dreamattack | a dialogue in pictures

A Birthday Present

What is this, behind this veil, is it ugly, is it beautiful?
It is shimmering, has it breasts, has it edges?

I am sure it is unique, I am sure it is what I want.
When I am quiet at my cooking I feel it looking, I feel it thinking

‘Is this the one I am too appear for,
Is this the elect one, the one with black eye-pits and a scar?

Measuring the flour, cutting off the surplus,
Adhering to rules, to rules, to rules.

Is this the one for the annunciation?
My god, what a laugh!’

But it shimmers, it does not stop, and I think it wants me.
I would not mind if it were bones, or a pearl button.

I do not want much of a present, anyway, this year.
After all I am alive only by accident.

I would have killed myself gladly that time any possible way.
Now there are these veils, shimmering like curtains,

The diaphanous satins of a January window
White as babies’ bedding and glittering with dead breath. O ivory!

It must be a tusk there, a ghost column.
Can you not see I do not mind what it is.

Can you not give it to me?
Do not be ashamed–I do not mind if it is small.

Do not be mean, I am ready for enormity.
Let us sit down to it, one on either side, admiring the gleam,

The glaze, the mirrory variety of it.
Let us eat our last supper at it, like a hospital plate.

I know why you will not give it to me,
You are terrified

The world will go up in a shriek, and your head with it,
Bossed, brazen, an antique shield,

A marvel to your great-grandchildren.
Do not be afraid, it is not so.

I will only take it and go aside quietly.
You will not even hear me opening it, no paper crackle,

No falling ribbons, no scream at the end.
I do not think you credit me with this discretion.

If you only knew how the veils were killing my days.
To you they are only transparencies, clear air.

But my god, the clouds are like cotton.
Armies of them. They are carbon monoxide.

Sweetly, sweetly I breathe in,
Filling my veins with invisibles, with the million

Probable motes that tick the years off my life.
You are silver-suited for the occasion. O adding machine—–

Is it impossible for you to let something go and have it go whole?
Must you stamp each piece purple,

Must you kill what you can?
There is one thing I want today, and only you can give it to me.

It stands at my window, big as the sky.
It breathes from my sheets, the cold dead center

Where split lives congeal and stiffen to history.
Let it not come by the mail, finger by finger.

Let it not come by word of mouth, I should be sixty
By the time the whole of it was delivered, and to numb to use it.

Only let down the veil, the veil, the veil.
If it were death

I would admire the deep gravity of it, its timeless eyes.
I would know you were serious.

There would be a nobility then, there would be a birthday.
And the knife not carve, but enter

Pure and clean as the cry of a baby,
And the universe slide from my side.

– Sylvia Plath

home from san fran.

started back to school this week to finish my b.a.

tired as an m.f.

i fell in love with san fran and the bay area in general. want to live in Alameda in my Great-Grandmother’s tiny old house. maybe some day.

took a bazillion photos - but this one is one of my favorites - the last one I took.

my dinner, the last night. it was squid-a-licious.

it’s been a motherfucker of a day, and I get on an airplane in six hours. no packing done. just realized I haven’t left M. & J. with any desk schedules for next week. it will all get done. can’t stop now can I?

going to San Francisco with my mother ~ just the two of us, mom/daughter trip for the very first time. the pretense is to attend a family reunion in “Pleasanton.” the real reason is to see how well I’ve worked on my patience (she tries me) eat our way across the city, get her her first tattoo (a labrys, of course), and wander around a Chagall exhibit at the MOCA.

back next week.

as a child, this sculpture formed some of my deepest archetypology. as the story goes, at the age of four, I gazed upon this sculpture and burst into an hysterical outburst of grief. my grandparents had to cart my slack wailing body out of the Art Institute of Chicago and set to calming me on the steps, with lions guarding my weeping soul.

the solitude of the soul ~ Loredo Taft

years later, I sought out the sculpture so as to determine what it was that sent me into such unexpected paroxisms. It had since been moved to the lower courtyard of a different wing of the museum. after an hour of hunting, I came upon it - pristine and chilling. I circled it cautiously, as though waiting for a psychic lightening bolt to strike at any moment. nothing came. I relaxed, brought down my hackles, and stepped closer to read the placqard accompanying it.

I felt as though I’d been cracked in the ribs, the lightening struck, but it wasn’t the bolts of some quasi-sixth sense, it was the cold blue light of comprehension.

Taft wrote, when explaining the impetus behind his creation of the sculpture … “The thought is the eternally present fact that however closely we may be thrown together by circumstances … we are unknown to each other.”

     

I was always a rather eerily perceptive child. even a young grasp of just how impossible it is to truly know another, to break through the bone and membrane that keeps us apart. it’s no wonder my tiny synaptic connections were strained. We are all, inevitably and by design, alone.

“your legs that bounce me up and down are the horses I will ride into eternity…” - a.s.

my legs hate me.

My legs are a primary source of my physical unpleasantness. They aren’t bad to look at, when I feel like shaving them. Unshorn, I give my spouse a run for his male-type money, but that’s not my point.

My legs have moved, unbidden, possessed by twitchy, insect-like spirits, for as long as I have memory. Arm in arm with St. Vitus’s legs came a nasty lifelong case of deep-rooted, electric nerve pain - the lovely Mistress Sciatica. Unfortunately, the sciatica seems to be something with which I am doomed to live. Just another notch in the “how fucked up are my legs?” belt.

My legs don’t actually move of their own volition, not all of the time, anyway. What really occurs is an increasing sensation of discomfort that is only relieved by a semi-voluntary rhythmic movement. I jiggle, tap & shake my legs. I waggle, jog & bounce my legs. What’s the big deal? Heh. Ever try to sleep when you are compelled to move your legs constantly? It gets worse the more tired I am.

All my life, I just thought I was a natural born fidgeter. And I was tired, all the goddamned time. There was no such thing as too much sleep. There was no time or place that I couldn’t sleep. My spouse could tell when I stirred from sleep even slightly, because the legs would start going, without even conscious propulsion.

One day, about a year ago, I was talking to Dr. H. about why I was so tired. As we talked, he looked down at my legs, which were going 90-to-nothing, while I droned on in a half-asleep zombie-like way.

“Ever heard of Restless Legs Syndrome?” he perked?

Wha?

One great hug, and a referral later, I was visiting a sleep specialist. After they covered me with electrodes (including 6 on my hairy legs), & subjected me to two “multiple sleep latency tests” (overnight two nights in a row), I was pronounced profoundly sleep deprived, and diagnosed with THREE, count ‘em, THREE different sleep disorders. Yes, I had the Restless Legs Syndrome, but I also had scored the jackpot by adding on one order of PLMS (Periodic Limb Movements in Sleep), also known as Nocturnal Myoclonus, as well as a side of Obstructive Sleep Apnea. Whee. Dr. W. said that he hadn’t seen anyone with such a low percentage of delta sleep in a long time. He whipped out my sleep report and showed me just how much my body hates me.

He prescribed a drug called SINEMET

Sinemet is an anti-Parkinson’s drug. RLS & PLMS are considered movement disorders and so are treated with pretty potent meds.

Legs that wake up when the rest of you wants to sleep

up too late, much too late, compulsively consuming my lower lip, my jaw unnaturally tight, my neuro-chemistry twisting in the wind, wondering where it will land.

it isn’t as though there’s a lack of sleepiness, eyes are barely staying open, but the locked jaw, the swollen, pulsing bottom lip, the ugly grinding of dentin against dentin, the violent yarmulke-shaped throb of musculo-skeletal rage raping the back of my head.

work tomorrow will be painful. must whip out next week’s schedules & only then may I try to force at least four to five hours of sleep into my brain.

interlude:
had wonderful company Saturday night. it was refreshing to be surrounded by fun, silly, intelligent people. goes to prove that it isn’t where you are, it’s who you know. hope everyone else enjoyed the night like I did. hope the newcomer wasn’t bored to tears. I’d like to assume that it was simply his reserved & self-contained nature that I was picking up on my antennae.

The world is made of poetry (building blocks of my subconscious) –

markov chains get me all excited. it’s not a quiz, it’s an algorithm. **shiver**

thanks to J. for helping me get my muse on.

- - - -

behavior it puts
the lotion in the ether
and spent the next night

***

door with her arm her
plume. strait in the grip of
each fear, recalls sleep

***

we grope and grope in
vain, for children born of her
pain. children are dazed

***

hard today, “i hear
ev’ry mother say cooking
fresh food for a gun

***

viewed from above
all the brain scans will fail to
reveal the source

***

listening to the
eye she is capable of
driving them inside

***

more confusing it
pokes more holes in my heart, but
i want you inside

***

head what stir ran through
the tulgey wood, and burbled
as it comes two lost

***

no it glides closer
something is very wrong
with my toddler ferts

***

mother says the pursuit
of happiness just seems a
bore. as she would repeat

***

my husband caught me
as i fell you’re having a
bad thing the two said

***

shrug every day
as it comes lost two months to
the demon pain

***

my soul i struggle
i scream i feel pressure on
all sides something goes

***

the frustration boils
my fists clench the muscles in my
ability lost

***

a friend suffers through
a serious brain injury
i’ve learned too much

***

brain wastes away each
day lost to the stars, dylan
thomas, crazed moon

***

have the obsessive
nature of someone who just
can’t let it go dark

***

something else i
was addicted to dreaming
i was convinced

***

emptiness buoyed by
the backscatter machine at
the blood bank, they say

***

dramatic sleep debt
i’ve had time to spend making
love to dreams inside

***

spread wide that each may
rend what comes in reach. william
butler yeats lost me

***

with dreaming i had
convinced myself that i
can’t move i cannot

***

drink alone i have
been removed with the saw
occam’s razor one

***

is far from benign
it moves closer no it glides
i’m losing the sky

***

strangeness so hard
to reflect. a moment so
moving goes straight down

***

and strike out at the
presence, it’s far from benign
it moves closer out

***

but i see the gray
and halo through the bouncing
wall, possessed by light

***

falling asleep i
am the worst, all these other
symptoms become me

the move is complete.

I started yesterday morning at 8am. between B. & the 5 friends who came to help, we had everything in the truck by 8:45, everything unloaded by 9:40am. I provided pastry, but it was waaayyy too early for pizza and margaritas. well, not for me, but I wasn’t going to drink alone. I have good friends.

spent the rest of the day unpacking and resting in spurts.

the cats came over around 7pm. freaked out entirely. all three wandered around yowling like they were lost, poor babies.

managed to ferret-proof the main living/dining area (open plan) and let the fert triplets have a go at the new house. they’ve never encountered hardwood floors before. they had a fucking blast. I played chase the blanket, and curl the ferret. but I gave out before they did, and crashed around midnight.

unfortunately, the cats were’t quite done yet.

both Ivan and Fatman took turns wandering the halls all night, wailing at the top of their lungs. I sure hope they didn’t disturb our new neighbors downstairs.

eventually they wore down, and B. said that when he woke up this morning, they were all gathered around me, the lot of us dead asleep.

hopefully today I can work on the kitchen & bathroom, but not before I take a quick nap & run in to work to take care of a thing or two.

hopefully I’ll hear from my doctor today. something is very wrong with my body, most likely in my brain. I have been experiencing a significant decline in my ability to function, on many levels.

so many alarms going off - it doesn’t help that I know the lingo, understand the concepts. having a fascination with all things brain-related, and having watched a friend suffer through a serious brain injury, I’ve learned too much about what can go wrong in the head.

my physical balance is tenuous. I can’t walk very far without a cane. my cognition has begun to resemble swiss cheese. I cannot keep a thought in my head for more than a second or two. my thoughts and words reverse and come out wrong. I’ve become extraordinarily forgetful, easily confused. I am losing the dexterity in my hands (formerly exceedingly coordinated). and the fatigue - the bone-crushing fatigue. the more tired I am, the worse all these other symptoms become. my speech even starts to slur.

and worse, I’m starting to feel trapped inside this body. like a prison. the frustration boils, my fists clench, the muscles in my jaw feel as though they are in a perpetual state of flexion.

what I fear most, right now, is that all the brain scans will fail to reveal the source of the disfunction.

if they show no abnormality - what will happen next?

Henry Gray is my hero

“The cochlea and vestibule, viewed from above.
All the hard parts which form the roof of the
internal ear have been removed with the saw.”

in about 8 hours, they’ll be exploring my brain.

Mesal aspect of a brain sectioned in the median sagittal plane.

the holy trinity:MRI, MRA, & MRM

better start taking out my piercings now. it will take a while.