Friday, April 29, 2011

Invisible Marks, Whorls and Fleshed Ridges

Along the surface of things my fingers trail, leaving invisible marks, whorls and fleshed ridges. I used to wonder if we didn't have our five senses would things cease to exist? Is it possible that our five senses construct things to see, smell, taste, touch, hear?

Not true with others, that's for sure, but if we were alone we would never feel the things we might bump into. Without others there's no one to tell us what the world is like. The world ceases to exist and we are not around, not in any conventional space or time. Things in the world turn to misty transparencies each time we approach something: a desk, a wall, the ground. We float, suspended with not even the darkness to keep us dancing. In the end, we might turn transparent ourselves, devoid of softly padded boundaries, while the underbelly of the surface world pours through us in a riot of strange visions and clandestine energies.

****
One night while slipping in between a state between waking and sleeping, I found myself in a dark place. It was as if I'd slid under my sheet which blotted out everything. Since this was one of those rare times when I knew I was dreaming I desperately wanted to fly away into the starry, foggy night above the city but I couldn't get myself free. I tried willing myself out of that fabric of darkness but had no luck. There was a tickling in my brain, like the recent tickling I felt when I ate fresh ground black pepper in a splendid salad at a dinner party. I felt like those angels in battle who'd been unfortunate enough to be pinned under the great mountains that were thrown on top of them. I realized I wasn't going to get out of that sheeted dark place and reluctantly woke myself up.

There was no getting back to sleep after that.

***
Every once in a great while strange things happen to me that I can't explain. This has been going on since I was a child. Other than the usual obvious childhood experiences such as the times I saw God, was blessed by Jesus, and saw the shadow of Satan on my wall, other things have occurred. (I've never seen an angel, though. Oh wait, maybe I have...hmm, but I can't be sure so I'll just say I haven't.) I used to be able to choose really great books by walking along the stacks in the library and running my fingers over the spines without looking at them. When I stopped, I would pull out the book and read it. It was always amazing. I was reading all the time and it was becoming cumbersome to find really good books so I started using this method to save time. Curiously, this ability faded once I reached puberty.

One time when I was driving down Highway 101 with my ex, we saw a giant tumbleweed coming towards us on the freeway. Now if you've been on 101 you'd know there's absolutely no reason for a tumbleweed to be anywhere near there, much less a tumbleweed larger than the car. The weed bounced over the car and disappeared behind us. At first, I thought it was just my imagination but my ex mentioned he'd seen it too. I never did figure out what was going on there.

There was also that strange time I was walking to McClure's Beach in Point Reyes National Seashore with the same ex. We were walking down a short path from the parking lot to the beach and when I first saw the ocean I had to stop. Something had changed and I couldn't figure out what it was. My ex inquired as to my reason for stopping but I ignored him. I continued to stare at the crashing surf and a real panic was growing inside me. Something was terribly wrong. I realized the sound of the surf and the actual surf were off by a few moments. As soon as I figured out this sound delay I became incredibly nauseous and almost threw up. I had to look away from water and when I looked at it again everything was fine and I no longer felt sick. This feeling seemed to be tied to the place I was standing in so I spent a few minutes walking back and forth along the path but couldn't recapture that feeling again.

****
It's probably nothing but most of the clocks in my apartment don't work. My clock radio is always off by 15 minutes no matter what I do (replace battery, check the plug). The previous clock was also off by 15 minutes which prompted me to get the current one. Any clock I put in the bathroom always stops working even the clocks designed to stick to your bathroom mirror. The wall clock here in the living room doesn't work. It's always slowing down until it's off by about 20 minutes. It doesn't matter how many times I change the battery. It doesn't matter how many clocks I replace it with (the current clock is the third one I've tried; I even tried an atomic clock once). Once the current clock stopped working completely I just left it on the wall permanently set to 9:46:44. The two watches I use the most work though I've noticed all my other watches seem to have stopped working prematurely. I even took a couple to have the batteries replaced but they wouldn't start up again. The computer, phone, and tablet clocks are working well, thank goodness.

It occurs to me there's a story in here somewhere.

****
I can tell when the bus is going to come and from which direction. The bus can come from two different directions on my corner and I started out by guessing which direction as a way to pass the time. I learned quickly that if I let myself settle and stopped thinking about it, I could feel which direction the bus was coming in and whether it was coming soon, right way, or in a while. Anybody who rides MUNI knows how unpredictable the buses can be so this odd game has proven to be useful. My accuracy rate is better 90% at this point.

I've thought about attempting a similar game with lottery tickets, dice, card games, or roulette but haven't had the time to try it out.

****
Years ago, I had boyfriend where odd things seemed happen more often than usual. There were the times I checked his blog and for a moment I would see the shimmering ghost of a blog post about trains that he wouldn't post until a good two weeks later. Why that post? I'm not sure but he did mention me in it so maybe that was the reason. I'd also sent an email to a different guy before I started seeing this boyfriend where I talked about moats and inferiority complexes. It was a sarcastic reply to a mean email he'd sent me and I'd sent it to the guy before meeting this boyfriend. Later, while checking my boyfriend's blog I found an old post of his where he discusses inferiority complexes and moats in almost the sarcastic same way. There were other things but they're too weird to even post here. Needless to say because of these odd things I was convinced that we were right for each other.

That was a bad call.

(Someone is practicing scales on a tuba in an apartment on my street. It's the first time I've heard it. Seems appropriate for this post and my state of mind today.)

****
During the worst part of my divorce (the first two weeks), very strange things would happen. I kept hearing things falling and dropping in other rooms in the house. I knew these sounds were happening because the dogs would look up too. Sometimes when I went to see what had fallen I wouldn't find anything. Other times I'd find something on the floor that had no business being there. I was in a very bad state, almost suicidal, and not eating or sleeping. I realized after the first few days that I was probably imagining these things falling though the scary thought occurred to me that perhaps I was causing things to fall because of my whacked out state of mind.

I've had two concrete encounters with ghosts though I've never actually seen one. There have been other similar kinds of situations though they've been too vague to explain. All in all, I don't take these odd things very seriously. They don't happen very often (except the bus thing) and are probably explained away by something perfectly rational. Still, I do believe there are things in this world that we just don't understand and so many things are happening below the surface that I can't ignore it.

2 comments:

Marco said...

I was at the dentist a couple months ago and the hygienist (a substitute hygienist, no less) told me, while she was working on my teeth, a story about how a ghost in her house got on top of her and tried to make love to her. She said she felt the weight of something on top of her. But it was the ghost of woman who had died in that house, and this ghost was continually thinking her husband was still there, years after he had moved out.

Mock Turtle said...

How sad! About the ghost, I mean. Poor thing. She must have been so confused.

Can't remember...didn't you say you've seen a ghost? Don't reply here, send me an email.

MT