Girl In The Bathtub, Years Ago Now

Slowly she climbs the wooden steps up to the back porch, then seems to gather her last reserves of energy to burst through the door into the kitchen, exalting in sweat.  She doesn't move for a minute or two except to breathe.  She scans the room.  It is a small old white kitchen, with black borders on all the cabinets, and an unremovable layer of grime on the walls.  There are old notes on the fridge, a microwave balanced on a crooked little end table, plants on the windowsill.  There are remnants of someone's dinner on the counter, and shoes everywhere.  She begins to make a pot of tea.
She is standing watching the blue flames underneath the kettle, crawling to the edge and spilling up the sides when something occurs to her and she marches suddenly into the bedroom.  Clothes are strewn across the bed and floor and she steps on them with dirty sneakers in her haste to collect all the candles in the room.  She finds eight, and some incense, and then sees a carton of bath salts on the back of a shelf that have been there waiting for this day for maybe a year and a half.  When she reaches for it the bottom gives out and tiny orange crystals pour out and scatter across the carpet.  Cursing quietly, she kneels down to gather them in her hands, bringing a palmful straight to the bathroom and tossing them in the empty bathtub.  She begins setting out and lighting candles, meticulously spreading them evenly around the perimeter of the room.  The incense she places by the sink, then on the shelf above the toilet paper, then finally on the windowsill.  She hangs a towel on the door, then hears the charging train whistle sound the old kettle makes when the water's boiled and returns to pour the tea.  She undresses hurriedly in the kitchen while it steeps.  Her skin is red and clammy from the ride home, her clothes damp with sweat.  She tosses them unceremoniously onto her bed from the doorway then stands at the dresser tying her hair up.  She sees the pack of cigarettes there and hesitates for a moment, then slowly and deliberately she takes them into the bathroom and places them on the toilet seat, next to the lighter.  She locks the door, turns off the light, and stands there naked, sipping tea and watching the water run.  When the tub is full she turns off the taps and begins a gradual, incremental descent into the bath.

In this house a silence like this one is rare and she wonders where everyone is.  Flickering candlelight exaggerates the shadows of goosebumps on her legs and arms.  It is dark in this small room but through the open window she can see it is still light out, there is maybe an hour or so left.  She moves slightly and the sound of the water reminds her of something from a long time ago that she can't quite place.  She leans back dejectedly, her head cocked to one side against the cool tile.  She reaches slowly for the pack of smokes and watches steam rising from the shining skin of her arm and water dripping from the tips of her fingers and feels like a strange animal, something dredged out of a swamp and unaccustomed to society.  The air is moving less and less.  It is pliable now, small motions leave indents in it.  She lights a cigarette.  The hiss and crackle are soothing sounds in the stillness and humidity of this room.  She exhales a long stream of smoke through the rising steam towards her feet, then rests the dart lightly on her lower lip so as not to soak it through.  The breeze coming in is just reaching the right side of her face and she begins to feel extraordinarily alone.  It is strange to her that this feeling should be so tangible, she cannot know this now but it will not leave her for years to come.  She is not crying, she can't remember right now what crying feels like.  Smoke fills her head, and her limbs grow steadily heavier.  To keep from drowning she attempts to count by feel the bath salts underneath her.  She is so far away from everything in here.  She can't remember her intent, the brass tacks.  She can't remember anything.  There is only the purity and holiness of smoking in the bath.  Sometimes she ashes out the window, sometimes right into the water.  When the cigarette burns out, she wants to be asleep.  Still no one is home.

Nausea, Sparks.

I had this dream about a week before I was supposed to get an EEG at Rockyview Hospital.  I had this appointment because I used to have seizures as a kid, not really seizures, I'd pass out and stop breathing and clench my jaw, eyes rolled back, face going blue, my poor parents.  The strangest thing was right before they happened I'd always smell ham.  Distinctly, like a baking ham in the oven, I still can't bring myself to eat it. Anyway doctors never figured it out, epileptics don't stop breathing, and the blackouts stopped around the time I turned 13, but then about a month ago I had another one.  It was different, no ham, no warning.  I was by the fridge chugging back a glass of water, crazy hungover, still wearing a tight little dress from the night before.  Then suddenly I was waking up, disoriented, couldn't see, my mother's voice repeating something, something about the phone, I could swear she said it at least six times, she sounded so far away.  By the time I was able to open my eyes there were paramedics leaning over me, and vomit on the floor beside me.  That's new too, the vomit aspect.  I hardly knew what was going on but suddenly I said to one of the paramedics, "Do I know you?" And then we figured out that her brother used to come in to Tops all the time, a bar up the street from my house where I worked years ago, he was my boss's best friend.  Jeff.   He used to kind of have a thing for me, a half joking, when we're married you won't have to bartend... kind of thing.  The paramedic was Jeff's sister.   I think I said something to her, half delirious, something like, "He was fond of me."  I hope she told him.  "How's she doing?" he says in my imagination.  The sister hesitates before replying,  "Well, um, gross, kind of, when I met her anyway."  Great stuff.  It was actually not a bad day in terms of comedy.  Mum was supposed to grab me some clothes to go the hospital in, and she somehow, in her haste, decided on a floor length skirt with a slit up to mid-thigh level.  To put overtop of the super-short, low-cut party dress.  As well as a big baggy hoodie, of course.  I was totally the funny young person at the hospital.  Made a different joke to every nurse or porter I encountered.  "Oh this old thing?"  "I know, super inappropriate, I tried to tell my mum it was too much but she kept going on about cute male nurses."  "I thought I'd just have my cleavage easily accessible for the stethoscope."  "Oh, yeah, this, I have a tango competition later.  Do you tango?"  Fun day.  Anyway they referred me to a neurologist, a serious man, tall, argyle socks, frequently rested his pen thoughtfully against his lip.  He ordered the EEG, and suggested I refrain, for the time being, from driving.  Also no heavy drinking.  This last suggestion I took extremely seriously for a while, until the greys became too much to bear.  And then I had this dream.
The dream was about the appointment, very realistic in it's beginnings.  I was supposed to not have eaten or drank anything in the 12 hours previous to the appointment, and to not have slept for the previous 24.  So in the dream, I'm in that beautiful hyperreal state that comes with insomnia, something I know about from a year or so ago in a tiny apartment, and the time I filled with midnight bike rides and cigarettes. My mother is driving me, in the dream, and No One is Watching You Now by 'Til Tuesday is on the radio, (that's a nice detail, isn't that a nice detail?) while she talks about a family dinner coming up, what should she cook and will Grandma be able to come.  Then suddenly I'm in the room, and a cloudy figure is putting the electrodes on my head and there is some sort of powerpoint presentation being shown and it is very dark, and then I'm laying down.  And because there is a soundtrack to this dream there is Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart playing when I feel it start.  Of course in real life you don't feel anything, I know this vaguely from having one as a child when the blackouts were more common, and solidly because I have since been to the actual appointment, recently, in real life.  But in the beautiful Donnie Darko soundtrack dream, there is a feeling, a soft buzz hum feeling that is seeping into me from each individual electrode on my skull and spreading downward.  It is a feeling like electricity and honey had a baby, and it is slowly moving through me, charging my blood, turning up some switch in my head so that I feel more, more alive and more angry and more prepared.  Sparks are shooting out of my eyes now, my muscles are beginning to twitch and tense, the current from the electrodes which is now impossibly intense, sped-up, rushing at light speed, makes everything before the EEG feel distant and senseless like I'm being delivered to some version of myself who is irrefutably stronger and who has been waiting and it's absolutely wonderful.  All the while I'm just barely aware of the cloudy figure, in the background, reading my brainwaves as they pass across a computer screen, checking settings, making notes.
When it is over I don't know how to feel and honestly this part of the dream has lost it's vivid colour so I don't remember it's atmospheric qualities or if there was anything sad from the eighties playing in the background.  I can't even remember if this part actually happened, maybe I just assumed it did because the next scene, if you will, is in the car again, on the way home, and I'm telling my mother what the diagnosis was.  This of course is another entirely unrealistic aspect to the dream, having since had the EEG I know they don't tell you anything right away.  Mum actually asked, but the technician, whose name was Danielle and who was very normal and not at all cloudy and who did NOT laugh at my jokes, said she wasn't at liberty to comment on the results, and that I'd be hearing from my neurologist if anything was amiss, or not hearing anything, if nothing was.  I don't expect anyone will call, I feel oddly certain about this.  I went to this appointment mostly to put my mother's mind at ease, because I genuinely believe there is nothing to be found, and that the thing that happened was just a thing that happened, maybe my body is slightly too prone to shock, maybe nothing, maybe it is just a weird life thing that I may or may not have to deal with occasionally in years to come.  Maybe this is because I have that "I'm invincible" complex that people over 60 with social service jobs tell young people they all have, or maybe it's just instinct, or maybe I'm wrong, but anyway, in the dream, it was different.  Back in the car, I'm telling Mum what they said.  It's something like, "Well what they found, it's not really affecting me.  Not yet.  It's just in there, taking up space.  It's unclear whether it's causing the seizures, I think that's what they said, but they're connected.  I'm on a kind of precipice, I guess, it's apparently sort of phenomenal that this thing, they started calling it a pocket, this pocket hasn't, um, hasn't burst or something.  Because it's unstable, the pocket, it's edges are fragile and if I keep having seizures, maybe even the next one, if it's intense enough, this pocket could break open in my brain, and then it's contents will spill out and change things.  They said my brain would be on, like another level, of brainyness.  The stuff inside this pocket would heighten my brain function in every way.  I would be able to retain exponentially larger amounts of information, even the creative parts would be just on fire,  essentially, neurons firing faster, everything kind of, just heightened.  They said I could be a genius.  There's no way to know when I'll have another seizure, whether it will be enough to spark this thing off, they also aren't sure how my brain would handle this kind of event, but, I mean, they know it's possible.  I could be something incredible.  I'm on the fucking precipice.

When You're Out of Practice, Out of Shape

When you go out late at night to ride your bike nowhere in particular and you feel so elated about it.  You really feel as though you're doing something good for yourself.  As though even though you're sad and alone all the god damned time you're becoming amazing at being sad and alone, you're on a path, you're rolling along, so sturdy, burning things down to get to some essential something and nobody gives you strength.  Nobody upon nobody, the nobodies you found in a Kafka story and took with you so that you too could link arms with a crowd of nobodies and go out and face the night and feel the sea air so thrilling on your throats.  When you're riding around with your nobodies making sharp turns and round ones, pounding up hills and coasting down them, cruising alleyways, skidding through shallow puddles, circling the block with one hand on the handlebars and your eyes on the sky and you run into your friend Dave, who is a really nice guy and who is on foot, going to a show somewhere and you catch up a bit and in parting he says, be careful riding around at night wearing all black.  And you look at yourself on your bike with no lights and no working gears until you get the damned rear de-railer fixed and the worn brake pads, nothing on your head but a tuque, nothing upon nothing, and you ride home feeling stupid but still kind of elated and very sweaty, kind of like you've just punched another hour on a timecard for something like community service and when you get in, you just lie down on the  red-painted floor, curled up like a bug with nothing to do but watch the walls not moving while the big sad comes back slow and settling in your blood and you laugh a quick and quiet, distracted laugh about it, and you're not burning anything down anymore except for time, just time.

Harvest Season

We are on a rickety wagon in a field of pumpkins. I don't know how old I am, or the city, province, country. My parents, brother and myself huddle together. It's chilly. My father is wearing a grey jacket, the one that he now uses only to barbecue, since he doesn't want to get his other jackets to smell of steaks and beer. It was brighter then, must have been almost new.

The wagon is stopped, because it is the end of the ride. Flashbacks are funny in the way that there is no context, no beginning or end. My parents disembark first, quickly hopping down to the ground, the way grown-ups effortlessly do. I stand on the wagon, anticipating. Only after my father motions me to follow his lead does it become apparent that those guiding hands were not helping me this time. Only while looking back at the past do I realize that this is the first time I would have to do something by myself.

"Bend your knees when you land, or else you'll break your legs!"

He is joking, of course (I hope).

I practice bending my knees on the spot, to make sure I don't forget how in the critical moment. My dad is eyeing for my attention by pantomiming the same action. For an outsider, this probably looked like some sort of invisible see-saw.

As I hit the ground, I bend my knees to excess and my bum touches the dirt. I'm relieved, empowered.

Sleeping

It began with a tickle on the uppermost crest of my ear.

Not too much of a tickle to cause a disturbance, I thought, but enough to make me think about it--and enter into the vicious cycle of tickly ears. The more emphasis the brain places on the tickle, the more I realize that the ear has iterated itself into the bane of my sleep. My pillow is too warm, my room is too warm.

I went hiking yesterday. The Crowsnest Pass was not too difficult, but it did amount to 6 hours in the gawking sun. In typical Albertan fashion, those brief moments of relief when the Sun passes behind a ball of white fluff were not applicable; yesterday, there was not one cloud in the wide sky. Did I remember to apply sunscreen that day? Sure I did (I hope), but if not, I'm not one that burns too easily. It was foolish of me to believe that I am immune. I did get singed on the uppermost crest of my ear, not too much to cause a disturbance, but enough to make me think about it.

Back to my bed: I can still hear the wall clock tick-tocking away. He laughs at my inability to sleep. Tick--my eyes are heavy. Tock--Wait, I wonder what time it is? Does it matter? Yes, yes, I have to get up at six tomorrow morning. Why did I leave the noisy clock on my wall? It's nights like these that remind me that I should switch the clock in my bedroom with the silent one in the kitchen. In the morning I will forget. These sleepy moments are not exactly conducive to memory formation.

I am not a back sleeper, but will try it for tonight. Tomorrow I will rise at six, and examine my ear in the mirror.

Sunday Dreams

Sometimes I imagine myself dancing. In my head, I'm much better at it. I mean I have fun when I actually dance, pure fun, and I don't hold back and if I look funny I laugh. I think it's an essential part of life, the occasional release of a body from the body-shaped box made from everyday things that it's kept in. Everyday things like restaurants or gas stations, because we don't dance there, or in line-ups, or while on the phone with our employers. But in my head, where there is a gorgeous and impossible freedom, I choreograph and star in entire productions. I am not limited by energy, strength, flexibility, time, location, passers by, or anything else. I am an Amazon. And that goes for everything I do in my head. I frequently hop fences and run through dusty wheat fields in the last hour of sunlight with twenty or so friends and family members and all of us are so fast, and none of us have debilitating knee pain. But in real life, as it's called, I'm just riding a bus.

I work as a bartender. I've done this before, it's a thing I do for money and because I genuinely like people. It's less than thrilling, but I have rent to pay, and debts, and decisions that are taking longer and longer to make. Here is a snapshot: I'm using a fork to sift out the lumps in the celery salt. There's more where that came from. My shifts are generally the least busy ones; weekdays, Tuesday nights. I clean things, and happily volunteer as a guinea pig for the

equally unoccupied cook who experiments with new menu items. Think mashed potatoes made with ranch dressing then grilled on a flat top to make little potato pancakes. If you have occasion to try this, do.

And, as ever, I keep my mind occupied. I try to picture myself with a career. Sometimes I imagine being a flight attendant, with a crisp, clean uniform and perfect hair, always smiling, speaking French, and coming home with pictures from various glamourous places every week or so. Last Tuesday I left the front door of the restaurant unlocked. We closed early, around midnight by the time the stragglers trickled out. The room was swept, chairs put up, bar shut down, lights off. I set the alarm and locked the back door behind me, forgetting entirely to check the front. It is a miracle that no passing thief discovered my mistake.

I came to work Wednesday morning to discover this alongside my boss, and cried a little while I was mopping. I never enjoy this. In my head I am not a crier, and when faced with my own failures or other challenges, I am steely and rational, rolling up my sleeves, saying and doing only what must be said and done. But the little body-shaped box I live in insists on the absurdity of opening the flood gates in my eyes and reducing my hands to useless, quivering pincers at the first sign of trouble. Such is life. Or real life, as it's called.

So, I spent Wednesday morning roaming the Scottish hills. In my head, I am this indulgent, yes. I imagined myself wearing wooly sweaters and gumboots, rosy-cheeked and dewy from the fog and when that grew tiresome I got myself an apartment in Italy, and leaning out my window with the sun in my hair I could smell fish cooking in the cafe downstairs. On the ride home I was Peggy Lee in a dark nightclub singing 'Black Coffee'.  

Well fuck, I don’t want to imagine myself sifting salt.

I wonder if you know of this feeling, that of half-lives, daydreams, and the maudlin, flickering halt they come to when the bus lurches.

I'm hanging out on Monday

My Sunday dreams to dry

What's in my pockets, What's in my pack.

Clockwise, starting at Top Left: Tank design cost calculations, folded once; Wallet, with $50 in bills and an upside down student ID; Keychain comprised of a key-less entry chip, LED flashlight, mailbox key, house key, laboratory key, bike lock key, room key, cupboard key; USB key sponsored by Suncor with a Suncor video saved; iPhone 3G, Quarter; Quarter; Quarter; Toonie.

Starting at Top Left: Beat-up clipboard folder with too much looseleaf and not enough organization; Photocopied textbook; Black blank-sheet notebook with Materials Engineering notes; Beige blank-sheet notebook with Process Control notes; Beige calendar + notes, slightly crooked; Clear pencil case containing a few pens, pencils, two erasers and 0.5 mm pencil lead; Engineering Faculty-Standard Calculator; USB key that was found on the ground and who is still trying to find its rightful owner; Moleskine reporter-style notebook with 4 postage stamps, half-filled; The pack itself.