sleepless at home November 2012

sleepless at home November 2012

In November of 2012, I just knew I was feeling strange.  I could not sleep after November 10.  It was an odd reality for someone who spent previous years lethargic and sleeping at least 9 hours a day and needing a nap.  So, I sat in my bedroom with a restless, strange mind.  I thought meditation could calm my mind and rest my body.  I did not understand not sleeping and what it would become.  From restlessness, my mind turned to overly active and playful:  delirium?  My imagination took over where dreams would exist.  Unfortunately, an active imagination cannot change the reality of memory. 

We have all heard of "your life flashes before you eyes," but how we view this has been informed by loads of television programs and movies.  My mind did the time-warp, and it was an odd and fascinating experience which I hope will never be repeated.  I fell back through my timeline with every memory unlocked moving towards my birth.  Everything was super-realistic, as I sat on the bedroom floor where I had crumpled from exhausting myself in a hyper-dance.  Just as quickly as I fell back, I then fell forward with a rush to my head:  vvroop.  I was back in the present mind, confused and strange.  I tried calling this period near the end of November 2012 my "near enlightenment," partly because my mind and body were running and working faster than ever linking words and topics and data stored . . . Others call it my nervous breakdown.  I don't know.  I wish I could still access those notes from Biology, Trigonometry, European History, or English Literature where I scrawled in the margins. Between the energetic awakening, there were lulls where I felt lost in my bedroom suite.  I misplaced a brush, a piece of chocolate; time was incongruent.  This disturbed me immensely.

Missing time.  Missing mind.  Missing things.  Missing thoughts.

I try to write to a topic because there were so many layers to this experience, most of which were unusual for me.  I could note them.  I could put them into memory, but I could not figure out what had gone wrong with me or what had gone wrong with the world.

. . . . to have a pensieve like Professor Dumbledore

paradoxical defects

circa December 2012
 

pushed and tugged and shoved

It wasn't a dream

starring at dawn every morning the only beautiful colors to be seen

beige, upon beige, upon beige, upon beige

I give it a name, as anyone who enjoys reading paint chip swatches and nail polish tops would:  "Desert Storm Beige."

So, how do you feel being a beige person with an off-pallor from poor health or nutrition in your beige world?  Perhaps, if it wasn't winter, it wouldn't be so sad.

I read the schedule posted outside of the nurses station:  "Outside Time."

I really could use some time communing with nature.

So, it's like you're in the clinker, you ask, and a psychopathic nurse named Shannon explains.  You must ask permission to smoke, at a health center, in order to be allowed to go enjoy "Outside Time."  I'm not into being ridiculous normally, but figure let's give this a try, after all the schedule reads, "Outside Time," not "Smoking Time."  I ask permission from the psychiatrist, feeling ill and ridiculous.  Dressed in all my many layers including my socks with shower shoes, I line up at the secure elevator which requires key access in order to escape.  We are taken down to the basement level in what, of course, is the most disturbing concourse of a hallway from the 1960s with little slits of windows to an exterior door.  All of this building is in disrepair, but I like terrazzo floor.

"John Waters, please jump out from somewhere with Ashton Krutcher," I think.  It would be better to be the target of some unreality reality television program, than for this to actually be my reality.  The stocky redhead next to me introduces herself: "Leviton."  I respond, "like levitate or Louis Vuitton or Megatron?"  She's amused. 

Her name is actually Carrie.  Yeah, I see an image of Sissy Spacek when I learn this, too.

At a later point in time she introduces herself as "4 of 6."  I don miss a beat, "I'm 3 of 5."  This woman is not unintelligent.  A good Voyager fan is not hard to diagnose.  Also, I, the middle child, just knew birth order and the number of children in your family really does affect who we become.

So, back to "Outside Time."  You go outside in a courtyard bounded by the 6 story hospital, the bizarre concourse, the fascinating stain glass chapel, and a tall chain link fence part covered in black material.  Yes, of course, I am looking for an escape route.  

So as you exit the door, the nurse stands holding the door open; a volunteer inmate is given the task of handing out clove cigarettes, and the second employee lights the cigarettes.  I say I don't smoke.  I try to find a bit of life in the courtyard, but it's winter and this poor garden just doesn't like that much milling about and smoking.  The one sign of hope is the gigantic camilla bush.  I'll spend what seems like a lifetime starring out of the window from room 618 to see the bit of color in the blooms.  I never attend "Outside Time," again; it's far too depressing and unhealthy to receive so much second hand smoke.

I miss walking into the sky on trees that fell during Katrina, but struggled to survive at odd angles.  The cats mapped them as a super highway and would quickly make their way around the woods at the back of the property.  Life, breath, color, air, sky, breeze, nothing stagnant when you truly step outside and commune with nature.

©2014 D. Moss

Recollections of a Worse Time

She's a lunatic in her parents asylum.

Stolen away from this home in a violent way

I come to find out yesterday there was never a hope of a medical condition.  My parents took the only route they could see through a system that solely deals with mental illness.  I lingered in prison unnecessarily.  I lingered waiting for a proper medical evaluation.

My behavior, as strange as it was, was all based upon the instincts of survival mixed with a little confusion over the sensory impute I was receiving.  Try to play god to a child acting out of the ordinary.  It is a lot easier than you could ever believe.

"Bitter much?"  I ask myself often.  "Why not, " is often my response.

I have a history of treatment for balancing hormones without ever a diagnosis.  But, now I have the preexisting conditions of mental illness, a banner perhaps you could hold high, if you only knew in some places it gives people carte blanche to treat you as inhuman.  The drugs they gave me did not help; they made my pee smell of cream-of-wheat.  

Room 618 is where you linger with the amplified sound of the HVAC return retrofitted into the bedroom.  Pink noise and noise of a co-ed dormitory with men loitering outside of the room.  Exposed asbestos tile near the new motion activated sink. 

Nothing but a flimsy shower curtain for the old toilet-shower room.  The shower has been defunct for years with a rusted shower head and some previous inmate's litmus test strips littering the shower pan.  The original matching blue toilet was replaced with a contemporary "comfort height" toilet which really is handicapping for a woman my size, under 5 foot tall.

The toilet never flushes correctly, though it makes a great attempt at it, not completely overflowing at every attempt at flushing.  The water from the sink tastes of blood - too much iron.  The main stack must be old cast iron and rusted innward.  An expensive repair, I know, I've learned lots watching people flip houses on tv.  I wish I could focus properly on a television in this place and escape in my mind, but what does it matter they have an awful, old television down the hall.

My body feels sea-sick.  I am in a haze.  

"Meditation Time" I read on the schedule posted outside the nurses station.  Oh, I realize too late I'm the only yogini in the place.

"Medication Time," well, a mistake you can smile at today.

This was meant to be an "Health Center."

Post from June 19, 2014 - Aorta Pulse Hypersensitivity: The Human Metronome

Aorta Pulse Hypersensitivity:  The Human Metronome

Thin as I've ever been

under the weight of puberty

pulsing loudly in my body and mind

the sound of the universe or a heart working overtime

my hips tick-tock back and forth like I am a human metronome

weakness in the spine is where my body is disjointed

hard to keep my footing as my torso and hips move to the pulse, but without a purpose

lying in my bed I feel as if I'm in my little ship

the wake of the waking attempts to lull me into sleep

in the bath you can see the pulse through the skin like a tom-tom drum kicking from within

every high and low of the heartbeat adding a new layer to the experience of time

In 2013, a cardiologist confirmed that what was overwhelming me was a hypersensitivity to the aorta pulse.  He studied medicine in the military and said it was not uncommon in thin soldiers.  He said they used to just cut men open to see if it was a aorta aneurism or just a hypersensitivity.  They checked mine with an ultrasound.  It has taken over a year to become less sensitive to this odd rhythmic feeling.  It was complicated with the amplified sound of hyperthyroidism.  

Post from April 13, 2013 - Spring Tree Leaves

Post from April 8, 2013 - Bywater Neighborhood Homes Tour 2013, New Orleans, Louisiana

 On Sunday, I enjoyed the annual Bywater Neighborhood Association Home Tour.  Here are a few things I saw on the walk around the neighborhood:

Pediment on House on Independence Street

Functional Shutters

Pollinated Bricks

Roach Border

Driveway of the House My Mother Lived in as a Child, Independence Street

Victory Arch

Detail of Arch Honoring the Citizens of the Ninth Ward Who Died in World War I

Great Uncle Emile Wenzel

Great Uncle George Schroeder

Erickson Cousin

Post from February 2, 2013 - Skewed Vision of a could be Slayer

Let's just say that Buffy was lucky to have Angel collect the heart of a demon when she gained the demon's telepathic powers.  She was lucky to have Xander revive her from drowning.  She was fortunate to have Spike for loads of reasons.  But, she really could have used a hand when she had to dig herself out of her own grave.

Posting from February 1, 2013 - My Timeline: Purgatory 1, Summerhill, Dublin, and Trainspotting Character in Edinburgh

The first level of Purgatory was somewhat akin to being trapped in Das Boot.  The sound of metal creaking in the bowels of a submarine.  Metal gates echoing for what seems like eternity.  Steel everywhere, no color, no sunlight to speak of, and a bed made out of rough blankets which would fit right in the barracks on either side in World War II.
I thought of the joyous scene when they are drinking and feasting and break into "It's a long long way to Tipperary and Tipperary is our home . . . "

So, let's all travel back through my timeline to when I was a very, very young 20 year old living in Dublin, Ireland.

ASDA Bus Station, Bournemouth, England, Age 20

It was the darkest and most depressing winter of my life.  I worked off Grafton Street with lots of young people from places other than Ireland.  We had to dress in turn of the last century (1900) servant uniforms.

I had a pleasant conversation one morning with a man who used to tour with T. Rex about songs about Deborahs.

The Bedroom I Let, Summer St. North, Dublin

I lived in Summerhill in North Dublin adjacent to the Council Estates.  I would walk to work in the dark down O'Connell Street with a solo garda on the beat.
At work, there wasn't a window letting in the misty grey daylight, and by the time my shift was done, there was absolutely no light.  To get to the women's locker room, I would go through a door from the bakeshop near the entrance and go down stairs then upstairs like I was inside a German Expressionist movie.

I once cleared Thom Yorke's breakfast plate and watched him read and drink his tea in my empty section.  All of the Irish girls acted like I was special, but we all know I was just a freak. 
I would go sit in Saint Stephen's Green somedays to enjoy the only green I could really find in the dreary city center.  One day, I was sitting on a rock reading a newspaper, and I was approached by a cute, Irish guy.  He asked me if I wanted some drugs.  I laughed and wasn't sure he was serious.  I mean as a child of the '80s, Nancy Reagan had prepared me for this precise moment:  "I'm just saying 'No' to drugs.  That means, 'No, thank you.'" 

Broken Window Pane

The children in Summerhill didn't know how to play.  They would just fight and make each other scream.  One day, they threw a rock through my bedroom window.  I had to sleep in all of the clothes I owned that night; the landlord couldn't fix the window until the next day.  The Frenchmen with Polish last names who I lived with convinced me to report the crime to the Garda station because I spoke the best English.

Now, let's go ahead and take a commuter flight to beautiful Scotland.  I hadn't seen sunshine all winter, but when the plane approached Edinboro golden sun glistened through the clouds.

Edinburgh Castle, Scotland

I called my friend from a telephone booth right in the shadow of the castle (too expensive for me to tour).  And, what do you know a character right out of Trainspotting starts yelling at me to get off of the phone.  So, holding the phone in my hand, I turn to face him and I yell and scream back at him:  I'm paying to use the telephone and he can wait his turn or go run around the corner to another payphone.  He's Scottish; he should know where the hell to find another phone in his own country.

Squirrel, Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh

Edingburgh in the mid 1990s

Post from January 29, 2013 - Recuperating in the Backyard

Violet

Gerber Daisy Blooming in January

My Favorite Type of Daffodil

Daffodil in Profile

This flower had a wonderful warm scent.

Let's be truthful, when you come home with twice as many grey hairs than you had two months prior, you are forever changed and not any younger.

Post from January 14, 2013 - December 2012 Drawings: Batch 5 of 5

trying to remember mom's eyes

craving easter chocolate

what I think I looked like when I was younger

I went to this bizarre Christmas performance by a choir from Philadelphia, Misssissippi.  I swear I was trapped inside of a John Waters movie for at least an hour.

severely dehydrated

arm, gear and kaleidoscope

girl lost in a "health center"

giving color

giving joy

weary eyes

Posting from January 13, 2013 - December 2012 Drawings: Batch 4 of 5

left-handed figure drawing

chairs and jewelry

french tablecloth

feigning sleep

emerald city

panic

age 37