tiny white doll

“Singular annotation to feel his complication of contraries” ( a line from this morning's dream)

Weird dream this morning including the ex and the past.  I don’t remember the details of the dream, but I do remember its strange impact on my brain after I woke up.  I woke up too early, hearing garbage truck sounds and still in my mind was the visual that was taking place in the dream at that time, which included mountainous outdoor terrain, the ex, an ex of his, and me in the background.  In the background I was talking with an ex co-worker of mine whose father was some sort of horoscope expert or bipolar disorder expert or something like that (in another remembered visual from the dream, the father looked like a Transcendental Meditation teacher from my past – which makes sense in a way, because in retrospect, after I suddenly awoke from the dream, I felt like I had been in the midst of an unexpectedly intense Transcendental Meditation).  

As soon as I awoke, I immediately wrote down the phrase the woman was saying to me, which had been said to her by her father:

“Singular annotation to feel his complication of contraries”.

I didn’t know exactly what those words meant, but they were meant as a definition of the ex – and even though I didn’t know exactly what they meant, they definitely seemed to make sense – and then as soon as I awoke and wrote that phrase down, all sorts of stuff started rapidly popping out of my head.  Memories in the form of words and sounds and images.

***

Sudden ongoing increasing contraries of the ex:

Super sweet/terribly mean/almost uncaring.

Singing goofball hilarious songs/yelling at me/yelling at the TV/yelling out the window.

Being an affectionate hugger/telling me my fingers felt like snakes/punching the cupboard doors.

Suddenly getting up early and immediately launching into a loud made up song while making bacon/having a drunk loud angry tirade about how great Hitler was.

***

After writing down those thoughts that spewed out after suddenly awaking from the dream, I felt suddenly compelled (for the first time in years) to open a hand written journal of mine, the first hand written journal I compiled after I had a stroke in January 2010.

Here is what it says on the very first page of that journal:

“March 9, 2010: POST-STROKE (diary)

Juliet Cook. The earliest part of this book is much older.

I tore out some words I no longer liked + saved the other words, which are pieces of other’s poetry + odd little words that I might use in a lighter poem of mine.

However, I’m not writing poetry any more, right now. Because I recently had a Stroke.  My reading and writing of words is slowly (slowly slowly) improving, but my writing of poetry is not yet. I’ve been reading poems by myself & others, but it’s tough to read them slowly or entirely understand them. I can no longer remember them (can’t read or write or speak or remember things as well as I used to post-stroke.) The last few years have been wonderful for me as far as poetry-writing and now…”

***

Maybe I will add more lines from my 2010 diary soon. 

It made me feel oddly emotional.  I’m not sure if anyone else would be the least bit interested though, so maybe I should just read them by myself and not bother typing it or talking about it to anyone else.  Not sure yet.

I do know that after awaking from my dream and then suddenly reading a few pages from my 2010 diary, I had another sudden visual from my past. Past dogs dying.

I do know that all of the thoughts/images I highlighted in green were real life events, not dream imagery.  The images of past dogs dying were real too. And my little journal entry was real. 

Odd Dream - Water and Death and Money and Math

In last night's dream, an unknown to me older black woman and I were transporting ourselves somewhere on an old-fashioned raft sort of thing (which thinking about it later, brought to my mind that raft thing on some of the cover images of Mark Twain's, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn").

Suddenly we saw another old-fashioned raft with two dead bodies on it - a mother and a child.

We placed the dead bodies upon our raft so they wouldn't sink down underwater and drown into nonexistence.  Maybe I thought we were saving them from total memory loss - but it turned out the other woman wanted to dredge the missing things out of the water in order to make money. Next thing I know, the two of us were sitting in front of a group of police people and I'm listening to the other woman describe what we had found, in a descriptive way that she thinks will make as much money as she can.  I didn't understand what was going on, but the people behind us seemed to.

Then the next thing I know, I'm walking around by myself carrying paperwork from the police and an envelope with the thousands of dollars we had gotten from that description of the dead bodies we had found. I was inside a school  trying to find my new math classroom.  I'm walking and walking by myself until I finally sit down, look at the paperwork that has my room number on it - and realize I've been walking around on the wrong floor and am now running late.

I suddenly envision a man from my past being inside that room when I find it.  But I don't remember who that man was or what he meant to me - and I don't find the room before I wake up, look at my clock, and see that it's later than I expected to wake up.

When you find out that someone from your past died

What are you supposed to do and how are you supposed to act when you find out that someone you knew and really liked many years ago has died?

I FEEL sad, but I don’t know what to do. Scott Gallaway was a college friend; we were in the same BFA Creative Writing program in the mid 1990s; and I just found out via facebook that he died a few days ago of cancer. He was only 39.

I've not seen him in recent years (other than on his facebook page), but I had a small bit of contact with him online. Less than two years ago, in July 2011, I found out about his cancer, and mailed him some poetry chapbooks and we shared just a few emails - but that's it. He crossed my mind numerous times, including these last few years, hoping he was feeling/getting better.

A number of people were posting photos on his page; most of them from many years ago; and I thought about maybe adding one there; but it sort of bothers me a bit how when someone dies, they suddenly appear to be receiving more attention than they did when they were alive.  (If you’re going to be really terribly hurt and sad and sorry when someone dies, then maybe you should try to pay more attention to them now while you still can.)

I know that doesn’t mean people were not paying any attention to him when he was still alive; I know the sudden rush of correspondence and photos are related to remembering and honoring – and that often in life, people's thoughts, feelings, attentiveness, and attentions are kept inside their heads - and they tend to open some of that up and share it more in the midst of tough times, such as when someone dies but is still so deeply remembered and missed.

It's terribly sad when someone my age dies. 

(A contemporary poet, whose creative work I have not read in recent years either.)

***

The past. He's in the front middle.