A disturbed reality, a shivering glass with a dot of
liquid mercury jittering as if freezing.
Shuttling between sub-worlds and
unrealized anythings . . . between two strangers
and a bedspread and a quilt and an old
sleeping bag . . . I live where I want to sleep.
But instead I dream there, and talk to phantoms
to try to make sense of early hours.
I live in isolation amongst a thousand strangers,
people whose faces tell me little about further
beauty and truth, telling more about sculpture,
landmarks and bronzable faces not worth saving.
I walk and sleep in a similar dazed state.
The skies gather my eyes for their observant
quality; the strangers see me a thousand times
slighting them for sunsets and starlight.
My reality sometimes exists on a moniter, in the
spaces between keys on a keyboard,
a loud, unkind keyboard, which loosens my
knuckles. I breathe onscreen, I live online,
my screen name is my option. I exist as another
ghost on the machine. I taunt your eyes and
synapses, and I fall silent again. I live and die
by e-mail; I cannot love someone I've never seen.
I still wear my childhood in my back pocket. I
have not grown completely up. My slippers
are bunnies and my sleeping bag testifies to
the glory of She-Ra. I can tell about my
childhood toys and obsessions and reminisce
about everything wonderful and fine, but it is a
little late to lionize the age now; when I was
younger I did not figure the present really mattered.
But my childhood comforts me. I brought it with
me and it lives with me on my mattress; when
the rest of the world reminds me of a blank slate,
it reminds me of a written history, of my little
traditions of turning thoughts into writing. My little doll
contrasts with those nameless people. The
cold air outside makes me want the safety of the
room and the comfort of a cabbage patch embrace.
It is all counterfeit. A daily sigh on the new-fangled
computer, and my particular friend asks me
what is up. Each of him has a particular connection
to what I grew up around (my commercial intake
and the ratio of cartoons to action figures in the toybox)
and tries to understand my incomprehensible muttering
keystrokes about overall lithe dejection, a bit aimed at
the jelliness of life, a bit at the inertia, and some at the past.
The loveliness of late summer, fair-to-middling autumn, a
creeping of stealthy chill, is lost. It is lost to me
with the light of a million bits reflecting off the surface
of my eyes, I who conjure spirits and engage in a
bit of wordplay. I who do not play outside like I once
did. My next goal is a mudpie, and the target shall
be a stranger, who will possibly become angry, depending
on where the mudpie lands and whether s/he wants to join me.
Today I switched off the computer. Today I talked to
a stranger, sans mudpie, avec cookie. Il fait froid.
But I can't crawl under my blanket and dream forever.
I have been cold before; I have been cold, clutching
my little doll for comfort in a fall like this, standing on a
parking lot, waiting for my mother to come.
I recollect that the sky was grey and the trees were bare.
Everyone was still a stranger. And computers were bad dreams.
Such relish of thought. I now sit with my same doll in our
pool of warmth. I could be at my home; I hear a train in
the distance. This could be February and I could be five. But
instead this could be fall and I could be older. So-so.
A glaring message saves my screen. It says,
"everything . . . is but a dream within a dream" and I
have forgotten the source. The mouse threatens seduction.
But no one I know is online at 3 in the morning.
A friend sent me a letter about the kids my age
with their particular memories--sent to my
screen name. An automatic emotion found me as I
read; I bathed my face in saltwater, to my awe.
I've often wondered why I haven't been electrocuted
while crying (I'm always busy when I cry--another policy).
I passed it along to those who were not strangers,
who could relate, and who did not mind forwards.
Tonight I will dream my last dream. In it I will
be five and happy. I will know that I am
always happy when I am thoroughtly non-six and
unaware of any peoplethan my own. In my dream
my little doll and daddy's present of a new sleeping bag
will allow me to do anything admirable at that age;
I will not learn to type for ten years, will not
write poems for one and will never grow up.
Tomorrow morning I will wake up to the sounds of central heat.