REAL LIFE: My body dropped 10 pounds in water and returned to normal within 48 hours of my decision not to go through with the cross-country move. A kidney problem of long standing. And when it comes on, my mind is muddled even to the point of not recognizing the kidney problem. Possibly I shouldn't have made such a decision while in that confused kidney-brain place, as now I am clear and see how the move could be done; on the other hand, the brain my body is may well have been resorting to extremes in order to communicate to the brain in my head. Because I was well virtually overnight. I'm still a little breathless, but it won't take long to get back in shape.
Thursday I mowed some of the high grass near the house. My brother helped gather up the scattered outdoor stuff and organize it in the garage--animal cages, garden hoses, bench, etc. I had him help me stretch a roll of sheep fencing around the lower part of the greenhouse. With that wall of wire in place, he is free to shoot baskets again (we had to put a stop to basketball last fall; the hoop is uphill of the greenhouse--we lost two windows to stray bounces). And so he played for hours, on Thursday evening. And again yesterday. This makes him so happy.
But I am preoccupied with what next? and haven't been there much for him, just superficially. Meals, laundry, and the like. A little grouchy, impatient.
So last night we were awakened at 2:30 by sudden howling--roaring--wind and spatters on the roof. I lay in the dark for a while, and I could hear Brian in his room across the hall making gasping fearful sounds. He's a very light sleeper and howling wind is one of the few things that frighten him. I called out to him that it was all right and to go back to sleep. Neither of us did, though, for a long time.
Then I was waking again, 5:30... from a strange vivid dream. I forced myself awake enough to write it down, the outlines of it.
DREAM: We live in an apartment in a big brick building in some town. (Our bedrooms though are identical to the ones we have now.) I am in my bed and can hear my brother making fearful sounds. He is up and dressing even though it's the middle of the night. I tell him to knock it off and go back to sleep. I am not kind. He comes into my room and stands at the foot of my bed and says "I'm so cold." (He's looking me in the eyes like he never does, with eyes of a normal person, normal intelligence, and great need. He's speaking clearly.) I know this can't be true, because he has several blankets and quilts on his bed.
I follow him to his room and begin tidying up. I see that he's dressed in his dirty clothes from yesterday and I tell him never to do that--always wear clean clothes, how many times must I tell him? Then I notice that the blankets on his bed are lifting and falling--there's a cold wind blowing through them from somewhere. The windows are shut, so what the... ? Then I see an opening in his closet wall. I walk into the closet and find an open door out the other side, wind blowing through it into the room.
I enter the space beyond--it's an attic, a storeroom, but very large and high-ceilinged. Our surplus belongings are stacked up all around, neatly organized in rows shoulder-high and along wall shelves. Narrow corridors between the rows. On top of every flat horizontal surface stands a plant in a pot. Hundreds and hundreds of them. I'd put them there when we moved and forgotten about them--never watered or tended them, pots of dirt with seedlings in them. And yet despite this neglect here they were, a little the worse for dehydration but filled, covered, rife with fruits. Cherry-tomato-sized saffron-colored backlit (from dim premorning light through opened windows) tender globes hanging on hundreds of plants that looked like trees, like banzai trees, like an orchard in miniature, but everywhere. I felt badly about having forgotten about them, but I plucked a fruit and put it in my mouth and it burst with sweetness on my tongue. All these fruits were perfectly ripe right now, waiting for me.
Then somehow I'm back in my bed here. Brian comes into the room lugging his big TV and he puts it on my bed and walks out. It takes up half the bed. I get up and ask him what he's doing. Take this back. What's going on? He doesn't understand what I'm saying. I get impatient. Use an impatient tone of voice. He stands before me, unable to understand me, unable to make me understand, again with the intelligent face and eyes, looking hard at me. He's weeping. I realize what's happening now; I feel such shame for allowing myself to be so distracted from him, so preoccupied with worry, for not always speaking respectfully to him, for not always exchanging the love that's there so abundantly to be exchanged. We put our arms around one another and just hold each other for a long time.
Now he's sleeping soundly in his bed. I pace around my bedroom; it's around 4 or 5 a.m. I go to the window and pull aside the curtain, open it and lean out to look at the quiet sleeping world. (We're on the second floor of the building, at the edge of a town.) It's been snowing lightly; a fine powder of white covers everything thinly, with little drifts against objects. I have an unimpeded view of the horizon. There in the notch between snow-dusted slopes is the setting moon, enormous, but a thin crescent, so slender it's barely visible, the last bit of waning moon. (It strikes me now in writing this that in reality tomorrow is new moon; this would be the waning moon's actual appearance.) This beautiful crescent with snow under and planet gleaming nearby and stars beyond.
And now I see a vacant paved lot across the street... the space there situated directly below that distant view of the moon at the horizon... a single street lamp shining down illuminating the middle of the paved space... Girls, young and very slender, perhaps 17 years old, six or seven of them, are shooting baskets together--practicing in the very early morning. And they appear to be wearing PE uniforms, because they are dressed identically--except that they wear short white sleeveless tunics, not modern clothes. And they are so beautiful and graceful playing together, passing the ball back and forth, jumping, so happy and harmonious in the cold stillness in snow, it's like a dance.
From inside my apartment someone calls out "Sam?" It sounds like a child's voice. I turn away from the window, alarmed. Had I forgotten to lock the door? I go to my bedroom door and lean forward to look down the hall, frightened. But it's an old woman. The Landlady. In her nightgown and housecoat, mule bedroom slippers, reading glasses on the end of her nose. I become indignant and start to tell her she has no right to just walk into her tenants' apartments in the middle of the night, but she gives me a look that's as good as holding up her hand to silence me, and I see in the dim light that she's holding something in both hands. It's large. She holds it out toward me.
It's an owl. Quite large. With vivid bright metallic blue feathers with overtones of purple and aquamarine, black sharp beak and huge black talons. I am given to understand, or I conclude (this woman never speaks, seems almost indifferent) that she's found the owl outside, it's been injured in the violent storm, she knew I was an animal person and would know where to take it. I accept the owl.
Obviously though it isn't injured. Perhaps it's a juvenile in its first flight. But it struggles in my hands. I'm confident I'm holding it correctly but somehow it embeds its talons in the backs of my hands and wriggles free and makes its way up my right arm, flapping and struggling, to the top of my head. One of its talons snags in the flesh of my arm. Then it stands up there and leans its head down in front of my face. I fear it will tear out my eyes with its beak. It could very well do so. I call out to the old woman for help, but she does nothing, just stands there patiently.
Gradually I woke up enough to scribble the dream down in outline. The bird hadn't actually harmed me in any way. It was just far more powerful than I could cope with.
9:58:32 PM 
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