Part I
I can rename it into “LOST”… it would give away too much. Ops, I just did, although there is much more to find….
It was the fifth day of the hunting season, and it was the fifth day for George to go in the woods, away from the house and his morning coffee that was the preferable routine, cup of a black, hot and strong coffee, the way to start the day, anytime his life would permit it. It was his blissful fifth day away from the kitchen soaked by the scent of a cinnamon mixed with bleach, although, the bleach was more of his imagination. The sterile cleanliness of the place, one could hardly call a kitchen, it could only be compared to the operating room just before the surgery. That spotless cleanliness nauseated him by evoking in his mind the smell of antiseptics and bleach. And every morning in his kitchen would bring the memories of nightmarish scents of the hospital room equipped with shiny, unfamiliar and familiar objects; one may think of tools that you can use to cut small branches. With this in mind, George felt a slight pulling sensation, not a painful but not a pleasant one either, in his chest, over his breast bone that was cut open about a year ago on real short notice, before the anesthetics had a chance to circulate up to that part of his body, by the surgeon, skillful, young woman, who repaired his heart, that was not wounded by a fat diet, smoking or any other pleasurable lazy activities that the lucky bastards indulge for decades, but shrapnel: hot, heavy and deadly. He keeps it as a souvenir. No, he likes to think of it as a trophy, a small fingernail from the bony hand that was squeezing the last drops of life out of him, but the lady-doctor won the battle.
Those days, excursions in the woods, were filled with a sense of purpose and routine, qualities, he learned for years and years in the military, even so the purpose and routine of his post army life felt artificial and fake. This winter he hit his Golden Age and was retired. The time, he had dreamed of so often, turned to be far from his expectations, filled with his friends and relatives and mostly with his wife Marta, the woman of his dreams, whom he was deeply in love with. They had the three children together. Today she remained the same, as years ago: sweet, innocent and naïve, the qualities he used to like. But those years changed him many times over and over, and she was the same, a stranger now, more, she was an annoying stranger. The thought he hated to have in his mind, but, at the same time, he was not able to get rid of.
And if he would say that he finally was happy to be home and have a peaceful night of sleep, without being awakened by shooting or explosions or being ready to wake up every minute due to some other crisis, he would be lying, because he was miserable. The idle peacefulness of those nights did not give him a chance to fall asleep. The memories of past events would run in circles in his exhausted mind, holding each other hands, dragging him inside of that circle, blindfolding, spinning, dragging him into the endless dance of insanity, until his consciousness would give up and drop him into a vale of darkness, like a rock from the cliff, and as soon as he hit the bottom, he would be awakened again and again, countless times over the course of night. Every night, in the middle, he would stop awaking Martha, he would go to the library and finish there, what most of the people call night, and he called it wrestling with the night.
They have a name for this condition, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder; they have all kinds of therapies, medications and groups for it. But George, being a loner at heart, had a different means to deal with his emotional and social wounds and problems. He had to be alone. In those times, he saw himself as a wounded animal who needed to find sanctuary somewhere in a cave, hide there from the world and lick his wounds, until they healed.
Today he left the house quietly and early, way before daybreak, not to wake up Martha. Any time he would leave the house, she would give him a look that would ruin his day with feeling of guilt and frustration.
The darkness of the night was broken by the light of the still invisible sun that was hiding below the horizon, somewhere in the deep waters of the ocean or in the dark valleys of the mountains.
The street light, outside of the house, usually, when George would take his dog for the last stroll of the day, around midnight, would cast long dark shadows. Today, the shadow was grayish in color and insignificantly small, maybe up to his knee if he would have measured it, a baby shadow, but nevertheless, it was tightly attached to George’s boots and followed him all the way down to the car and in the moment he closed the car door behind, the shadow split free and crawled under the car, or maybe lurked for a ride in the comfort of a dark trunk.
He liked this time of the day. The road was almost deserted. He was driving to the East and the sun met him half way through. At first it was just a red stripe slightly above the horizon and growing in size the stripe was swelling into roundness until it finally rolled over: perfect circle, bloody-red and apocalyptically majestic. As soon as it broke with the land, it had turned into a yellow giant that was quickly decreasing in size and increasing in intensity, blinding George’s eyes. He put his sunglasses on, blocking the brightness of a new day.
The sun was sailing through the deep, blue sky when he parked his car on the side of the road by the hill, they call it mountain… he silently smiled at this thought. The last two years of his military career, he spent in northern Afghanistan. He chuckled again, muttering softly and rolling his eyes up… ”mountain”.
He pulled his back pack from the passenger seat of his car, double checked its contents, put his hands through the straps, felt its heaviness comfortably on his back. Then he bent over, tied his boots on double knot. He noticed an army of ants’ crossing over the trail, marching in harmony, one after another and disappearing under the rotten bark of an old three on the other side. He sighed, straightened his back, opened the trunk of the car, reached for his binoculars, hung them over his neck and lastly, he reached for his riffle, picked it up carefully and gently, slung it over his right shoulder and started walking.
The fresh morning air, saturated with early fall and the forest, flown into his lungs, circulated through his blood stream, sipped into every cell of his body, bounced there from wall to wall, made him light. George felt that gravity had lost its deadly grip on him; it made him childishly happy: the heaviness of his past and uncertainty of his future had disappeared.
The sound of a broken branch high up to his right, made him to turn his head and he saw a squirrel dropping down from the top of the pine tree, bouncing from branch to branch like a brown balloon, filled with water. She broke her fall by grabbing on the lower branch and was sitting there …. She looked in George’s direction, intruder that startled her and broke the balance of the forest. As much as he welcomed this morning and those woods he sensed that he was not welcome here.
In a mile or so he broke of the trail and was walking in the direction that was pleasing his sight and his feet, changing the angle frequently to avoid thick shrub or other usual obstacles of the forest. He was trailing, feeling the incline of the hill, and it was all he wanted to do, just go up, following a general direction.
He walked slowly and quietly; he looked attentively under his feet avoiding breaking the natural silence of the woods by stepping on dry branch. And every time he did, the woods become still for a second, listening to the noise as of determining what had made that noise and how dangerous that “what” was.
In a few hours of hiking George felt thirsty and tired; he decided to take a little break. He opened his back pack, drank some water, put the back pack on the ground and leaned against it, looking at a pale blue sky of the afternoon with occasional curly clouds slowly rolling toward the North. He felt relaxed and tired and decided to let it go and doze off.
A faint sound, unnatural, alien to the forest, woke him up. He was listening without opening his eyes or made the slightest movement. Someone was crying and that someone was female or a child, he determined it by the pitch of the voice. The sound was fainting away, stopped, the silence was restored for a few moments and then, the sob started again as if the person forced that cry out. George opened his eyes, carefully packed his back pack and silently walked into the direction of the sound. It took him a few steps to reach the clearing of the meadow, he stood there hiding behind the tree and looked. As he lifted the binoculars to his eyes the young woman appeared within reach of his hand.
She was sitting on a large stone, with her knees up and embraced by her arms, fingers both of her hands were enmeshed and tightly held her in that position. Her head rested on her knees, tilted to her left and her hair long and tangled, color of gray sand were reaching her toes while the wind blew it in all directions, like tall grass with roots up in the air. She was alone. George did not detect any other items, except her shoes, that were placed neatly on the ground. Those shoes told him that she did not leave her house for a hike in the woods, perhaps for a stroll in the city. He was stroked by indecision. He could not just walk away, what if she is lost, injured, thirsty or hungry. But on the other hand, her presence had disturbed the flow of his day; her presence was unwelcome in his life, unaccounted for. He just stood there waiting for a sign or miracle to happen to save his day.
And, sometimes, when you ask for a miracle it will be given, and as many would say, be careful what you wish for. But George skipped the second part of that thought, when he saw a man walking from the woods in her direction. He was ready to walk away with relief but then not knowing why, he paused, waited for a moment, still holding the binoculars to his eyes.
Friday, July 8, 2011
Thursday, July 7, 2011
letters (flow)
feather in the air,
snowflake on the skin,
touch of the wind
gentle, warm and weightless.
breathe of the Indian summer,
moment of indecision.
the fragrance of winter cold
and warm passion of the summer
mixed into nostalgic mixture.
the pastel tones of sweet sadness,
painted over the sunset
life walks silently
with catwalk of constant changes.
snowflake on the skin,
touch of the wind
gentle, warm and weightless.
breathe of the Indian summer,
moment of indecision.
the fragrance of winter cold
and warm passion of the summer
mixed into nostalgic mixture.
the pastel tones of sweet sadness,
painted over the sunset
life walks silently
with catwalk of constant changes.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
letters (your absence)
your absence
your presence is a silent void,
the rope over the burning coal.
I walk. I run mindlessly
to the edge of the world.
I die into my memory.
your voice, trick for the lost,
floats on the surface:
enchanting and soft
like a heavy silk...
the attraction of the raindrop,
trapped in a cobweb...
the night sifts through my dreams,
whispers spell of your breath
over my bare skin.
the knife of the permanent loss
curve the stars off my flesh
and pin them randomly
at the fringes of the dark sky
your presence is a silent void,
the rope over the burning coal.
I walk. I run mindlessly
to the edge of the world.
I die into my memory.
your voice, trick for the lost,
floats on the surface:
enchanting and soft
like a heavy silk...
the attraction of the raindrop,
trapped in a cobweb...
the night sifts through my dreams,
whispers spell of your breath
over my bare skin.
the knife of the permanent loss
curve the stars off my flesh
and pin them randomly
at the fringes of the dark sky
Thursday, June 30, 2011
letters (today)
Nostalgia… a touch of beautiful sadness, compared to a yellow leaf of the fall falling to the ground in a graceful descends, supported by the pressure of the air. Exhale! And it almost gone, and the leaf is on the ground… And sometimes nostalgia is a thorn in your heart: not fatal, not debilitating but cause of pain with every breath…
today is the first time in my life
I want to run,
run fast and far,
after the waters of a mountain river,
visible by its effects.
run like wind, like light
somewhere far and remote.
today is one day out of many
I want to lose my identity,
my internet connection and electricity
find a lazy wilderness of a day without humans
collect the stars, dripping from the dark skies
of not polluted night.
today is a day when I want to return
into the lands of my childhood,
place and time
when we all still have our wings
and still remember why!
today is the first time in my life
I want to run,
run fast and far,
after the waters of a mountain river,
visible by its effects.
run like wind, like light
somewhere far and remote.
today is one day out of many
I want to lose my identity,
my internet connection and electricity
find a lazy wilderness of a day without humans
collect the stars, dripping from the dark skies
of not polluted night.
today is a day when I want to return
into the lands of my childhood,
place and time
when we all still have our wings
and still remember why!
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
fragments (woman, owl and Cat) III
III
Loud sound of a car crash ripped the silence of the room and exploded in Loxy’s head and chest, sudden surge of adrenaline burst him into a ball of fire. He jumped up, on his feet and ran outside. As he ran out of the building he saw what he feared he would. On his left, to the East, a quarter of a mile away, on the busy intersection, the ambulance was still sliding in circular motion, next to the awkwardly positioned dark-blue semi truck. He thought that he saw the broken pieces of glass, continued to drift in the air, defying the law of gravity and sparkling like little pieces of the broken rainbow under the angular rays of the early afternoon.
The ambulance halted, before Loxy got there. He stopped a few feet away not realizing that his instincts driven by intuition kept him at a safe distance.
Screams of fear, pain and wailing of the distant sirens filled the air, stopping people around. “It is too late…” Loxy thought without grasping the end meaning of the sentence. And it was definitely too late for Lisa. Her body, still strapped to the gurney was suspended in the air when the gurney flew through the broken and wide open back door of the ambulance and landed upside down with one end still inside and the other side was ramping on the street. Lisa’s head was dangling down to her right with a gushing cut on the left side of her neck and a piece of metal imbedded there like the dull blade of a guillotine that can do only a half ass job. Pool of blood and Lisa’s pale face told Loxy that it was over. He was standing there and watching as the last drops of blood were dripping from her neck one by one, making small concentric circles in the pool, “still alive” strange thought entered Loxy’s mind.
Loxy saw a fire in the front of ambulance that was aggressively hissing, while consuming medical supplies of the ambulance. Loxy thought about the canister filled with compressed oxygen that was attached to Lisa’s face via mask a few minutes ago and now was lost somewhere in the debris. The stream of gasoline that was leaking from the tank was making a pass toward the pool of Lisa’s blood…
A few minutes earlier all the blood was where it belonged, rushing through Lisa’s arteries enriched by supplemental oxygen and strengthened by the meds that were fighting for her life. And she was in a happy place of her dream. She lay down on her back in a grass and wild flowers; cat by the name of Cat was sitting next to her pouring something nice and unknown. She was looking into the depth of a blue sky. The owl was missing; she flew away a few moments ago. And how hard Lisa tried to imagine the owl in her dream, the owl was nowhere to be found.
And suddenly Lisa saw in the deep sky a small dark object flying or falling down; it was changing color and appearance as it was getting closer. It was her owl! She was growing fast in size covering Lisa’s view, and she made unpleasant, statically scratching sounds.
Then darkness and a painful sting on the left side of Lisa’s neck, she tried to hold her hand to it, but the grass and flowers entangled her immobile. She tried to pull herself out and in the last attempt she regained consciousness for a split moment, just enough to realize the reality of the situation.
And she did. With the speed of light, her mind knew that she ended up in a car crash, that she was strapped to the board and that she was bleeding profusely from the cut on her neck. She felt the sticky warmth of her blood on her chest, shoulder and back, tasted unpleasant saltiness in her mouth and she was trying to cough out its suffocating presence from her lungs. She knew that it was her last moment, The Moment. She was calm and ready. And she helplessly surrendered herself in the hands of her faith.
She had drifted back into unconsciousness fast and it was not a field anymore, it was a huge owl’s eye closer and closer to Lisa’s vision, until she saw a deep emptiness there and then a flicker of fire on the far distance that was attracting and absorbing the last drops of Lisa’s awareness, while Cat was purring somewhere close…
Loud sound of a car crash ripped the silence of the room and exploded in Loxy’s head and chest, sudden surge of adrenaline burst him into a ball of fire. He jumped up, on his feet and ran outside. As he ran out of the building he saw what he feared he would. On his left, to the East, a quarter of a mile away, on the busy intersection, the ambulance was still sliding in circular motion, next to the awkwardly positioned dark-blue semi truck. He thought that he saw the broken pieces of glass, continued to drift in the air, defying the law of gravity and sparkling like little pieces of the broken rainbow under the angular rays of the early afternoon.
The ambulance halted, before Loxy got there. He stopped a few feet away not realizing that his instincts driven by intuition kept him at a safe distance.
Screams of fear, pain and wailing of the distant sirens filled the air, stopping people around. “It is too late…” Loxy thought without grasping the end meaning of the sentence. And it was definitely too late for Lisa. Her body, still strapped to the gurney was suspended in the air when the gurney flew through the broken and wide open back door of the ambulance and landed upside down with one end still inside and the other side was ramping on the street. Lisa’s head was dangling down to her right with a gushing cut on the left side of her neck and a piece of metal imbedded there like the dull blade of a guillotine that can do only a half ass job. Pool of blood and Lisa’s pale face told Loxy that it was over. He was standing there and watching as the last drops of blood were dripping from her neck one by one, making small concentric circles in the pool, “still alive” strange thought entered Loxy’s mind.
Loxy saw a fire in the front of ambulance that was aggressively hissing, while consuming medical supplies of the ambulance. Loxy thought about the canister filled with compressed oxygen that was attached to Lisa’s face via mask a few minutes ago and now was lost somewhere in the debris. The stream of gasoline that was leaking from the tank was making a pass toward the pool of Lisa’s blood…
A few minutes earlier all the blood was where it belonged, rushing through Lisa’s arteries enriched by supplemental oxygen and strengthened by the meds that were fighting for her life. And she was in a happy place of her dream. She lay down on her back in a grass and wild flowers; cat by the name of Cat was sitting next to her pouring something nice and unknown. She was looking into the depth of a blue sky. The owl was missing; she flew away a few moments ago. And how hard Lisa tried to imagine the owl in her dream, the owl was nowhere to be found.
And suddenly Lisa saw in the deep sky a small dark object flying or falling down; it was changing color and appearance as it was getting closer. It was her owl! She was growing fast in size covering Lisa’s view, and she made unpleasant, statically scratching sounds.
Then darkness and a painful sting on the left side of Lisa’s neck, she tried to hold her hand to it, but the grass and flowers entangled her immobile. She tried to pull herself out and in the last attempt she regained consciousness for a split moment, just enough to realize the reality of the situation.
And she did. With the speed of light, her mind knew that she ended up in a car crash, that she was strapped to the board and that she was bleeding profusely from the cut on her neck. She felt the sticky warmth of her blood on her chest, shoulder and back, tasted unpleasant saltiness in her mouth and she was trying to cough out its suffocating presence from her lungs. She knew that it was her last moment, The Moment. She was calm and ready. And she helplessly surrendered herself in the hands of her faith.
She had drifted back into unconsciousness fast and it was not a field anymore, it was a huge owl’s eye closer and closer to Lisa’s vision, until she saw a deep emptiness there and then a flicker of fire on the far distance that was attracting and absorbing the last drops of Lisa’s awareness, while Cat was purring somewhere close…
fragments (woman,owl and Cat) II
II
How would you imagine your last day, last moment on this planet?
Lisa imagined her last day to be crispy clear and clean. From the fogginess of her tired mind, she imagined her last moment as the moment of clarity to understand which breath of hers would be the last one. Not much to ask. Is it?
Hot water of her shower was pleasantly caressing her skin, immersing her body into warm wet comfort. Two weeks without any meds sharpened her senses and put her on the very edge of something unknown, dangerous and exiting.
Stepping out of shower, she took up the new towel - acquired for the occasion - and wrapped it around her full figure. She gently dried herself, carefully examining an appearance in the not so clean mirror, dropped the towel on the floor. Her hair, clean and lustrous, draped her pale face into a dark mahogany shroud. Her eyes, green and sharply focused looked into her eyes from the flat surface of the mirror, repeatedly asking “are you sure? Are you sure?” Lisa nodded her head with a short “yes”.
She went on the toilet, forced herself to urinate, but she was dry and she was satisfied. The “pleasure” of the enema she endured last night. From her limited academic knowledge, but the excessive internet surfing she knew that when a person loses consciousness, next they lose bladder and bowel control. she walked to her bedroom, step by step, stepped on the towel, felt its softness with her feet. She put a new pair of underwear on, kept from Christmas time for the occasion. Next was a pair of pajamas. Then she walked slowly, barefooted, over a dirty carpet, from her bedroom to the kitchen, holding numerous bottles of pills close to her chest.
In the kitchen, Lisa opened a cupboard and found the last, clean glass, filled it with water from the sink. Then she started slowly opening the bottles of pills, reading names and dosages, examining color and weight, the doctor who prescribed, pharmacy that dispensed, direction how to take them and why. She had half a smile and half a grin on her face while observing the pile of pills on the kitchen counter. There was two weeks of her supply, max she was allowed to have… “Precaution for overdose” she thought and smiled to that thought. There were sleeping pills, anti anxiety pills, pills to treat good mood and bad mood, muscle relaxant. And the last two new prescriptions, with names she was not even able to read, and could not remember what they were prescribed for.
As she emptied all the bottles, she took a handful of pills, making of her own prescription and as she was about to shovel them in her mouth, she saw a shadow, in her side vision, from her left, behind the kitchen window. She sharply turned around, nothing was there. “An owl” she thought. “Why is she hanging there at such an odd time of the day? And, wait a minute, why she is she but not he?” And, in her thought, it was definitely SHE. With this in mind, Lisa took a large gulp of water to wash down the first meds of her prescription, and then another one and another… until all of them were taken. Suddenly she felt thirsty “I shouldn’t be” she thought “it’s got to be anxiety”. Although, the calm and tranquility of the moment was so great, that she did not let herself dwell on such an insignificant thought. She finished the first glass of water, filed another one, drank half of that, put the glass in the sink, overflow with dirty dishes and walked back into her bedroom, her last sanctuary on this planet.
Lisa was lying in her bed, flat on her back and was carefully examining all the sensations within her body; trying not to lose the beginning of The Moment. All was familiar; she experienced no difference, no changes….
She started to feel sleepy, dizzy and slightly nauseous in about twenty minutes. It was nothing too terrible at first. But the intensity of the symptoms was increasing with every passing minute. Helpless, half paralyzed and violently ill, she started thrashing in her bed. There was no more glamour of the last minute and of the last breath, she was fighting something so painful, so frightening, so awesome, powerful and extremely uncomfortable. And it was objectively real; even so she did not see it, she felt the presence.
The flow of time had disappeared for Lisa. Hey! Lisa had disappeared; she was just it, a fleeting moment of life, fragile and incredibly resilient at the same time. That fragile moment of her was in a crushing grip of the dark awesomeness and resilient was not giving up.
She was on the floor. She vomited. It was so violent that it brought a filament of consciousness back and she felt as if she expelled her stomach and her intestines outside of her abdomen with that violent urge. It made the crushing darkness step away, perhaps from the disgust when Lisa’s face landed in the puddle of pharmaceutical vomit.
At this time Lisa’s consciousness was gone. She was back in her last night dreamland, running the fields with the Cat and at this time the owl was there too, she was comfortably sitting on the Lisa’s left shoulder. Lisa thought that it would be nice to see some flowers on the field, and flowers appeared, throwing green grass into the mosaic of colors then she thought about the distant sound of water and she heard it too, and then she wished for mountains, and they appeared in a foggy perspective. She suddenly realized that she is dreaming. She had read about lucid dreaming that other people describe and claim to have, but never believed that it was true, now she experienced it and it was beautiful.
The fragments of the memory of her last minutes were painfully returning back with waves of nausea and an urge to vomit. Lisa was regretful and she knew that she wants to wake up. She wanted her life back and she knew she would never do anything stupid again. She wanted to find the green field and run there at sunrise with her Cat (she will go and adopt a kitten and name him Cat). She would not shout at the owl ever again, but check on internet what she needs to do to keep the owl by her window. At this time, the owl started hooting, and she was not crying about food, but her cry reminded her of static white noise, something unpleasantly mechanical. And despite that Lisa felt love for the bird.
The room becomes quiet, too quiet, and shadowy still…
Knock on the door disturbed no one, another knock and one more… “Lisa, Lisa, are you there, your door is open...” Loxy’s face appeared in a doorway. He thought that she left her apartment and forgot to lock the door, although it was a little too early and unusual for her to venture out. He was about to walk away and close the door behind his back, when something suddenly stopped him. He was uncertain what, perhaps a hint of a strange smell or eerie stillness of the place.
He walked carefully inside, without realizing he was scanning the apartment as he was walking toward the bedroom…. Lisa was there, on the floor in the position of the moment when she lost her consciousness.
At first, when Loxy saw her, he was frozen stiff because of the shock of the conflict between denial and reality of the scene. the reality brought him into his senses quick and he jumped to her, dropped on the floor on his knees, picked her head gently with both hands embraced tightly to his chest, as his tears were uncontrollably pouring from his eyes down his checks and dropping on Lisa’s wet hair which smelled like coconut, Loxy thought that he would never be able to use anything containing coconut or smelling like one. And he thought about left over ice cream in his refrigerator that must go into the trash can as soon as he gets home. He touched her wrists, her neck, leaned close to her face and he sensed subtle signs of life: fainting pulses, shallow and slow breathing. “Lisa, Lisa …” he was shouting loudly, helplessly and without any results. Then he reached into his pockets, pulled out a cell phone and started dialing 911. He got it right on the third attempt.
As he talked to the emergency operator, describing the situation, giving directions, performing basic CPR under the guidance of a distant stranger and waiting for the ambulance, time had slow down. He felt that some large portion of his time disappeared and his being was invaded by heaviness. And that he, himself, was the invader and a stranger; because he was watching himself do all of his acts and think his thoughts as a movie where the hero was him, an obvious retard. He pulled himself together as much as he could…
And at this moment, the ambulance arrived, Loxy determined from the siren that it was getting closer for the last seconds and finally chocked silently by the front entrance of the building. Heavy and loud footsteps of a few people end up with a loud inpatient knock at the door. “It is open” he shouted, but his voice was deep and raspy, hidden somewhere in the pit of his stomach changing his shout into just a whisper, but it did not stop the paramedics; the knock was obviously just a routine, because three of them were in the apartment and in the room within seconds. Young woman in uniform with her stethoscope ready in her right hand shoveled Loxy aside with her left hand “move” while kneeling next to Lisa’s body.
Busy and concentrated, almost silent two of them were attending to Lisa, while the third one was on the phone with the hospital, as Loxy deducted from the broken phrases, he was passing information along to the other two. Two cops entered the apartment shortly after. They were on Loxy like a shit on underpants. He was never comfortable with cops, at this moment especially. But he did try to answer all their questions; some were so absurd that Loxy had to ask to repeat those questions a few times, which must have made the cops suspicious. But, in reality, both policemen thought that Loxy was in a medium stage of retardation. And all in all, everyone worked to their best to pull the fading life back.
Within ten minutes, the policemen were done with Loxy. One of them offered his help for the medics; it was politely refused. More routine, thought Loxy. And they left.
Loxy, tired and exhausted, slid down to the floor and was sitting there in the corner in an emotional slumber. He understood that Lisa was doing better from the conversation of the medics, which was more coherent at this time and drifted to a personal matter.
The woman was complaining about her life being split every morning between daycare and school, before she gets to work and no help because her husband was on his second tour in Iraq, and her partner was crying that since his divorce, he has little time with his kids because of his bitch wife, that tortured and manipulated him using the kids.
The woman noticed Loxy in his corner “Hey, cheer up, she’s lucky, you saved her life. She is alive, just in a deep sleep for now.” And they left the apartment with Lisa on the gurney, strapped flat.
Loxy was not moving, his heart had dropped low and was flipping on his diaphragm like a fish on low tide, every breath was painful, the air, he breathed, was turning into water in his lungs and was painfully and slowly drowning him with every breath, the sensation of pending doom was deepening. He was listening and he did not know for what…
How would you imagine your last day, last moment on this planet?
Lisa imagined her last day to be crispy clear and clean. From the fogginess of her tired mind, she imagined her last moment as the moment of clarity to understand which breath of hers would be the last one. Not much to ask. Is it?
Hot water of her shower was pleasantly caressing her skin, immersing her body into warm wet comfort. Two weeks without any meds sharpened her senses and put her on the very edge of something unknown, dangerous and exiting.
Stepping out of shower, she took up the new towel - acquired for the occasion - and wrapped it around her full figure. She gently dried herself, carefully examining an appearance in the not so clean mirror, dropped the towel on the floor. Her hair, clean and lustrous, draped her pale face into a dark mahogany shroud. Her eyes, green and sharply focused looked into her eyes from the flat surface of the mirror, repeatedly asking “are you sure? Are you sure?” Lisa nodded her head with a short “yes”.
She went on the toilet, forced herself to urinate, but she was dry and she was satisfied. The “pleasure” of the enema she endured last night. From her limited academic knowledge, but the excessive internet surfing she knew that when a person loses consciousness, next they lose bladder and bowel control. she walked to her bedroom, step by step, stepped on the towel, felt its softness with her feet. She put a new pair of underwear on, kept from Christmas time for the occasion. Next was a pair of pajamas. Then she walked slowly, barefooted, over a dirty carpet, from her bedroom to the kitchen, holding numerous bottles of pills close to her chest.
In the kitchen, Lisa opened a cupboard and found the last, clean glass, filled it with water from the sink. Then she started slowly opening the bottles of pills, reading names and dosages, examining color and weight, the doctor who prescribed, pharmacy that dispensed, direction how to take them and why. She had half a smile and half a grin on her face while observing the pile of pills on the kitchen counter. There was two weeks of her supply, max she was allowed to have… “Precaution for overdose” she thought and smiled to that thought. There were sleeping pills, anti anxiety pills, pills to treat good mood and bad mood, muscle relaxant. And the last two new prescriptions, with names she was not even able to read, and could not remember what they were prescribed for.
As she emptied all the bottles, she took a handful of pills, making of her own prescription and as she was about to shovel them in her mouth, she saw a shadow, in her side vision, from her left, behind the kitchen window. She sharply turned around, nothing was there. “An owl” she thought. “Why is she hanging there at such an odd time of the day? And, wait a minute, why she is she but not he?” And, in her thought, it was definitely SHE. With this in mind, Lisa took a large gulp of water to wash down the first meds of her prescription, and then another one and another… until all of them were taken. Suddenly she felt thirsty “I shouldn’t be” she thought “it’s got to be anxiety”. Although, the calm and tranquility of the moment was so great, that she did not let herself dwell on such an insignificant thought. She finished the first glass of water, filed another one, drank half of that, put the glass in the sink, overflow with dirty dishes and walked back into her bedroom, her last sanctuary on this planet.
Lisa was lying in her bed, flat on her back and was carefully examining all the sensations within her body; trying not to lose the beginning of The Moment. All was familiar; she experienced no difference, no changes….
She started to feel sleepy, dizzy and slightly nauseous in about twenty minutes. It was nothing too terrible at first. But the intensity of the symptoms was increasing with every passing minute. Helpless, half paralyzed and violently ill, she started thrashing in her bed. There was no more glamour of the last minute and of the last breath, she was fighting something so painful, so frightening, so awesome, powerful and extremely uncomfortable. And it was objectively real; even so she did not see it, she felt the presence.
The flow of time had disappeared for Lisa. Hey! Lisa had disappeared; she was just it, a fleeting moment of life, fragile and incredibly resilient at the same time. That fragile moment of her was in a crushing grip of the dark awesomeness and resilient was not giving up.
She was on the floor. She vomited. It was so violent that it brought a filament of consciousness back and she felt as if she expelled her stomach and her intestines outside of her abdomen with that violent urge. It made the crushing darkness step away, perhaps from the disgust when Lisa’s face landed in the puddle of pharmaceutical vomit.
At this time Lisa’s consciousness was gone. She was back in her last night dreamland, running the fields with the Cat and at this time the owl was there too, she was comfortably sitting on the Lisa’s left shoulder. Lisa thought that it would be nice to see some flowers on the field, and flowers appeared, throwing green grass into the mosaic of colors then she thought about the distant sound of water and she heard it too, and then she wished for mountains, and they appeared in a foggy perspective. She suddenly realized that she is dreaming. She had read about lucid dreaming that other people describe and claim to have, but never believed that it was true, now she experienced it and it was beautiful.
The fragments of the memory of her last minutes were painfully returning back with waves of nausea and an urge to vomit. Lisa was regretful and she knew that she wants to wake up. She wanted her life back and she knew she would never do anything stupid again. She wanted to find the green field and run there at sunrise with her Cat (she will go and adopt a kitten and name him Cat). She would not shout at the owl ever again, but check on internet what she needs to do to keep the owl by her window. At this time, the owl started hooting, and she was not crying about food, but her cry reminded her of static white noise, something unpleasantly mechanical. And despite that Lisa felt love for the bird.
The room becomes quiet, too quiet, and shadowy still…
Knock on the door disturbed no one, another knock and one more… “Lisa, Lisa, are you there, your door is open...” Loxy’s face appeared in a doorway. He thought that she left her apartment and forgot to lock the door, although it was a little too early and unusual for her to venture out. He was about to walk away and close the door behind his back, when something suddenly stopped him. He was uncertain what, perhaps a hint of a strange smell or eerie stillness of the place.
He walked carefully inside, without realizing he was scanning the apartment as he was walking toward the bedroom…. Lisa was there, on the floor in the position of the moment when she lost her consciousness.
At first, when Loxy saw her, he was frozen stiff because of the shock of the conflict between denial and reality of the scene. the reality brought him into his senses quick and he jumped to her, dropped on the floor on his knees, picked her head gently with both hands embraced tightly to his chest, as his tears were uncontrollably pouring from his eyes down his checks and dropping on Lisa’s wet hair which smelled like coconut, Loxy thought that he would never be able to use anything containing coconut or smelling like one. And he thought about left over ice cream in his refrigerator that must go into the trash can as soon as he gets home. He touched her wrists, her neck, leaned close to her face and he sensed subtle signs of life: fainting pulses, shallow and slow breathing. “Lisa, Lisa …” he was shouting loudly, helplessly and without any results. Then he reached into his pockets, pulled out a cell phone and started dialing 911. He got it right on the third attempt.
As he talked to the emergency operator, describing the situation, giving directions, performing basic CPR under the guidance of a distant stranger and waiting for the ambulance, time had slow down. He felt that some large portion of his time disappeared and his being was invaded by heaviness. And that he, himself, was the invader and a stranger; because he was watching himself do all of his acts and think his thoughts as a movie where the hero was him, an obvious retard. He pulled himself together as much as he could…
And at this moment, the ambulance arrived, Loxy determined from the siren that it was getting closer for the last seconds and finally chocked silently by the front entrance of the building. Heavy and loud footsteps of a few people end up with a loud inpatient knock at the door. “It is open” he shouted, but his voice was deep and raspy, hidden somewhere in the pit of his stomach changing his shout into just a whisper, but it did not stop the paramedics; the knock was obviously just a routine, because three of them were in the apartment and in the room within seconds. Young woman in uniform with her stethoscope ready in her right hand shoveled Loxy aside with her left hand “move” while kneeling next to Lisa’s body.
Busy and concentrated, almost silent two of them were attending to Lisa, while the third one was on the phone with the hospital, as Loxy deducted from the broken phrases, he was passing information along to the other two. Two cops entered the apartment shortly after. They were on Loxy like a shit on underpants. He was never comfortable with cops, at this moment especially. But he did try to answer all their questions; some were so absurd that Loxy had to ask to repeat those questions a few times, which must have made the cops suspicious. But, in reality, both policemen thought that Loxy was in a medium stage of retardation. And all in all, everyone worked to their best to pull the fading life back.
Within ten minutes, the policemen were done with Loxy. One of them offered his help for the medics; it was politely refused. More routine, thought Loxy. And they left.
Loxy, tired and exhausted, slid down to the floor and was sitting there in the corner in an emotional slumber. He understood that Lisa was doing better from the conversation of the medics, which was more coherent at this time and drifted to a personal matter.
The woman was complaining about her life being split every morning between daycare and school, before she gets to work and no help because her husband was on his second tour in Iraq, and her partner was crying that since his divorce, he has little time with his kids because of his bitch wife, that tortured and manipulated him using the kids.
The woman noticed Loxy in his corner “Hey, cheer up, she’s lucky, you saved her life. She is alive, just in a deep sleep for now.” And they left the apartment with Lisa on the gurney, strapped flat.
Loxy was not moving, his heart had dropped low and was flipping on his diaphragm like a fish on low tide, every breath was painful, the air, he breathed, was turning into water in his lungs and was painfully and slowly drowning him with every breath, the sensation of pending doom was deepening. He was listening and he did not know for what…
Sunday, June 26, 2011
letters (every word is important)
Good bye... I am sorry... How insignificant and meaningless those words are or how incredibly important! Development of language evolved us into modern Homo sapiens and true magicians. Think about it, all we have, all we know, all we do – is born, encoded and passed forth by the medium of words. Moreover everything is stored via words into our communal memory: our feelings, memories, memories of others. We become adepts of language and we learned to trick ourselves into the idea that “words are empty and deeds are meaningful”. The truth is – we had created a prison without walls and become own prisoners. It is a perfect setting, we cannot escape, because there nothing to escape from…. And how important “Good bye” is? It is not if you have a choice to say it or not. Although if you are stripped off that choice, it will hunt you beyond your grave … EVERY WORD IS IMPORTANT.
GOOD BYE
you said “good bye”
casually… on the parking lot,
walking me to my car.
ten feet of walk equal ten years of life.
you didn’t have time for an explanation.
our hearts were cold,
frozen into the icicles,
they resonated like a crystal glasses
in the middle of celebration
upon touching each other.
I listen to your reasons
and was wondering
if people toast on funerals…
GOOD BYE
you said “good bye”
casually… on the parking lot,
walking me to my car.
ten feet of walk equal ten years of life.
you didn’t have time for an explanation.
our hearts were cold,
frozen into the icicles,
they resonated like a crystal glasses
in the middle of celebration
upon touching each other.
I listen to your reasons
and was wondering
if people toast on funerals…
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