the girl

I have read some of my previous entries back to myself and have found something. I have a few things yet to deliver. One, that poem, the one I said I'd look for and post if it had relevance. You guessed it. I forgot to look for it. So sorry. I will try and devote some time to that rummaging and rustling of papers. The other thing I said I would do is tell of that 1970's girl in the before-sleep-sequence that played out in the black of my eyelid flaps. And, since no one has indicated that they want to read the fifty-million ton book that led to my early-week rant (big surprise, eh?), I guess I will fill an entry or two with my impressions of that too. But, that will be down the road, as I am a very slow reader. Nick reads super fast. Me- not so much. I have this hang up where I have to visualize everything in a sentence in detail before I will allow myself to continue on to the next sentence. If I am having a day-dreamy sort of day, just imagine how many times I can read a sentence over and over and over... Sometimes I don't realize I day dreamed and have continued to read on auto pilot, the words going who knows where, perhaps to some black hole waste space I have allotted for drifting blank words that my imagination didn't tackle. What exactly is a word without the mind's visionary process? Do some people compute words without seeing them? This is an eager question. I really want to know. Back to the point, it may take me a while to read Night of Stone. But, I will read it and I will report back. Rest assured!

Ooh, guess what just came through my speakers. Santigold has just been given her turn on my play list. "Creator" is on. Fingers are typing to a beat and the hips can't help but to break it down on this one. Writing and dancing at the same time, my kind of gig. I have no problem with combining these two actions, surprisingly. Multi-tasking at its absolute best right here my friends!

Okay, on to the next song, can get back to whatever, if any, point I was making.

The girl. It was the girl I was going to tell about so that I can strike that promise off the list. I was lying in the bed. The bed at this point in time was located in a tabby house on Saint Simons Island, Georgia. Nick was already asleep. I had probably already woken him up at least once. I do that thing where the room gets really quiet and I'm thinking and he's drifted off to la la land and I say "Hey! Remember that 'so and so' I told you about?" I sort of have a voice that projects itself easily and whispering is a challenge for me. I don't scream, but my voice cuts the air. That's not all bad. I don't tell secrets or gossip because of it (and many other reasons too, but this is why I couldn't even if I wanted to.) But, it is partly bad if you are Nick, sound asleep already, and I have just blurted a random comment across the bed. It wakes him up pretty much every time. Oops. It's hard to keep track of the time when I'm in my head. It's a timeless, magical place up there. I get a groggy "Huh?" There are two versions. One is genuinely sleepy and bogged down. The other is his irritated one that really says, "I was almost there, fully asleep and you want to say what to me?" This one is sprinkled with pretend sleepy sounds. Like when you were a kid and at your friend's house playing and you realized your parents were downstairs talking to your friend's parents and you decided you wanted to spend the night. That is where the pretend sleepy voice was invented. It has proven to be a useful trick in the bag well into adulthood. So, I had probably already done the thing where I wake him up again, and have now silenced myself and sunken into a relaxed state. Right there, in that place, is where I see oddities.

Faces. Some old, some young, a mean one or two that I promptly shoo away and say "Don't you ever come back. Not welcome here."

I see locations sometimes, like a path curving around a chain link fence on a dewy, barely sunlit day.

One time I saw someone run out of an office with apparently good news on the sheet of paper in his hands and lean over the balcony of the third story of a building to tell me about it. The wooden railings were Victorian style and the floors were black and white checked and I was looking up, having been waiting. It seemed like a New Orleans location. There was a square lobby in the middle and it was pretty. It felt like an era when the air conditioner might have been cutting edge.

Once, there was a very attractive soldier sitting on his helmet and his elbows were on his knees. His body language was slack and his hair was brown and longer than a typical military cut. The hats were Army green and round and the uniform was old Army green style. He was facing my right and turned and looked straight at me. It was a little intense and I was like "Who are you?" Did I expect an answer? That would have been really startling, more so than seeing a detailed image of a face pop up from nowhere. I saw him while trying to fall asleep in Atlanta.

A favorite of mine- an old Indian man's face gazing slightly left. It was like a semi-profile portrait except he was the texture of liquid. He was so tranquil. I immediately thought "This man watches over me." And I love Indians. I am meaning to say Native Americans in actuality. That label Indian was a mistake that stuck. "Uh-oh, we aren't in the East Indies?" I am a mut, a good ole' American mut and part of that mixture is Cherokee. I like it.

I'm not trying to add suspense to the story of the girl. The stalling is purely accidental.

Enter.
I have the point of view of sitting in the back of a vehicle and looking out of the window. This window is lower and is one large, dusty window pane, looks like it belongs to an old station wagon. It has those horizontal stripes going all the way down the glass... in maroon. The carpet was an ugly blue in the back. This is not a happy trip. The car is going down a long desolate dirt road to nowhere that I can see. But, what I do see is dust and dirt flying up from the wheels and a long stretch of road we have traveled that is lined with poles stringing power lines on both sides of the road in a methodical arrangement. They are all tilted slightly in, toward the road, as if done on purpose. I found that strange. The roadside terrain is brush and desert. Nothing was around. This seemed to be a girl who was taken and was being driven to a location. I couldn't tell how much fear she felt because I was concentrating on what I was seeing. But there was a vague sense of fright.

The next thing I see is this: floating upward from a dark body of water is a girl with long brown hair that is weightlessly floating too, in all directions. She is wearing a high-waisted full skirt and a maroon button-up shirt half tucked in and the right half not. Her limbs were outstretched, limp. The right arm was straight, pointed up and in front and the left was lower, and half bent. Below her to the left is a wood paneled station wagon and I thought "They drowned her." Then the word 'Reno' popped in my head and all disappeared. And when I thought, "Who would do this?" I felt like the guy who did had dark hair almost shaved and was talking to someone else on the passenger's side, his window cracked slightly as if to let smoke out.

There you have it. It was a murder mystery. Did I make it up? What all is in my brain to have produced such visions that I didn't knowingly prompt? I did look up some key words out of a sense of duty and curiosity. I didn't find much. I'm no Jessica Landsbury... I mean Angela Landsbury, right? Did she play the role of Jessica? That doesn't matter.

I just remembered something. I once had a dream of playing tennis with a friend's father that had passed some time back. I told her about it and how he was dressed and how he was so nice and funny, but turned serious. He was hitting the ball back to me hard and he didn't want me to be nonchalant. Then, he called me to the net and said something and all I remembered after waking was the word Monday. Funny thing was, she showed me a picture of him in the same type of outfit I described and she said he was always a person her friends turned to, so it didn't surprise her he would be in a friend's dream.

I guess we have to figure out which dreams or flashes are greatly important by which feel real.

Well....... I must go now. I'm going to go hop into bed and blurt something out to fulfill my wifely duty. I hope when I lay down in bed tonight I don't wish back my entry. I hope I'm not seeing visions of myself looking like a flake on paper for any and everyone to see. Then again, there are far worse things than having bizarre, flaky dreams. I'll claim it.