Walking With the Ghosts

Waking up in Paris should be dreamy and romantic. What girl doesn't want to wake up here? Not this one. It's not any better than sitting in my apartment back home. I though it would be different here, but it's the same. Christmas was uneventful, as usual. John Michael said that he would come out, but he was a no show. I was excited for about ten seconds, but I knew that he wasn't coming. I wish he would have. I really miss him. New Year's was fun, though. I dropped by my parents' for dinner then ended up partying with tourists under the Eiffel Tower. 

"I hope you find what you're looking for."  That was the last thing my brother said to me when he dropped me off at the airport for my trip.  I suddenly hoped the same thing, but how do I find what I'm looking for if I don't know what it is?

Sometimes, I just drift through the streets of Paris like a ghost. I want to be inspired and to find that thing that Jon Michael hoped for me, but it's just not here. I like going down to the catacombs beneath the streets. It's peaceful there, me and the other ghosts. When I first came to Paris a couple of weeks ago, my mother took me around to the touristy places and we ended up there. She rattled on about the history, but I was mesmerized by the thousands of skulls that stared back at me. I didn't hear a word of what she was saying, all I could do was wonder who loved these lost souls. Sometimes I feel like I can't breathe, but then I think of this place and I wonder, who could love this lost soul?

I was supposed to meet my mother for lunch today, but I think I will walk with the ghosts of the catacombs instead.

Walking With the Ghosts: these lost souls

bon appétit!

Visited my parents today.  Eating lunch with mom and dad was a flashback to childhood.      

bon appétit: lunch with the rents

Mom sipped her “ice” tea and Dad went on and on about how things are so much different than they were then.  I listened to them, sure.  But it has been a long time since we last sat at a table together.  So I drifted....  I remembered playing with my dolls and building towns in the dirt outside.  I remembered decorating the grove of trees with mardi gras beads and claiming it as my own as they worked around the house.  Mom always put a jar of sun tea out on Sundays when it was sunny.  Dad worked on the backyard garden and his boat/canoe.  Hmmm, those were some easy like Sunday mornings.

Hello, France!

Another place... feels like another time here.
I am different, slightly lighter and a bit more at ease...  It’s a feeling I want to last but somehow fear that it won’t.  Being away from all that has been familiar to me is not frightening at all.  It seems to be what I need.  I don’t know how I would have gone on pacing within the walls of that apartment talking to Re-run as if she were still there.  


It was home for a while and my heart will always hold a piece of it.  But for now I will relish my time away and take in as much as I can.

Hello France!!!!

Hello France!: Moulin Rouge

... And Now Back To Our Usual Programming

(Let’s actually hope for de-programming).  I’d say, “welcome back” but I no longer claim to know where you are coming from or where I am welcoming us back to.  I have done my best to cleanse myself... and to liberate my companion.  I have accepted where I am currently and because I have accepted it,  have decided to hop this huge island for another.

... And Now Back To Our Usual Programming: blue

Europe has been calling my name and I finally picked up.  I fly out on the 11th (2 days from now).  I’m subleasing my apartment to some friends.  Jennifer(one of the gals at work) is going to use my car while I’m away and my position at the kennel will remain until I return.  I have not been there, although my parents moved there almost 4 years ago.  I am anticipating new scenery and welcoming the adventures I am about to embark on.  There is a small “flat” in Paris that mom has reserved for me.  I was hesitant to take her up on her offer at first.  But, part of growing up is letting go of old ways and being open to new ones. 

The Want Defeats The Purpose

It’s been about a month without her.  Thoughts of her nearly trick me in fleeting moments... trick me into thinking she is still here with me.  But nobody is here.. nobody but me and my reflection and a flood of unexplainable dreams.  The girls at work don’t even seem to want me around on account of my sad presence....  This maddening solitude has made a few points to me.  The trend of only surrounding yourself with “good” energy is fine in theory.  But is it good energy to be selfish when those who are selfish are at war with themselves in the first place?  I am beginning to understand more of where my little brother is coming from.  Being “good” is not based on whether or not you follow some old guidelines or new progressive thought wave...  the want to be recognized as “good” defeats the very idea of it.  Unfortunately, it seems to take tragedy to open our eyes(for some of us).  The ones, like my brother, who are naturally tuned in are coming at it from the opposite side of this existance.  They are rare gems who we all feel justified in pushing out because they do not fit the criteria of the times.  It’s nonsense.  I know this now as I sit here with my heart in my hands in need of a little love with no one but my reflections to give it to me.  Nobody answers the phone now...  they just want to go out and have fun.  I suppose I, of all people, cannot fault them for that.  I have outgrown my surroundings or have suddenly realized that I never “fit” in.  I have to form a retreat for myself.  For no religious or political reasons, I will be exiting the accessible realm for a while.  Quiet time is to be taken out.  I have to find a center somehow before I can go on functioning.  I leave you for a short commercial free break with something I read out of yet another book given to me sometime ago.

Imagine a man or a group of people who, alone or together in a quiet place where no radio, no background music can be heard, simply sit for an hour or a half hour in silence.  They do not speak.  They do not pray aloud.  They do not have books or papers in their hands.  They are not reading or writing.  They are not busy with anything.  They simply enter into themselves, not in order to think in an analytical way, not in order to examine, organize, plan, but simply to BE.  They want to get themselves together in silence.  They want to synthesize, to integrate themselves, to rediscover themselves in a unity of thought, will, understanding, and love that goes beyond words, beyond analysis, even beyond conscious thought.
~T. Merton, Love and Living

Loneliness

I mourn for her.  I feel more alone than I have ever felt before.  I turn in every direction looking for comfort that’s not to be found.  I keep turning...... in circles.  I have become a classic record kept after warping just for the sake of being kept.  I stay in a sleeve ornate with lovely artwork.  The record stays there because it cannot get beyond a certain point and is doomed to repeat itself.  The repetition of it is descriptive of how I feel now.  I pace the floor without destination looking for my sweet Spirit keeper, for anything, for my SPIRIT.  Did I have one at all?  Is it something I have lost along the way.... or it is something I have yet to truly find?  I miss Re-Run.  I miss my baby brother.  I miss kayla.  I miss myself.  All I can do is take showers and cry.  Just opening the door to get outside of my rented space is a task.  Television turns me inside out with uncontrollable emotion.  Loneliness is a concept that lays on a dissecting table before me.

Loneliness: lonely, alone 

Re-Run Is Gone

Re-Run Is Gone: RIP

This is the first day that I have been able to collect my thoughts in over a week.  My faithful companion has left this planet.  On October 20, Re-Run passed away.  We were playing in the park and a little girl had joined in.  Her mom was fascinated by how well her daughter was doing with a big dog like Re-Run.  Just when she began to explain that the little girl had been scared of all dogs up until now... The cute little girl was running for the ball toward the street.  The woman dropped her paperback and launched across the field after her little girl.  Re-Run was way ahead of Mama and I was running as fast as I could to signal the jeep I saw headed for her.  Re-Run knocked the little girl down and didn’t stop in time not to get hit herself.  I wasn’t fast enough either.  The driver of the jeep stopped and was all shook up.  The sweet mom was holding her little girl tightly.  She and I were shaking uncontrollably.  I looked at them and was glad that they were okay.  Then I looked at poor Re-Run looking up at me.  It did not seem real.  I kept waiting for her to get up and walk, run even.  I could not have gotten there any faster.  I racked my brains over it.  




Honestly, it is just now setting in and even as I write it....  my entire being is sickened, saddened, leaning towards denial.  She was my greatest friend here.  She had become my family here.  It hurts to let her go.  It tears me apart to wake up and not see her staring at me.  The girl in the jeep felt so bad about it.. she offered to help take us to the vet.  Without even thinking.. I loaded my Spirit Keeper into her jeep and gave the girl, Brittany, directions to the shelter.  I held Re-Run in my lap all the way there.  All of us were in tears by the end of the night when we realized there was little we could do.  I brought her back home and loved on her as much as possible.  The next day, Re-Run didn’t wake up.  She died next to me.  I have not been able to really talk much since that morning.  It plays over and over again in my mind.  The gals helped me bring her to my childhood home which now stands abandoned.  We gave her a proper burial in the backyard of my innocent days beneath the tree that once had our big rope swing hanging from it.

Rest in Peace Re-Run, keeper of my Spirit...  Thank you for your precious time.  Thank you for choosing me.   

Re-Run Is Gone: thank you for choosing me

Shape Shifting Roof-Top...

Another morning...  I woke up before the alarm sounded.  Another dark, quiet morning foreshadowed by yet another movie-like dream.  I lay my head down and the tape begins to roll.  There is no ticket line or purchase price.  There is not even the need to dress appropriately or put on shoes.  I just lie down and close my eyes.  Re-Run seems to have become the starlet of my midnight features.  Last night after all the lights went out, without noticing that I had fallen asleep...

I was standing on top of a roof. The shingles were aged and brittle laying out a pattern one could get lost in.  Re-Run was on the roof with me.  It was a well lit, perhaps full moon night with puffs of clouds in the sky.  We walked together on the never ending peak of the roof top.  There was an unspoken sense that we needed to stay on that straight line.  I looked down at either side descending at a gradual slant toward the ground below.  I noticed that the shingles had a brick-red tint to them.  When I picked my head back up, I saw Re-Run ahead of me, sitting gracefully.  Her eyes pierced mine.  At that moment, the roof tops all around me began to morph and shift shape until I was sliding on my belly away from her and toward the ground.  My heart began to beat so hard it produced a loud base sound that carried me more rapidly to the streets.  She was out of my sight and I was on the ground scared.
                                   

Shape Shifting Roof-Top: morphing 

With all that said...  I have never looked into it very much.  But this morning, I put my previous beliefs aside for a moment and googled “Dream Dictionary”.  My first keyword was roof.  It suggests that seeing a roof in your dream symbolizes a barrier between two states of consciousness and that you may be protecting your consciousness, mentality or beliefs.  To be on top of the roof symbolizes boundless success.  But falling off the roof suggests that you do not have a firm grip on your “advanced” position.  It does not mention anything about the roof morphing.  However it does point out that a leaking roof basically may mean that something is finally getting through to you or new information is revealing itself to you.

The dream and the suggested meaning of the things in the dream made me very happy to see Re-Run’s magestic face staring at me when I woke up today.

Recycled Dream Cans

A month has flown by.  I have yet to hear from Kayla.  Everything at work is basically the same.  I have not seen Marty again and am thinking of demoting him back to simply “that guy at the Snow Cone Stand”.  I spend most of my time with Re-Run and reading these books one by one.  I have started to have memorable dreams again.  I had one the night before last that feels more real than the hours when I am awake, sleep walking through the days.

    ~The dream was another about water.  Re-Run was in it also.  

Recycled Dream Cans: the dream

    
“TREADING WATER IN THE CITY STREETS”

I was going out during the day to run errands, grocery shop etc.  I exited an apartment that was not mine in real life, but very much mine in the dream.  As I exited onto a city sidewalk with Re-Run in a cute little “happy” sundress, I locked the RED door and pushed my long hair off my shoulder.  

Recycled Dream Cans: the red door

When I had locked the door, I turned around to find myself neck-deep in water.  The city was suddenly flooded.  I grabbed Re-Run and we treaded water together.  Buildings began to fall down around us.  We found refuge occasionally on top of the parked cars (they hadn’t moved at all).  Small metal cans floated by us.   They could have been soda cans or dogfood cans.. I’m not sure.  We kept treading water, my arm wrapped around my spirit keeper, keeping our heads just above water.  After a long struggle, a non-threatening current swept us down the street and into a totally different scene.  I saw a raised island of land with a big tree on it.  We swam for it.  I was still carrying Re-Run when we got to the sliver of land.  I had finally found dry land.  Then just as I was about to put her down, I noticed a brightly colored, oversized scorpion on the extruding roots at the base of the tree.  I thought.. “please move to the other side of the roots so we can share”.  As if hearing my thoughts, the scorpion moved to the other side and disappeared into the underbelly of the roots.  I put Re-Run down and then sat beside her against the tree.  We watched as the waves rolled by.  


Instead of being relieved completely to have found a safe spot,  there was a distinct feeling of sadness that lingered even after I woke up.

What Was Once Second Nature...

Breath in, Breath out. 
 Breath in , Breath out.

What Was Once Second Nature...: inkblot 

I have to remind myself to do the most simplistic things (things that should be second nature to a human being).  I can’t recall ever feeling like this before.  I understand the theories... the countless theories.  Still Theory is only theory.... in theory.  In other words,  we invented our own theories.  We wrote the rules and we followed them.  What happens when you begin to see the ridiculousness in the whole thing before the death bed?  I don’t really care about my un shaven legs and un-ruly eyebrows.  I am comforted and validated by the Hawk (who has made an appearance 5 days in a row now) and by Re-Run of course. 

What Was Once Second Nature...: I built myself a metal (flightless) bird

What would you call this?  What is my diagnosis says the little helpless girl to the behavorial therapist, to the followers of freud, the cognitive maniacs, the neurologists and the doctors waiting in line to make a bill?  They are just interior decorators. 

I’m out for now.....  

What Was Once Second Nature...: chained entrance