Daymares

The daymares occurred over a couple of days:  November 20 and 21, 2012.  It was such a bizarre experience that I didn't even realize was humanly possible.  They first occurred in the French Quarter, of all places.  My brother, who was visiting, wanted to weave in and out of old bookstores that day.  I took photos the whole time I was walking around like a zombie.  Everything in the world was as it is normally, but for brief periods all of the beings (humans and cats) were transformed into broken versions of themselves.  The people in the French Quarter had skewed, asymmetrical bodies (think a daylight, normal version of Thriller zombies without the zombie aspect and normal clothes).  Nothing I saw was not there.  I wasn't hallucinating random things; only the people were affected.  The version with the cats the next day was truly terrifying because one of my greatest fears is for the cats to be hurt.

Photos taken in the French Quarter whilst I was experiencing daymares:

http://southerngothicyogini.blogspot.com/2014/06/posting-from-november-22-2012-photos.html

http://southerngothicyogini.blogspot.com/2014/06/posting-from-november-22-2012-in-french.html

The day in the French Quarter, November 2012, was the first day that I had trouble with food. I lost my appetite, food tasted off, and I could only stomach beignets at Café du Monde.

Chaos of Sound and Sound of Mind

crispy, dry leaves

Over a year and half later, and my mind often revolves around the events of late 2012:  strange feelings of unwell, couple of days in and out of daymares, hand-balances and arm balances and my near-enlightenment, imprisonment and the Alliance Health Center.

I returned home with a lot of hope.  I came home to a world that was changed and chaotic.  

My parents argued over placing Christmas tree lights on the tree.  So, in the hope of silencing them, I volunteered to untangle and place Christmas lights on a Christmas tree for the first time in my life.  I was thin and unsteady, but decided it did not matter.  I could not explain how hard it is to dangle upon a ladder with an aorta pulse swaying your whole body off balance.  I wanted to make the world better.  I wanted to be better.  I knew I could not explain how unstable my body was; it might be mistook for my brain.

This was to be the first Christmas with the first grandchild for my parents.  But, my youngest sister and her family had become estranged from our piece of the family.

Christmas Tree 2012

Baking Christmas treats to try to prove my cognitive function and to regain my patience and composure.  The whole world is more frustrating;  I'm absolutely overwhelmed by everything.  Sound is the most disturbing.  It is all amplified beyond my belief.  I just want to hear the natural world as it was.  I cry that I am lost in this loud place.  The subtlety of tree leaves moving in the wind, of crickets, of cats trudging gingerly through fallen dry leaves, are lost when all of them become exaggerated.  I hear electricity for the first time in my life.  I must be crazy, but I test my reality.  I plug the portable DVD player in, and I unplug the portable DVD player.  I hear the static, the charge.  I do this again.  I confirm it.  I am overwhelmed.  I jump at a sound that's too loud.  It is truly terrifying.  It is nearly impossible to tell where sound is coming from when it is all louder.  Is there someone in the garden or across the street?  I don't know what is wrong with me, but this is not something anyone should ever have to manage.  You can learn coping skills, but you cannot manage or control the modern or natural worlds.  

To see is not to hear, but we know what sound belongs with what image.

When you live in survival mode for weeks as I did, it is a great challenge to be patient and understanding with other people.  I just can't put up with squabbling over little things.  I can't deal with people who catastrophize everyday events.   I hold myself to a higher standard. I want to embody la petite yogini, who honors the yamas and niyamas. I struggle with my own bitterness and wonder what went wrong with my karma. Discovering and experiencing a darker side of humanity and a new level of ignorance is very difficult to come to terms with as my reality/our reality.

Posting from January 8, 2013 - Chapter 1: thinking in old fashioned hypertext

This story begins the night of my cousin Elizabeth's wedding, the second week of November 2012.  The wedding was outside of Hammond, Louisiana.  I did not sleep that night.  I could not remember sleeping a full night's sleep from Saturday, November 10 through about December 10 or 15.  I can't remember the first night I actually slept more than 3 hours straight.  

The night after November 10 (the 11th, I believe) I remember my mind and heart racing.  I remember dancing the dances from the Buffy episode "Once More with Feeling," which was the musical put together by Adam Shankman.  I was in my bedroom probably wearing some just below the knee length leggings.  I dance both the parts of Buffy and her younger sister Dawn.  I danced and danced.  Adam Shankman is also a judge on my favorite summer television show So You Think You Can Dance.  So, I went into a Bollywood style dance, as well.

I was having the best time of my life playing in my bedroom.

Then, I thought why is my mind working so quickly?  Why am I linking all of these memories and facts that are stored in my mind?  I am thinking in old fashioned hypertext.  Why are all of these memories of my life coming to the forefront of my mind?  Why am I thinking about experiences of my past with such great clarity?

Is this enlightenment?  I had been meditating instead of sleeping the night before (the 11th or the 12th?).

Then, I thought about one of my favorite television shows Doctor Who.  It is a science-fiction show in which the Doctor travels through time and space trying never to double back on his own timeline.

There was an episode in which a daughter is made from his DNA sample, and she skips childhood.  She dies at the end instead of regenerating - as far as he knows.  But, the show ends with her being brought back to life after The Doctor has already left and moved on to his next destination.

So, I was thinking am I a daughter lost in time and space?

Perhaps.

In the show Doctor's Daughter named Jenny does gymnastics through a laser beam grid.

I began doing what any yogini would do.  I began practicing my inversions:  handstands and armbalancing and headstands, too.  These came with greater ease than they had ever come before.

This was one of the best experiences of my life.

However, I was really hungry and thirsty, too.

All of the food and water began tasting strangely.  I felt like it was poisoned.  Some tasted, perhaps, like rat poison (no, I've never tasted that before).  Some tasted like iodine or formaldehyde.  I kept searching for water and food that tasted correctly - like how I remember.  It was very confusing.  And, I panicked at this point.

Finally, I found some dark chocolate and that was my safe food along with sardines.  I dumped the sardines in a bowl for me and a bowl for Orlan and did my best to keep us hydrated.

I worried that the cats were dying.  I worried that I was dying.

My heart was racing and beating arhythmically.    

I tried listening to my CDs and none of them sounded correctly.  They seemed all garbled and tortured and ruined.  The lyrics were changed.

Was this a living nightmare?  A day-mare? This is what it seemed to me.

One point in time I was a fabulous yogini.  The next point in time I was in a panic to save myself and all of the cats in the house.

Dad laid in his recliner with his cat Flash; she keeping watch over him.

Mom was speaking like a frightened girl who had just lost her father to cancer -- not allowed to visit him in the hospital and say her goodbyes.

What really happened?  Perhaps my story is the truth.  It is after all my story.

The food problem freaked me out the most.  My safe foods kept becoming unsafe, tasting differently.

I'll end this posting here.  There are a lot more details and things I remember.  I'm just taking my time writing them down.  The chronology probably will never be perfect.

©2013 D. Moss

Posting from November 22, 2012 - in the French Quarter, New Orleans, Louisiana

Posting from November 22, 2012, Photos from the Day I Spent in the French Quarter, New Orleans, Louisiana

This was the day I knew I was unwell.