Box it up
30 June 2011 06:34 AM Categories: The struggle
These are recurring dream settings, the vast above-ground finished basement that we never venture into because of what was left behind, the dark corners and creepy bathroom with wall-to-wall shag and a shower stall like a movie version of a cryogenic freezing chamber, the jacuzzi tub clogged with unfamiliar hair. Last night I took a friend downstairs to show her why we kept the basement door locked. She counted thirteen rectangular windows in the sitting room. We walked into the bedroom together. His stuff was still there: a stiff and formal robe, the shapeless sweatsuits draped over a golden-quilted bed. Up by the pillow was a copy of Dutch Life, some sort of travel magazine. He died in this room and they took him away and no one ever came to pick up his things.
Maybe it was grief or maybe they were too busy. Maybe those left didn't think he cared about the room, the medicines on the side table, the layers of dust accumulating on the clock radio. He left behind echoes of his humanity and suffering and maybe he was still there, maybe he wasn't, but it was time to take care of the room and what he left behind. I stripped the bed, put his last outfits in the wash, made plans to reclaim this space, to sell off the stuff and fill it with things of my own taste. I was going to sit in this room in the mid-afternoon light and bask in the sun with my eyes closed, curled up like a cat, a book resting next to me.
I have to hand it to my subconscious: it lacks subtlety, it knows how to hit me over the head with a metaphor, shows me that what I am doing, all the blah blah blah and the 6 a.m. pill and the being here now (when I can) is having an effect. I'm cleaning out the haunted house! I'm reclaiming the space! Sure, sure, sure. It may feel like I'm doing it one thought at a time, so slowly that progress seems impossible, but there are changes.
Still: why can't it tell me the outcome, lay out a path for what I should do? I expect too much of my subconscious, expect my dreams to be oracles, emotional barometers, to show me what the future brings. I want to believe in fate. It's a comforting feeling, that some of this is preordained and I have to follow the path set out for me by the cosmos or laid in some random pattern by an unseen being that I don't believe in. I reconcile my gut feelings, my intuitions, with the fact that sometimes our guts are mangled by experience, are hair trigger in their decision-making skills. I scrape away the past, expose how my fears can control me, but ... but ...
The ride continues, I steer sometimes, I try and fail and hope that the next try works. My future consists of the hours in front of me, the appointments I've made for the next week. But my subconscious is optimistic, is pulling for the cleanup. I'm just not sure what kind. At least I'm sleeping. I'm dreaming. And in the morning, if I am lucky, if the time is right, I tap out my thoughts and send them to you.
No time for writing lately. We were away for several days and since we've gotten back it's been me and the boy hanging out. And I've been sleeping! Almost eight hours for the last couple of nights. I wake up a little after five and then the kid is up and the day begins. Missing the words, but know they will come back. And it won't be all about my dreams next time.
Image by rpeschetz.
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