as there isn’t room to swing a cat in there). They were just beating each other. Then he picks her up and holds her up high and shoves her to the ceiling. She instantly is unconscious and her dress begins to get wrapped up in the ceiling fan. She is going to die from this. I know this. Despite being the person who caused this, the man starts to try and save her and pull her down but she is very twisted in the fan. Her limp arm drops down from the fan with a billow of white chiffon fluttering behind it. I jump out of bed and rush to pull her down, to save her from the fan that will chop her unconscious self up and kill her. I reach and grab to set her free from the dress.

I wake up standing in the middle of my room, my hands are smarting, knuckles slightly bleeding and covered in dust. My bedsheet and blanket are completely wrapped around my feet and all I can think about is “Where is the woman? Did she die?” It was then that I realize that I am awake. The woman was a part of a dream and that I just jumped out of bed and stuck my hands into a moving fan. A MOVING FAN!

Sigh.

I told my dad this and he laughed. "Welcome to adulthood," he said and then he laughed some more, "A moving fan..."