Saturday, January 12, 2008

Generosity

About the dreams...

The shortest dream, and the only one I did not see Marcie in directly was the dream of Generosity. I know that these little dreams were likely created by my mind reconciling and grieving. But the way they were set and what they contained connects them to each other and Marcie for me.

Generosity


I "awoke" into the dream world on the same granite surface I had been on before, and I immediately began looking for Marcie, fully aware I was asleep. My plan was to basically make sure I interacted with her and asked her all the questions I had, and to make sure I let her know how loved she was. I did not see her, but the furniture was there, though covered in dust.

I opened a double door onto a point overlooking a vast plain. Wandering it were massive herds of llamas. Some of them were singing as a person of indeterminate age and gender, dressed in the manner an Animal Planet host might, rattled on in a weird, tinny radioesque voice about how expansive a llama's voice range was, how they interacted socially, and various other items of interest.

I watched the herd and scanned for Marcie, but one comment pulled my attention back to the speaker.

"Thanks to the generosity of Marcelyn Stoddard-Pruett, all of these llamas will be returned to South America next year, making them the last held outside of their home hemisphere forever," the host said.

I turned, incredulous. "Where did she get the money for that?" I asked the man, who shook his head.

Oh, no, she gave no money," he said. "She wanted to do this very badly, and she was alwas talking about it, so we thought it would be good way to help her better rest."

I nodded and as I slipped out of the dream state again. I understood. Generosity of spirit will often produce the same benefits over time that any physical of financial generosity would.

I woke fully and the vision disappeared.


F.

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

I don't like monster/lifted trucks

Last Night, I was run off the road by a pimpled freak in a lifted truck.I was... annoyed. I also chased the truck. However, other bad behavior, someone noted, is wiser left unshared. Therefore, I have edited it out for now.

Suffice to say that when it was all over, I ran on, back north of Adams, back to my route, faster, my anger relieved and the beast caged again, even if my inner savage had reminded me he was there and ready to back me up.

To make sure I channel it properly, I decided to expend my rage in a poem. Here:

Slips

Against you,
who deny that the sky
and the land,
and the sea could be free
to all man,
all reserved undeserved
I now stand
So that I can defy.

Upon you,
who demand that my hand
and my heart,
be enslaved and not crave,
for the start,
of the way you delay
I impart,
That I yearn to upturn.

With you,
who exact and extract
from us all
who propose and impose
without call
and therethrough take undue,
I will brawl,
and preempt in contempt.

You,
who belie you rely
on a ruse
who intend to depend
on abuse
and fall back to attack
on excuse.
won't assuage my red rage.

For I
am not cowed nor endowed
with your fear
disavowed and unbowed
I am clear,
houl aloud and am proud
and I sneer,
no regrets at your threats.

For I
understand that your hand
now grows weak,
you are ill and your will
becomes meek
And the laws are your jaws
and they creak.

Know I, who will stand and defy,
who is clear and will sneer at your fear,
call your ruse, your excuse to abuse,
and will brawl until all then must fall,
am still in civility's grip.
But it slips.




Marcie used to love my madman poetry, anyways. Hope you liked it. Night/Morning, whatever. Rawr.

F.

Of Preparation

With the tingle on my lips gone and the numbness of sleep sliding over me, I felt fleeting brushes of hair on my skin. I should have startled out of my sleep, but instead had that falling sensation we all know along with the feeling of hair sliding past my arms.

Light eventually struck the world around me as I slid down a billowing red slope of satin or some other unbelievably frictionless material. It felt like I was sinking into the cloth as I slid through it, and the strands caressed my arms and my legs, my whole body, more soothing than sensual.

I slowed and, from the endless expanse of red, I saw a white edge, then as I drew closer, slowing still, I saw silver water beyond. And as I came to a stop, somehow on my feet, the material retreated and various furnishings were revealed on a mostly unpolished but somehow comfortable granite floor.

Here was a 5-post bed with a pentagonal mattress, something I have never seen, yet seemed familiar. Black sheets stretched over it, pillows sat in a pile in the middle. the drapes were pulled up with red and gold braided cords, which shifted oddly from time to time. The frame appeared to be part of the floor, one piece of stone, continuous and unbroken.

There was a kind of lamp stand with an odd miniature gaslamp on it, black and white with a warm red flicker within. It sat next to a bookshelf with myriad books, all of them tiny, tiny versions of larger works. I pulled one out labeled, simply, "Cummings." Behind it was one labeled "Joyce."

I saw a multi-tiered desk nearby, the arms of which wrapped around the seat and merged with it oddly, though I knew it was a seat. I slid into it by stepping over an arm. There were dozens of drawers. I opened one.

Inside was a little note which read, in her writing, "Remind Frank to pack."

I was suddenly stricken by the anxiety that I had forgotten to pack, and then that I had forgotten why I was supposed to. I started opening drawers and flipping through empty sheets of paper. I finally opened one drawer and found a note.

Again, in her hand, a note. "Oh, honey, I was just teasing." Marcie's smirking admission, never false, only to keep me from obsessing on her latest cryptic comment.

I felt very sad for a moment and I clambered out of the odd desk. I was naked, and though I had likely been naked, I wondered how but was not anxious about it. I reached awareness of my dream state just as her voice tickled my neck, my ear.

"Because I used my hair to take them off, silly," the voice said.

Having become aware of my dream state, I froze and tried to reason through the situation. But my heart won out and I turned, looking back at the sea of red cloth.

I realized it was not cloth, but a massive, endless cascade of her hair. It wavered and then retreated, shrinking down as it reformed in scale and darkness, lightening and slowly turning to waves. It stopped as it formed in a thick blanket down her back, to the floor, the rock.

She turned, my beautiful baby. Again she was ageless and young, no cruelty of disease, no fear or pain or sadness. Not so for me. I felt tears, then heard them spatter on the floor as she walked over to me.

Her hair trailed behind like a bride's train and her smile was broad. She looked at me with her head tilted, circling me slowly, sauntering. I was frozen in place, afraid she might shatter with my dreamstate, if touch her I dared.

"I need you to be awake for this," she said. "Because it isn't something I think you will keep with you if you are really asleep."

I gulped and she took my hand in hers, that warm sensation so strong and real in the half-dream, the lucid fantasia. I pulled her into my arms and smelled her Chanel No. 5 again. I consciously tried to feel her flesh and was breathless as I did, my hands unable to cease, my mind-within-my-mind marveling at it all.

I did not have to say I loved her, but she had something to say to me.

"Honey, you get the details and you get the big picture, but you need to make sure you don't just dive in like you have," she said. "Because you're going to get hurt if you don't know what you are getting into, and I always tried to plan for both of us."

I nodded and wondered what she meant. Everything was a plan to me, something I had learned from her. Everything was a list, another thing I had learned. I wondered what she meant.

"You could also lose a good opportunity if you don't plan to take advantage of it, mister," she said, stroking my back and kissing my lips, the tingle returning to them, my hands tingling as I stroked at her.

She broke the kiss and smiled, "I told you so."

I panicked and fell, and there was no silky slope, no mass of hair. I awoke to the cold night again, and the tingle of my hands and lips. One was from my sleeping position, the other from the cold. I pulled the blanket into a tube around my head.

I decided that I would have a plan for visits, as irrational as it all was anyways. Somehow, I felt a little burned, but I had learned a lesson in just the way Marcie liked to teach them, too...

F.

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

The dream of Thoughtfulness

There was nothing at first but the muffled padding of my feet and a vague sense of expectation. Then there were lines as I walked, then I noticed it felt like marble under me. The vast chamber was walled with rust-tinged, coruscating glass. Deep, heavy bands of gold flowed well under the surface.

I looked down and there was no floor I could see, just an endless depth below me where the walls may have met or just seemed to... but I was calm. I looked up and, though I felt they had to be impossibly far away, there were clouds, rushing, like wisps of white smoke, dipping down between the divergent, refulgent slopes.

Then the light changed, became more brilliant... the gilded bands and wisps in the walls writhed and grew, and somehow, just as it was so luminescent that I couldn't look at it anymore, it melted and I was on a ledge of sorts, the glass now under my feet, soft but stable.

I smelled her first, the soft touch of Chanel No. 5 slipping over my nostrils. I turned and looked right into her eyes, her mouth was open and she smiled that smile, the one from her picture that I love so much, and she was young, younger than me by far suddenly.

Her lips did not move, but I heard her voice as I did so many times when thought was all she gave. It was more natural here, as it had never been when I responded to her in ways that seemed out of the blue, unbidden.

"You're on time, as usual. So let me show you what I found, and you can tell me if you like it. I hope you do," she lilted, singsong slipping into and out of a more chatty tone and back.

I walked behind her, noting her near-transparent gown and the soft lines of her lightly freckled flesh beneath. She led into a room of things I instantly recognized but could not name. She handed me a small but heavy, crystalline ball.

"Look inside," she said.

I did, and a flood of us washed over me as the ball pulled me in somehow. Marcie and I at our first Christmas, poor but besotted. Me opening a gift, a sorely-needed wallet, her opening mine, a set of scents from a bath store I had seen her smell and coo at.

It grew faster. Birthdays, more scents, perfumes, jewelry and clothes, sending her flowers, getting candy for her, delivering flowers at work... all flashed by. Then more gifts to me, years of her careful selections and agonizing gambles all rolled across my hands and heart, beads of warm glass against my skin as I broke out of the little globe and suddenly it was back in my hands.

"The reason it is the thought that counts is that holidays and birthdays and anniversaries come and go, but people stay with us for as long as we think of them. You always thought of me, I will always think of you. "

She smiled, and a little tingle played over my lips as she pulled my neck and my hands took her waist. Then the glossy, translucent bands of gold in their flowing, burnished encasements closed on me and I awoke to the cold of the early morning, 1:15 only an hour of sleep under my belt.

I closed my eyes, shedding no tears, but the lingering tingle on my lips faded gratefully slowly. Whether it was born from cold or warmth, I did not have time decide as I slipped thankfully back into another dream.


Which I will share another night.

F.

Monday, January 7, 2008

The Dreams

"Thoughtfulness, preparation, generosity, love, enterprise, passion and wisdom."

These were, in retrospect, what the dreams I had one morning in December communicated to me. My own "Christmas Carol," only without the pain and only a little scariness for my troubles. Before I share these dreams with the reader, I want to remind them of some other items I have posted, especially regarding dreams, our loved ones, death and continuance beyond it.

So, whether by my mind or by my heart, by Marcie or by the simple process of things working out in all of those, perhaps with the influence of too much meditation and flowing tears, I had a rough but sufficient sleep from about midnight to 8 a.m. December 25th. During it, I had dreams in sequence, waking from each and immediately trying to cram myself back into them, to feel close to her.

As is often the case with dreams along themes, and especially those in sequence, nothing was quite the same when I escaped into sleep and rejoined the dream state. My lucidity in sleep, by the way, is both a curse and a boon. I can remember much, but I cannot always force my dreams to do what I want.

For these dreams, it was best that I wasn't able to. They were perfect how they were. Tomorrow, I will share the first of them, which I will simply call Thoughtfulness, because it was all about that aspect of Marcie.



Sunday, January 6, 2008

Teej linked

I have added Teej's "Smells Like Happy" to my related blogs list. A fellow journalist! Check her out if you have time. I will post something tomorrow, maybe one of the dreams.

Upset at myself

I found more of Marcie's written materials last night, from this year's birthday, but I appear to have mislaid it. There were also more notes from her from the Humboldt visit and other occasions. I am quite distraught. On top of that, Christi's computer lost a lot of information during the storm in Northern California. Jane thinks some pictures went with it.

I did not bring my own camera because, though I was on almost a tour the last night, I was hosting them and wanted to focus on sharing before my visit ended. We'll see if Christi has those images on camera still (via memory card) and I'll post some other time if so.

I can't do this stuff today, too much is on my mind. I feel as if I have lost a part of Marcie, but I have decided to let it find me. Besides, I have already torn the trash apart looking for it... crap.

On a more positive note, I have a new reader. Teej, the commenter below, has a blog, too... I will be linking and tracking back, maybe.

See you Monday, folks.

F.