Daily Question: What does Spring Mean to You? (3/22)

What does Spring Mean to You?

Cool breezes, warm smells, buds, blossoms and blooms, grass, butterflies, lingering sunsets, picnics, playing in the dirt, slow walks, long walks, walks of every kind. Sitting in empty fields. Swimming streams. But especially the cleansing rain falling on my arms, my shoulders, saturating hair and trickling down my forehead, tapping out myriad kaleidoscopic rhythms on my eyes. Jumping puddles, into puddles, swimming in rain.

-Raine

Daily Question: Where do You Feel Most Comfortable? (3/20)

In an empty, preferably secluded, field or promontory, in the woods, overlooking a body of water and the sunset. It's best at dusk when all of the colors of the sunset wash together, fading into an endless expanse of plum. Walking in the rain sans umbrella. Wandering up and down trails. Walking aimlessly and exploring empty places. It may sound strange but: being knocked about by waves at the beach. Occasionally, when the ocean's been too calm, I've spoken to the waves, professed love, sometimes dared them (pretty hubris leaden, I know) but its so beautiful. Its like everything else disappears - the screaming children on the beach, the blaring stereos. Yeah, I'm probably a lifeguard's worst nightmare. Also, the lighting section of Home Depot.

"It is what it is."
"It usually is." I said 

Hands trembling at 
the thought of 
your lips brush 
against my ear 
whispering in tones 
i cannot speak, nor sketch, nor 
can I paint for you a picture
 it has been silent 
since the sun set 
the cars outside have stopped 
their idle chattering whine, their roaring 
engines drawn into the distance

There's been a chill in here 
your hands 
give off an electric tumbling shock 
magnetic rumbles fumbling their 
way down my arms and through 
my arms 
have fused in two 
my back: fingers fixed into my flesh 
I have often found myself wondering 
what does it feel like to be
inside a person 
to make oneself their 
Here and Now 
to make one's self  
a figment of reality

I imagine it is dry, a firm 
embracing of the chest and nothing 
more than 
spoken sounds are 
simple words still uncommitted 
I imagine that it must have- wait
it's weightless as
the moon
is drawn into
its center 
is gravity drawn down to the earth
Weightless

It sees itself as one
reflected as 
I see myself
reflect
on its reflection in my window
beaming brighter on
my face
is watched  - and blushes brighter still
 it shimmers          it knows
     it is not real         revolts
       this revolution          broken 
          against its own mistrusted orbit 
       falls face first 
    on to the glass
reflecting on itself

And curtains.
My mind is drawn by curtains 
drawn across 
how many lines? 
There are no curtains on our bedroom windows and
I find myself 
gazing away, musing - suddenly 
distracted by some detail
I had not thought to ponder before:
   Windows
      This house is made of windows
          And they are glass.

                --S.I.B, "Raine"

Missing Connections #1

Dear Angel,

I know you don't know me from Adam but I saw you down the street the other day whilst walking to the path train and it occurred to me that you have been there everyday this week. You were standing around, you know, in front of that duplex down by Newark ave laughing raucously with the junkie who drops in on my neighbor from time to time, drinking mead or wine or - whatsit you people like to drink? Whatever it was, it was apparent (for so many reasons) that you were pretty trashed and feeling rather... um, amorous. And while your plans for the day aren't really any of my business, nor your reasons for being here, I just thought that if the person up there isn't going to say something, someone aught to.

I could totally see your halo, dude. Yep, your halo.-

Now, I don't know if you thought you were being slick with your too small leather jacket, your muscle man tee, those oh so very tight pants you had hanging off your ass or that quite poorly wrapped turban. I don't know if you were just being sloppy or trying to blend and quite frankly, Angel, I don't care. Tuck that in or something, will ya! First of all: you never know what kind of crazies might be lurking around just thinking, "Man, wish I could find an angel right about now. I could totally steal their wings and sell them to religious fanatics on eBay." Yes: eBay, my friend. eBay. Your wings are gonna end up on some mid-western catholic's mantle piece sandwiched in between Scott Bakula about to have his blood drained by the Vampire Jesus and a moldy piece of bread imprinted with the Virgin Mary's face. And I'm not too sure you'd like that, Angel.

Plus what if God found out? The shit you've been doing this week is not cool and not okay, Angel. There are children living in this neighborhood. Its bound to have some sort of horrible consequences for someone and I'm pretty sure it won't be you. Oh yeah, just try to look confused or something, Angel. I know how your people are. You go out, find some poor impressionable schmuck and tell him you'll whisk him away from all of life's problems if he takes you out on the town and shows you a good time. Then when daddy finds out its: "Oh, it wasn't my fault. Humans are always trying to molest me." I mean, look what happened last time one of you guys started flashing their shit around: IT RAINED FIRE - that's what and, honestly, I think the good people of Sodom can tell us all where this is going. So put your hat back on, find yourself a creepy hobo-shift (like a normal divinity in cognito) and go about your business or its gonna be a bumpy ride - FOR EVERYONE. Goddamn exhibitionist angels...

Anal Bead Fury

Don't know how I got there but I was inside of what looked to be a shop in the middle of some dusty middle-american plain. If it was a shop, looks like they must have sold furniture 'cause that's all I can remember being surrounded by. What I do know is that I'd gone there voluntarily and probably alone. It was getting dark and outside the wind was whipping around in a worrisome way. My father found me inside. He was with the rest of my "family". Who exactly? I can't remember but I was both distinctly aware and annoyed that they were there. That was when the first tornado hit. It was howling at the windows and the storm outside had increased itself to such thickness - like a dark soup marked with striations of dust-blown particles in varying shades of gray. I could barely make out the fiend struggling restlessly against the horizon. It didn't seem to be making much movement to either side but it had grown minutely larger - and that's how I knew it was coming straight at us. I warned people. A few of them argued with me, running to windows in a vain attempt to deny my prediction of horrors. With them eventually subdued, we began staking out the securest location in which to preserve ourselves. The tornado hit and something - I didn't have the time or inclination to find out at the moment - battered and injured my leg. Then it was over. But not for long.

I stood up when the coast seemed clear. I'm not sure when or how Necro and Zombie (some of my real-life friends) showed up, whether they were together and whether or not there were other people from my actual life with them. I suspect that there were, as some other names come to mind. I am pretty sure that they weren't there before the storm roughened but there they were. The second and third tornadoes appeared on the horizon (the second which, very uncharacteristically of tornadoes, looked like a string of anal beads or the makeshift chain of marbles that my occupational therapist gave me in physical rehab to regain my manual dexterity, which also looked suspiciously like a chain of anal beads). It was the shapes, almost stylized and seemingly controlled by some outside will that started me thinking that there was no way this could have been a 'natural' disaster.
The warning was sounded throughout the [store?] and everyone took position again. We modified them somewhat, for the tornado seemed to be coming at us from a slightly different trajectory. This time, instead of being in the center of the room beneath a piece of furniture, I was huddled up against a wall with Zombie hidden halfway under a [sofa?] and a battered old mattress and (I kid you not) she was feeling me up (WTF?!?). Somehow, as it turns out, we'd managed to choose the perfectly wrong location to hide because the tornado managed to struck against the wall just to our side. The impact was, or so I've read, negligible and strangely nothing like you would expect a it to be. It was solid (the impact) more like a big mac truck or giant ogre had slammed itself in to the side wall of a house than a massive, churning force of pure, natural fury. A few items fell on us. Okay, a lot of Big items fell on us. Zombie and I, who were closest to the point of impact, were thrown maybe a foot toward the center of the room. We were pretty terrified and, once again, something hit my leg (WTF with my leg!?!). Eventually the storm cleared. Everyone was fine, minus a few scrapes and BRUISES. And after waiting for a while, perhaps a half hour subjective time, we ventured outside.

And make no mistake: this is where everything gets weird.

We walked outside reluctantly where we were greeted by clear skies and an empty, albeit dusty, horizon. I don't know how much time we spent aimlessly ambling about. There was nothing around, just the [store?] and a bunch of people. Not all of them were my friends or family. Not all of them had been in the [store?] with us but there was no trace of any other building but ours. We saw a bevy of trucks heading toward us on the horizon interspersing a very large group of people in bright orange hazmat suits. I said something to the effect of:

"Uh-oh. They're wearing puffy suits."

And all of a sudden some random government suit standing in front of me with no hazmat on said:

"Yes. And they're wearing plastic bags on their feet too."

It was clearly a reference to the way hazmat shoes sometimes sorta look like plastic bags tied around the feet. Strangest of all: I was no longer me anymore. I had somehow regressed into a little girl. If I had to infer, about 9-11 yrs old. With messy hair and shabby, beat up clothing. The first indication was the way he spoke to me: adult to child condescension mixed with a hint of knowing sarcasm. My friends were gone and, in fact, did not matter. I'm assuming that they didn't exist to me in this part of the dream. I wasn't alone though. My family was there although the only one with the same form as in my real life was my father. He looked traumatized and burned out, sorta like he did after the fire last year. It was that look of having just lost so much of your livelihood, so many of your memories. That look of not really knowing what to do. I had a feeling that I knew many of the random people around me. And the girl had a history. Like most of my dream personas, it's not that I wasn't myself at age 23. It's that I was her with a past and relationships with the people around me. I knew that I was a child. I had two younger siblings who were with me: one boy and one girl. I knew that I was fiercely protective of them but they were, like all younger siblings especially in that age group, irritating as hell. They were frightened and clinging to me. I knew that I was unappreciated and people always assumumed that I was less intelligent than them because of my age when I knew most of them were idiots with their heads up their asses (much the way I did at that age). I know that that had been part of the reason they'd been so reluctant to believe me inside. That was definitely a thread of connection between this and the first half of the dream. What happened to me in the paradigm of my life had taken place for her within her life's paradigm as well. I had simply switched over into hers (thats the best way I can describe it like there had been parallel versions of us at different points in life).

Anyhow, we were taken to a refuge camp where there was no outside communication. No one had cellphones or anything like that anyway. I/she knew that this was not a good sign. We also knew that this had something to do with aliens and were VERY distrustful of the government. Everyone else seemed to be in so much shock that they just went along with the big orange men. Another thing, at this point I became very aware of the thick, crusty, almost gooey coating of dust on all of us/everything. The government guys assured us that everything was all right. Not believing them and being a child in the aftermath of a disaster, I was able to sneak away with my siblings and find an old broken sink to wash in. Miraculously it worked. We started trying to wash the gooey-dust (grust) off but it didn't go anywhere. We scrubbed, it stayed. I became very aware that there was just something very wrong about this stuff. I was pretty sure that it was some alien substance and we were about to become the victims of some massive government cover up.

I kept trying to tell my siblings to keep their hands out of their eyes and mouths but they were too young and stupid to understand what was going on. All they really got (according to me in the dream - hypocrie much?) was that something terribly frightening had taken place and now it was over. They wanted to joke and play. I did not. I finally found something, a chemical (can't remember what) in a canister. I remember that in any other circumstances, using this stuff would have been a pretty bad idea - but that was under any other circumstances. I told them not to do anything, just watch, poured it on my hands and started scrubbing at the grust. After a little while it turned into sludge and I was completely relieved but worried that the chemical I'd put on my hands would have some horrible side effect. Then I noticed that my little sister had followed suit. I started yelling at her to rinse her hands off now but she just giggled and handed the canister to my brother. I started yelling, unheeded, that you should never -EVER- try something before the first trial has proven it to be safe. They were to wash their hands off until I made sure I wasn't poisoning myself, etc. That was when my little sister put her hand to her mouth. I think she may have already rinsed it, then touched the sink, which was also coated in the grust and transferred it back onto her hand without knowing. Somehow I also got it in my mouth and we all started trying, unsuccessfully, to spit it out.

The next minute I was wiping my mouth in an attempt to keep the massive gooey loogie dripping down my face from landing on my newly washed pillow case. And I was really, really freaked out.

What is "This" anyway?

"This" was originally supposed to be my dream blog: mostly because I've decided that a lot of my dreams are way too freaky not to write down for future reference but also because I'd rather not devote all the dead trees necessary to keep a physical dream journal. Another reason for this is because I don't mind sharing my freaky dreams or finding out what people have to say about them.

So, if you're reading this: Enjoy!

If the post is tagged "Dreams" feel free to psychoanalyze me.


An amendment:

If the post is tagged "Story" or "Excerpt" just comment on the story. In such a case your psychoanalysis is far from welcome. So if you don't have something constructive to say on the literary front I'd just as soon not have to read it and go through the trouble of deleting your comment.

K Thanx.

- S. Irulan