Perle Champion

what i was

i am not

now

i know not

why or when or

how

Melisande gazed from the window.  The call had gone out suddenly and there was no help for it, but to make some lame excuse, take a few vacation days and fly to Mayax.  It had been a long time.   

Everything these days seemed so long ago.  She had fled this city for a quiet job in a rural setting, determined to hate it and make it brief.  But she liked it there and her temporary flight, her banishment, became her passion.  A husband and children followed and she led an ordinay life ever keeping to her training ever keeping in mind who she was and ever at every turn using her powers and knowledge in the best tradition of the wise throughout the ages.

She always made it look natural, herbal and simple.  From the store she and Gerald ran with her father, she had slowly gained the trust of the town.  And, when she married a favored son, everything magically fell into place.  She became just like one of them, and not so frightening after all.  She just had gifts, special gifts and when the baby came the final ice melted away to distant memory – like this city which she now viewed anew from the hotel  penthouse suite.

There were six bedrooms with huge beds in each.  She had arrived first, her sisters from the school would all be here later tonight.  By morning, they would occupy the entire top three floors of the Mayax Hilton and they had booked the penthouse ballroom for their “Conference” for the next full week.

They was no choice but to intervene.  They’d worked so hard to build the people’s trust – One of their own gone rogue would destroy it all.

Is there such a thing as Lucid dreaming.  Can we really decide not only to dream, but what to dream about?

Depends on who’s answering the question.  I say yes, but then I think life is magic, and dream is just the part of our life our essence inhabits when our corporeal self sleeps.

I notice in my dream journal…

Note: if you don’t keep a dream journal by the bed, get one.  We say, oh, I’ll remember.  But we don’t.  Dreams so fresh and vivid on awakening, are lost in moments as the day’s chores loom.  Write it down immediately – review at leisure.

Once more:

I notice in my dream journal that I revisit certain places over and over again.  There are familiar houses, stairs, rooms, places and people that I know from past dreams.

At first I thought, hmmm, odd.  But as I let the dream sweep me along where it would, I reflected on later reading that there were doors I’d never opened.  There were conversations unfinished, and I wanted to know more.  I woke feeling unsatisfied as if I’d missed something.  I had.  I had missed out because I didn’t exercise my free will.  It exists in dream, but you have to work at it.

Lucid dreaming is an odd place, and anyone can do it with practice.  I find that taking a tangible item in my hand allows me to feel anchored on that side of dream to the me I am on this side.  I use stones.  I have my smooth stones, a clear and a black, and a rather craggy frosty quartz.

Practice and it comes.  These are my steps.

*   Meditate for 5 minutes as simple as paying attention to my breath

*    Hold my chosen stone loosely in my hand

*    Turn off the lights, lie down and with closed eyes recite in my mind:

• “I will remember my dreams.”
• “I will know I am dreaming.”
• “I have choices, as it is my dream.”

At first, I did good to remember the dreams, and slowly my recall became more intricate and detailed.  As time went on, I knew exactly when I entered a dream and my surroundings seemed more solid.  I could choose to explore more; pursue conversations and get real answers.  Things that frightened me before were manageable because after all, it was my dream.  I could will a light on in darkened rooms; sprout wings instead of fall.

I find I’m become more attentive on this side of dream, because I’m so attentive in dream.  That is a boon it did not expect, and I plan to embrace both sides to the fullest.

Glancing through old journals, I came across one entitled “The House call – a Date with Death” I wrote it on this date in 2003, on the actual day it happened January 9, 2003

Journal Entry 2/6/03 – Aerie:

I can put it into words now, It’s been a month since Sabrina passed.  My beautiful star-white angora cat was 23 years old.  She could barely walk and refused food and water toward the end, but life would not let her go.  She needed my help and one morning told me so in the only way she could.  She stood, looked me in the eye, wet her blanket and lay back down.  I picked her up, wrapped her in a fresh blanket and made the call.”

I still remember the kind young vet who made house calls, sitting with me on the couch with Sabrina between us on her favorite blanket.  He and I stroked her as the drugs had their way and she breathed her last as the strains of Tim McGraw’s ‘She’s My Kind of Rain’ played on the radio.  I still get moist eyed every time I hear that song.

Twenty-three years was almost half my lifetime, so it took several months before I could rescue another cat.  I briefly considered another white cat, but thought better of it.  I would expect her to another Sabrina and that wouldn’t be fair.

I have Jazmine now.  She is shiny obsidian black – Yin to Sabrina’s Yang.

Where Sabrina was star white (yang), Jazmine is black satin (yin).    Aptly  so, their personalities are as diverse as yin and yang, and I’m grateful.  Another white cat would only disappoint as I’d expect her to live up to my first. 

That wouldn’t be fair.

At 5, I remember thinking 62 was really old. Now, at 62, not so much. I am sometimes utterly amazed that I’ve been on this planet so long. Lately, I’ve been pondering this next 3rd of my life. Yes, I think I’ll make it to ninety-something, but not as some fat frail old lady.

I can’t prevent getting old, but I can certainly prevent getting fat and infirm. A very real danger if I don’t begin and do it now. Somewhere around 57, I started slipping, and I can’t really put my finger on any one reason.

I think it was a combination: A sedentary job I knew would end in lay-offs, as the company was slowly divesting itself of all its properties; menopause that although symptomless slowed my metabolism; and then eight months on unemployment followed 6 months after that by a year on unemployment.

For the first time in my long life, I look at the scale and do not like what it says. I look in the mirror and it confirms the numbers – 40 pounds in 5 years.  Like everything else, I’m taking everything in steps this new year. 

January was committed to a blog per day. February, I am back to walking daily rain or shine and art, being it photography, drawing or painting one by Sunday of each week while continuing the blog a day and a walk (5miles) per day.

It takes 30 days to build a habit and only 3 to break it, so I’m committing to a minimum of one new thing per month  February is exercise, but I felt that 1 drawing a week is doable as well.  

I’ve always kept a journal and stored the old ones in boxes on a self, hence they escaped the fire.  The ones from my youth; however, are long gone, along with my rock and fossil collection and of course all my comics (would have been worth a fortune today). The reality of a Brat’s life is that so much gets left behind and can only be found in the dark corners of memory.  And, part of my journey in this my 6th decade is to restore at least in part those long gone journals,  née  diaries.

Only children of military parents know what it means to be a Brat.  The toll in things abandoned because of the moving truck weight limitations is small in comparison to the relationships, the roots yanked up over and over again worn so thin that transplantation becomes near impossible.

As a military family through the 50’s & 60’s, we moved every three years.  Every three years, we got orders to move.  I said goodbye to more friends and loves and cried more rivers of tears in the first 14 years of my life than I can remember.  I know it changed me.  By my after my freshman year, I stopped making any more fast friends.  I began to keep people at arm’s length.  I don’t think anyone noticed, nor did I, except in retrospect.

My friend Pam Parker in ninth grade voiced what I knew in my heart.  We turned 14 together; we were fast friends for all of 8th and 9th grade, and it ended the day we said goodbye to each other at Big Spring Air Force Base in west Texas.

She said out loud what I had yet to admit.  “It ends now.  I won’t write, so don’t ask me.  People always say they’ll write, and they might once or twice, but sooner or later they all fall away.  I’d just as soon do it sooner than later.  It’s easier.  So, goodbye, it’s been a blast, but goodbye.”

I didn’t believe her. I wrote her once.  She did not write back.

There is so much I haven’t done, but I won’t bore you nor flagellate myself anymore than I already have.  You get the point. Procrastination, is my middle name, Alias or otherwise. Scarlett is famous for saying ‘I’ll think about it tomorrow; tomorrow is another day.’  But today is yesterday’s tomorrow and I’ve squandered far too many today’s to keep on this way.

Having entered the next 30 years of my life, I can relate to Shakespeare’s as Richard II saying, ‘I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.’

I’’ve been spending time like so much loose change, that it’s almost second nature.  It’s got to stop and I’m making a plan I’ll try hard not to stray.    

I know that my constant companion, alcohol, plays a huge role in all my straying.  But I am hardwired for pleasure, and can’t ever see being a teetotaler (unhealthy in my opinion) so,

Now what?

This morning, I struggled.  Stayed up late – one-ish.  Two chapters shy of finishing the book – need I say more.

Sooooo, 5 a.m. came very early and since I don’t really have to leave for work  til 7:45, I could have rolled over until 6.   But the cat had her nose to mine inquiring about breakfast.  Those whiskers get me every time.  No purring or meowing here, it’s more a truncated, disgusted sound like ‘meck’ – hard to write phonetically, but cat people know what I mean.

So I got up, fed her, then prepared my morning pre-walk drink: 10 oz water, 1 Tbs raw honey, 1 Tbs Braggs organic vinegar, stir well, drink on way to bathroom.  I shed my shortie pajamas on the toilet, pull on my workout shorts, flush and head for the living room to don shoes, socks, hat; put phone in one pocket, and a pad and pen in the other.

I’m about ready to walk out the door, but then I did a Flip Wilson and listened to those little voices.  ‘Hey,’ said the devil on my left shoulder, ‘you’ve done 7 days straight, take it easy.  The world won’t come to an end if you don’t walk today.’

Whereupon, the angel on my right shoulder piped up, ‘Big deal.  You’re 40 pounds over weight; you’re still drinking like a fish; you think 7 days is gonna shed all that fat.  Not!’.

I got my keys, sunglasses and headed out the door. Angel 1, Devil 0.  When I got back home, I was glad I went.  I always am.  The sunrise was a bonus.  In the beginning, it’s just getting out the door that’s the hardest part.

It’s a fact that it takes 30 days to build a good habit and only 3 to break it.  Not fair, but whoever told you life was fair, lied.

That angel was so right, I’m walking, but I’m still drinking more than I should.  I’ll keep moving forward and maybe arrive at the best answer to the question:

Now what?

far away and
long ago
there is a child
i used to know
with wide sad eyes
asking why
not out loud but
deep inside
why do we live
why do we
die

those clouds those

insubstantial
faery vapors which
upheld us
have given way
to the ground
i wonder if we shall
walk together
as easily as we
flew

© Perle Champion
11/27/07