siberia

during the past few years, dan and i have spent time in separate bedrooms. for many years prior to this, we shared a double bed. but neither of us are small people, and when we decided to merge bedrooms again last year, i just pushed together the double bed and my acquired single bed.

when dan saw it, the first thing he said was: "my god, it's like siberia...it just goes on and on." (;

it's actually quite comfortable--mainly because we're both thrashers, and on separate beds, you don't feel your partner shifting around and trying to get comfy. the exception is that if you want to cuddle you have to roll across the divide.

this morning i woke up a bunch--i think i saw every hour after 2 am, and then between 530 and 7 i just laid there, cocooned in my down comforter, listening to the white noise fan, the burbling vaporizer, and the feathers in the comforter crinkling, awake and drowsy. for a while i thought, "i should get up and exercise, since dan was kind enough to fix my exercise machinery." but i couldn't get up the gumption.

i thought about dan's blog, and how sometimes you can be so close to a person that it creates the biggest distance on the planet. i thought about the work on my desk and the time in which i had to complete it. i thought about devin and babies, buying a new house, renewing the lease on our current townhome, how much i wanted it to snow. i thought about the dreams i'd been having, strange and convoluted, not scary but for some reason unsettling. of course i couldn't recall any of them, just that i'd been unsettled.

suddenly i wanted to curl up next to dan, just to be close to him. i laid there thinking about all the things i'd been mulling. i remembered two things, right then:

1. one of dan's issues with me was that i always waited for him to make the first move
2. my friend cari saying that if you're having issues then you have to ask yourself: what are you going to do about it?

it seems like an aggressive stance toward emotional and mental items. but it's something that i think people like me, who wander between distraction and depression, need to do on a regular basis. perhaps everyone does; i don't know. but i suppose i avoid it, because to answer that question, to even take the first step, would mean that the problem would be on its way to being resolved.

resolution, in my world, exists only with dishwashers and sitcoms. it's not something in which i try to take an active part. i'll help it along, but i won't initiate it.

and i think asking that question is the R L Ermey of brain militia.

someone has to police my mental status, and it has to be me.

i'm still learning the ropes, mind you. i'm not able to all the time take control of the runaway train and route it correctly again. but i am trying. and that's something, right?

***
anyway, i lay awake, trying to excise the wandering of my mind and erase the odd sense that i just dreamt i was a half-dressed barbie doll, plastic tits and all.

trying to get over the need in my marrow to cuddle up to dan's sleeping warmth and leech some comfort from that heat.

the two thoughts ran like tandem hamsters through my head, endless circles: start something, kim! what am i going to do about it?

i rolled across the great divide and found a limb; felt like a knee, folded. i didn't much care. the frantic pace of my head slowed a notch. i could feel the heat radiating through the comforter. hear his breathing, smell the familiar scent of sleeping dan.

***
when i got to work this morning i thought about that morning, laying there next to an unconcious man who feels like an extension of my own body, but whose mind is often further away than any hands can grasp. and how mine often does the same to him--hiding, flitting about, crawling into the darkness.

i think about serena--the other day her birthday reminder popped up in my yahoo! mail. lingering there in memory is a dangerous place, especially when it's a memory of pain. i think of my dad's mother a lot too--when i wake in the morning and stand up, the first thing i see is her perfume bottle. then i think of the tender scent of her, wearing that perfume, and i think of her laying on her deathbed, lungs rattling.

it's like biting your lip again, just after you have bitten it the first time.

in the dark, at my desk, in the car, reading a book--those memories overtake me, pull me under. they are just as familiar, much of the time, as the feeling of love and calm, and they beckon me towards that dark end of the pool. can i stop them? can i keep them at bay? the question then becomes: what am i going to do about them?

laying on that bed this morning i wavered--i could have remained on my side, could have suppressed the need to roll closer to dan. it's what i would usually do, the litany of fears: what if i wake him? what if he's angry that i woke him? what if what if what if...

thinking those two things--i CAN start something, i CAN do something about this--that rolled me over, that silenced some of those clamoring thoughts. knowing that i can try--that even if i i fail, i have tried--that is to what i should cling. the other things--the doubts, the pain, the frustration and the apathy--they're still around, old relations i cannot remove from my blood. but i have the choice, i always have the choice, of whether i wish to allow my habitual responses to rule me, or if i choose to question them and martial some random order in my mind.

***
in siberia, i imagine that there is no time to dwell on these things.

i also imagine the alternate: that this morning some person woke and thought in another language something akin to my thoughts, felt like emotions, crossed the space within themself--their own personal siberia.

passion, potlucks and pride

so last night, due to the fact that there was no Sci Fi Friday (sniff!), dan and i sat down and watched the two Netflix movies that had been taking up dust atop the tv. the second was one i'd highly recommend, Thank You for Smoking. excellent movie, very excellent.

first up was A Prairie Home Companion, which was good and amusing but disjointed. i wanted everyone to hear garrison keillor say, "not much is going on in lake woebegon these days..." and all that. but he didn't. it was interesting to see downtown st paul on the screen (another moment when we could both point and say "i've been there!") and to hear meryl streep and lily tomlin sing. but the plot was thin, if present, and it could have used a bit more...passion.

of course, it *is* the midwest, and we're not a passionate people up here, unless it concerns a few things: hunting, children, fishing, potlucks and snow boots.

i'm not making a mean-spirited comment about the midwest. perhaps more of a generalization, based on movies made, songs sung, tales told. midwesterners, minnesotans in particular, seem to take some inordinate pride on being dispassionate.

from where does this stoicism stem? perhaps that's not such a mystery. watching garrison keillor, spawn of lutheran norwegian ancestry, you get the idea perfectly: it takes patience to live here.

down south you can storm out of your house pretty much any month of the year, slamming the door on your spouse/parent/child/dog.

up here, nine months out of the year, you have to stay in the house, content with moving room to room, because storming out the door would mean a variety of things: jackets, scarves, gloves, fumbling for car keys, shovels, ice scrapers and kitty litter, so that your escape can be made with head held high, and not skidding on slippery sidewalk.

it's hard to maintain a good righteous anger when your ass hits the pavement and you need to ask for help to get up.

does the weather really shape us, that much? perhaps. culturally, the folks up north of the mason dixon line have to be more patient, in my mind, not just with the weather but with each other.

you can't fight as much, but it's not because the weather has pounded it out of you. it's because you know that you have to huddle together for warmth, it's that genetic code that says, don't antagonize your neighbor...you might need to borrow wood for the fire this winter.

perhaps the disjointed arena of that movie just pointed it out, at length. it wasn't lacking anything; it just wasn't like the majority of hollywood movies, with their heated arguments and wild actions.

i'm sure that long ago, before we had highways and electricity, people had to all get along in their own little caves. and the further north you went, the better you had to get along. the less passion you could cultivate, the more subtle it had to be, because the microcosm of your world was, for many months, the size of your cave.

are there less secrets here? nope. they're just better kept. less passion? no; it just doesn't stand out in the same way, it's not broadcast visually; it's radio waves, things you can't see, something you hear and you know and you internalize.

welcome

on thursday i stared in awe
the pale skin of your face, stretched
thin and new

friday i held you, nestled deep,
blinking dark eyes and restlessly
feeling out your
boundaries

watching her face,
perplexed
as you twist and swirl
onl y the night before
shrouded in mother
you slumbered

today the blanket rises
shoves at the crook of my elbow
one small foot
each nail a transparent crescent
pokes out,
heel tasting air

call it what you want

it's some sixth sense--not smell or taste or sight, and not hearing, especially for me. (;

my great grandmother read tea leaves for the police department. she saw things sometimes before they happened, or so the stories go. the only person who remembers is my uncle jed, who's immobilized by strokes and unable to speak.

*sigh*

when i first went to therapy one of the questions helene asked was about knowing the future, or having ESP. i grudgingly admitted that yes, i often had dreams that came true, or knew something before it happened. it's never anything life shattering--nothing that they'd make movies about, and helene just asked for some examples and moved on.

one of the examples i gave was years ago, when dan's parents got a german shepherd. i dreamed that they had a dog that looked like an elkhound but people kept telling me was a german shepherd. then his parents got gabe--who looks like he's been crossed with an elkhound.

another was a friend who needed to get into the doctor, but was on a long list. one day two months prior to the scheduled appointment i said, call now. and there was an opening that afternoon.

it's little things like that, daily bits, that enforce my belief that sometimes people are given, or people sense, things that you cannot predict. my sisters and i all call our mother on the same day. we send each other the same cards. is it esp? probably not--we all think a lot alike. but to pick out and send the same card at the same time was a bit odd, i will admit.

some dear friends of mine are due to have their baby next week, 11/25/06. due to the baby being bashful when it comes to ultrasounds, they've no idea of what the sex is, and they haven't told anyone what names they're considering, either. i had a silly dream months ago that it was a boy, with the same first name as last name. like, Smith Smith. personally, i had a very strong feeling that the baby would be a boy, for whatever reason.

anyway, this last tuesday night i dreamed i stood in the kitchen with my friend cathy. i dreamed she held a little girl in her arms, with wispy red-brown hair and cathy's gray eyes, named evan. the child was about 9 months old, sitting upright, with fingers in her mouth.

this morning i woke up at 3 am. i'd been dreaming about a hose, spraying water all over a crisp green lawn. i fell back asleep. at 4 i woke up, dreaming that dan was bringing me a cup of water that ran over the lip of the dark little cup. usually these dreams mean i need to go to the bathroom--it's my subconcious' way of reminding me, i suppose. but i didn't, when i woke.

later that morning, we got the email: cathy's water broke around 4, and they had a little girl named devin.

how much of this is coincidence? how much of it is random chance? how much of it is something else, that cannot be pinned to anything but the unknown ether that makes up this world?

just when i had given up on my gut instincts, and the dreams that seemed to have abandoned me as of late, i dream something that is so close to reality that it doesn't feel as random as it should.

my sister beth and i have discussed how dreaming feels just as real as being awake, and how sometimes the dreams mix so well with reality that you cannot separate them--they have fallen out of separate bottles, and swirl on the floor, reality melding into dreamscape.

goliath, felled by one stone...

or kim, felled by one bacterium.

i'm here. existing. crawling out of whatever virus-infested hole i got sucked into.

will post more later. after much cat-enhanced napping. (;