11.5.11

 

My Dearest J.

 

I apologize for my delay in replying and rest assured your second letter was received. I also apologize for not alerting you on my change in address. This was my fault and I should have been more attentive in updating you on my life. There is much to catch up on. I don't feel I can respond to everything in one letter. So, I will write you a series of shorter letters. That way I don't skip/skim on anything or wear my poor hand out. Feel free to respond individually or in bulk.

 

To begin, please don't feel that you need to be clever on my account. All I expect from you is to be honest and open with me. I know this is easier said than done. Rarely are we honest with ourselves, let alone another. Though, I feel that if a person questions their honesty, then they are a pretty honest person. It requires diligence in being self-aware. I have known a few who claimed they were "always" honest with themselves and others. Their kind of honesty involved carelessness with the feelings of others and claimed their disregard as being true to themself. I am often amused by how these individuals would dress being an insensitive jerk up in the finery of honesty and principle. This, I feel, is more self-involved and less self-aware.

 

It is obvious that I have often been on the wrong end of these exchanges. I try not to let it bother me. This is also easier said than done. When I find that someone is getting to me I either become so angry that my mind is constantly on rewind or I go cold with everything and everyone. I try to use and turn these reactions into creative fuel or initiatives in resetting my physical and mental space. I have seen my behavior manifest in a pile of ongoing art projects to messing with my lifestyle by eliminating habits or creating rituals. I am not sure if these reactions are entirely  healthy, but anymore I don't trust anyone to know what is or isn't healthy for the whole or the very least, me.

 

J., being human is complicated business. I find that the more I try to uncomplicate my life the more knotted it becomes. At times I struggle with comparing my life to the lives of other women, no matter their age. There is often a feeling of panic when seeing another's pace and direction. I know you feel this too. It is that feeling of not being where we should be mixed with not being where we want to be (and wondering whether where we want to be is where we should be). There is no easy answer to these feelings. I am not entirely sure they are even valid, as if I feel this way because it's socially expected of me to compare myself to the lives of other women. Most times I am able to sift through the panic and realize that where this other person is, is not where I want to be. Maybe this panic is really just a response to the constant shifts in my life. I experience this anxiety due to the impermanent nature of the world and life, and struggle to understand where I fit in the unknowable. However one thing is known to me, other women make for poor measuring tools.

 

I hope that you don't look at my life and feel that I have moved beyond your reach. There have been times when I thought of you and longed for the stability of your life. My thoughts are not envious. I just sometimes wonder if I am doing anything wrong or if there are opportunities that I have missed. I imagine you reading this and laughing at my misguided thoughts on your life, especially after our last conversation. What I am trying to convey is that although our lives have moved along their own course, I still feel very much connected to you and that we experience many of the same feelings. I am always here for you as I know that you are there for me.

 

Thank you, for your kind words on my shyness. There is part of a Swedish proverb that goes something like "talk less, say more". (I know it's cliche.) I find that when I talk less no one listens when I speak. I know it's not me, listening is becoming a lost art. I am also guilty.

 

When it comes to group conversation, the Designer is similar (somewhat) to the Scientist. He is always ready for a conversation, often seeking it out instead of just letting it naturally occur. He has described various strategies used in order to get a person to talk to him. I admire his iniative, but at the same time cringe thinking about moving into another person's mental space. It seems invasive and somewhat confrontational. (Not in the way that one avoids confrontation, but in risking a drain on my own energy.) I have had too many experiences where I have entered into a dialogue with a stranger to later find that I can't get rid of them. This mostly happens with the opposite sex and on occasion with another female (the latter due to neediness). With men it is almost always mistaken that I am interested in something beyond the conversation. I don't exactly know what I am doing to get this kind of reaction. I am not a flirtatious person. (I don't really even know how to flirt.) The only thing I can think of that might cause people to react this way to me is the habit I have of locking eyes when speaking to someone. It is something I am acutely aware of, but don't know what else to do. I never know where else to look and when I avert my eyes I feel either rude or self-concious and awkward. I imagine to a male, a female locking eyes during a conversation can be misconstrued as attraction. What is unfortunate for me, is when I am attracted to someone I can not look them in the eyes or barely speak to them for that matter. What a dumb joke on me.

 

Regarding your apathy to your social groups, I don't think it is pretentious. I think that you just aren't connecting. This doesn't mean that they are boring. It just means that you are not stimulated by your engagements. Someone once told me that only boring people are bored. Apathy and listlessness are not the same as boredom. You just aren't interested. So yo have to create interest or just interest yourself.

 

Politeness may also be a factor. I consider myself to be a polite person and am familiar with the barriers of the neatly trimmed hedges. It is my expereince that being polite suppresses more natural behavior and cause me to hold back on probing for shared interests, which helps to form bonds. When you have two people being very, very polite with each other, it is like they are playing a timid game of catch and dropping the ball each turn. While social, niceties can be used as a way of networking and help ensure that the people you want to know want to know you back, they can also paralyze a conversation and keep a more meaningful dialogue from occurring. Any thoughts on how to break the polite ice?

 

On that I must close this letter. I am not one for knowing song lyrics, as I mostly listen to music that do not contain words. However I read a lot, whenever I can. Currently I am reading a lot of Frank Herbert's writings. I recently finished Children Of Dune. Here is a quote from the book:

 

"The one-eyed view of our universe says you must not look far afield for problems. Such problems may never arrive. Instead, tend to the wolf within your fences. The packs ranging outside may not even exist."

-Frank Herbert

 

Until the next letter...

 

With all my left handed heart,

H.

 

 

 

July 25, 2001

 

My Dearest J.

 

Hearing your voice and The Scientist's mischievous cackle in the background the other day gave me a warm feeling of home. It made me realize how much I miss you both. I do not have many close girlfriends in the city. I miss the emotional ease of our conversations. It has not been easy for me to develop new friendships with other women. I sometimes think it is because I am not open, too preoccupied with myself. Other times I wonder if it has more to do with how women relate to each other as we age. I am also generally shy. It has been something I have always struggled with in large social settings. My shyness used to make me feel insecure. I am working on it and am able to speak more openly about feeling this way. Though, it doesn't change the fact that I am still shy.

 

It has only been a little over two years since my mother passed away. I sometimes forget, as if she never existed. Throughout my adolescent and adult life it seemed as if she were barely alive. It is easy to forget her. I had felt that in order to live my life, forgetting her was how to survive. She wouldn't accept me the way I wanted her to. So, I created an ocean of silence and distance between us. Now, when I remember her existence, and I am reminded of her absence, I feel like a coward. I feel my failure as a daughter. I stayed away to punish her. It was never going to be and easy relationship. Had I known... It is something I now must carry.

 

Lately I have been struggling with my memory of her. My memories of her often seem like junk. I had put so little value in my time with her, because it felt like she put so little value in me. Looking back, it all seems so reactionary and I can not ignore my own immaturity. It is a sadness I can only describe in weight. These past two years have been very heavy for me.

 

In addition to the sadness, my days feel very thick. I do not move through life with ease. Four months after her passing I broke down and grieved for the first time. It was as if my heart cracked and opened wide. Drunk off my own vulnerability, I poured my emotions like wine. I resurrected things long past and put my faith in someone to treat them and the situation delicately. Following their own emotional agenda, they did not. They did not have my best interest at heart and failed to be, above all, a friend. Regardless of what has transpired, I care for their happiness. They are connected to me in ways that are too painful to cut. I did not ask for the shape our relationship has taken, but it stands. We must choose to become better because of it. It is wrong for me to want more than someone is able to give, just as it is wrong for me to expect someone to take more than they are able to receive. I am responsible for the condition of my own heart and I broke it in folly. Knowing this has become my gravity.

 

This past winter was a very low time for me. In those cold months I contemplated suicide. My thoughts ventured to a place where I questioned the importance of my own mortality. I can only describe what I felt as a nothing that was everything. I remember feeling desire and decision, as if they were more than just thoughts, but an answer. I began to feel an overall disconnect to other people, both friend and stranger. Not that I didn't care about anyone else, but that my attachments to this physical world were more painful to maintain. To float away felt like it would be freedom.

 

I know all of this may seem disconcerting to learn about me. It upsets me to write about it. To look at me, public or private, no one would ever know. I put on a busy show. Where did I learn how to hide myself so well?

 

I want to apologize again for my lack of communication. I want to be a good friend to you. I look forward to our future correspondence. Do you still write poetry? If you do, I would love to read some of your poems. If not, I would love to read what has yet to be penned. Tell The Scientist I say hello. I look forward to hearing from you!

 

With All My Left-Handed Heart,

 

H.

 

 

 

"How does one learn to be blind?", I asked myself after the acute pains of my fall had dulled to aching throbs. No longer being able to see time, I didn't know how long I had been lying on the floor. I guesstimated twenty to thirty minutes, but there was no way to know for sure.

I had been counting my steps, learning a new concept of space. My shin must have hit against the edge of the coffee table. I remember the two to three teetering seconds, arms searching the open air for support, before falling. I had twisted my body slightly to the left, to prepare my arm and shoulder to take most of the impact. Falling, my shoulder knocked into a lamp before catching the corner of the end table, while my hip must have struck the arm rest of the chair that sat next to it. Upon hitting the floor my body crumpled, bending into a half-hearted fetal position. I felt the grit of an unswept floor against my face. Tears of frustration and self-pity had streamed from my broken eyes, smearing against the hardwood floor with every moving jerk of my sobs. When my face dried, I could still feel the grit of my dirty floor, but with an additional sticky texture.

Lying there on the floor, I contemplated the differences in pain felt from my initial injury to it's current aftermath. When I fell it wasn't the physical nature of the situation that caused the most pain. It was the humiliated anger felt that struck my ego. The sharp stabs to my pride collapsed the walls of what I had built up as important to my human experience and shattered the mirrors reflecting my autonomy in the world. Without sight, space took on new dimensions and danger redefined my reality.

Wondering, I questioned whether pain actually disappears or does one just get used to it, accepting it into the fabric of their being. I pondered acceptance. It wasn't until each point of injury radiated the physical pain out in what I imagined to be spreading bruises, did my mind calmly register the moment as a fact to my future. Or, is it the other way around? Could it be that once my mind accepted the situation, the pain dissolved into something I could manage and tolerate?

After my fall and several minutes of sobbing into the floor, I lay there sniffling and suffocating on an overwhelming feeling of helplessness and self-pity. From there, my emotional state descended into a stillness that felt like nothing, because I felt like nothing. Alone in my darkness, I wanted to just not exist. I unfocused my mind and allowed my awareness to drift away on subconscious currents.

I am unable to explain what I thought about. Like waking from a dream, only a vague idea could be ascertained from shapeless details and events. I remembered a blank horizon, the sound of the ocean and an unclear childhood memory collecting sea shells along the beach. My mind grabbed onto this memory. As I mentally came to focus back on the situation, I continued to hear ocean waves faintly rolling in and out of the distance. Puzzled, I wondered at its source, registering that my home was no where near an ocean. The idea of being crazy flickered through my thoughts and was dismissed as quickly as it was conceived.

Determined to know what I was hearing, there had to be a plausible explanation for the noise. I concentrated on closer sounds known to come from within my apartment. I heard the ticking of my wall clock. That was easy. One didn't have to be blind to know the tick tock of a clock. I continued to listen and heard a low buzz come and go. I waited and soon heard it again, this time ending with a familiar noise that sounded like heavy blocks being shoved around and into each other. It could be heard coming from somewhere ahead of where I fell. Remembering the direction in which I fell and where I then lay, I realized it was coming from the kitchen. I recognized the source as my refrigerator kicking on and off to maintain a stasis in temperature. The sound of tumbling blocks was the large appliance making ice.

I brought my attention back to my body and felt a faint vibration coming through the floor. I flattened the palm of my right hand against the hardwood surface and pressed my ear firmly against the floor. A muffled sound could be heard. They were indistinguishable words being murmured on top of an underlying rhythm. My downstairs neighbor, Penny, was listening to music. Remembering her schedule this was her day off and she liked to play her music somewhat loud when home. I continued to listen, but couldn't make out the song. The tone and beat were unfamiliar to me.

A soft breeze brushed against my right cheek and moved a few strands of my hair. It smelled like crisp sunshine and the tangy sweetness of fresh grass. A mixture that makes for a lovely day, warm enough to lie on a blanket in the park and cool enough to wear a light and loose sweater. I turned my attention to tracking the flow of air. It was coming from my bedroom. The night prior I had difficulty sleeping. The room had been hot and stifling. I had awoken several times with a dry mouth and feeling the stale moistness of my sweat. At some point I had gotten up to get a glass of water and on my way back opened a window.

Beyond this opening a dog barked in the distance, the wind rustled through leaves in trees, other noises too infrequent to be learned clamored and the ocean, the nonexistent ocean, softly roared. They were noises cobbled together, creating a rich sound scape of texture and tonality. I organized each sound by distance, layering them away from me. The rustling leaves seemed to be the closest. There were trees along the street outside my bedroom window. A little further the dog started barking again. I guesstimated the animal to be within the neighborhood, maybe a street or two away. Random noises could be heard in peppered bursts throughout my relative distance to each known sound. They sometimes sounded like shouts, sudden slamming or machinery.

The ocean seemed to be far away, further than my neighborhood. What lay beyond my neighborhood? What lay beyond what I knew? I tugged at my memory, pulling it past familiar streets and homes out into an area filled with businesses, alleys, parks, empty lots and the highway. The highway? The highway. The highway! It had to be the highway! The highway was my ocean with it's constant motion of vehicles rolling back and forth. My automotive waves continuously roared and hissed, rising and falling with every revved engine and braking foot.

Musing on this revelation, I still found the sound to be tranquil. Knowing that it was a highway did not change the fact that it sounded like ocean waves. I knew that instead of scattering broken shells along a sandy shore, fast food wrappers would be tossed from car windows into roadside ditches. I still found it to be just as valid as an ocean. What an ocean is to the movement of water, the highway is to the movement of people. An ocean without water is not an ocean and a highway without people is not a highway. Pondering this perspective I thought about my own outlook and realized that I had asked myself the wrong question. I realized that it was not a question of how one learns to be blind, but how one learns to see.

A gust of wind slammed into us as we turned the corner. The day was cold, overcast and a fine rain fell in a steady spray. We tolerated the elements as a growing pain that must be endured throughout the experience of spring. It was like embracing an annoying old friend, calculating the length of their visit.

 

Paul and I had just finished sharing an almond and chocolate filled croissant, bought from the french nun who keeps a bake sale table at the fruit and vegetable market every Saturday. We walked through Noble Square, a neighborhood of pitched roof homes and retired smoke stacks. I would have walked by, unnoticing it, if the wind had not caused me to lower my face a few inches in defense. A foot away from the curb sat a tiny bird, no bigger than a clementine. I stopped walking, Paul stopping in response. For a moment we looked down at the tiny bird. It's eyes were slit. It looked tired and vulnerable against the open concrete. Its feathers were wet and clumped together. Concern for its well being overcame me. I found a small twig lying in a nearby flower patch. Hands full, I asked Paul to gently prod the bird, hoping it would become aware and fly away to somewhere safe. He gently tapped the bird's breast with the twig. It's eyes widened in response and it stumbled away from our intrusion. The bird was clearly hurt. The wind must have knocked it into some hard surface, injurying it. Paul moved away from the bird, encouraging me to walk away too. He said it was hurt and there wasn't anything we could do for it. I took a step or two away and stopped again.

 

Some kind of instinct kicked in, deciding my next action. As I look back upon that moment, there could have been no alternate choice. The moment was fixed and a force beyond my free will moved me. Handing my bags to Paul, I turned around and gently enclosed the tiny bird in my gloved hands. Days later I would learn that what I held was a female Pine Warbler.

 

We continued walking towards home. I babbled about what I could do for her, working things out in excited and continuous sentences. I rambled on about the various sized shoe boxes I owned and the tiny nest to be made from my stash of fabric scraps and pillow stuffing. I wondered out loud what to feed her and how long it would take for her to heal and fly away. She was like a broken idea to be fixed through realization. As we approached Ashland Avenue, an artery for traffic in the city, I stopped talking. I briefly wondered if the extra noise of cars, buses and people would disturb the bird I held. It couldn't be helped. We would have to walk through the noise before entering another quiet neighborhood.

 

As we walked parallel to the flow of traffic, I felt a tiny pulse against my hand. Uncertain of its origin, whether mine or hers, I opened my cavern formed hands to check on her condition. The feathers on top of her head had dried and fluffed out softly, whereas her breast was still damp and matted against her shape. Her eyes, still slit, stared out not seeing. She didn't seem to be aware of my hand or me. I folded my hands, enclosing the fragile body again into a cupped carrier. I wore cotton gloves the color of red wine. I wondered if this shade of red added any additional warmth.

 

We walked past hair salons, furniture outlet stores and taquerias. I caught a few glimpses of my reflection in storefront windows. I looked awkward carrying my hands in such a way, like a young child carrying a secret treasure. Movement from within my hands caused me to stop walking. Paul, a few steps ahead, stopped and again patiently waited. I opened my hands again with the faint hope that she had magically recovered and wanted to be free of me. Her eyes were fully open and she seemed to be shifting her weight around in my palm. Then she looked up at me, grotesquely twisting and stretching her neck. Her right wing jerked, as if in pain, then she leaned against the padded base of my thumb. Her eyes half closed to slits just as before. I covered her with my hand and continued walking. Holding onto hope, my thoughts chased a ghost of a chance she was still alive.

 

We crossed an intersection with heavy traffic and passed a bank, a few more hair salons and taquerias. We passed a school and decided to take a short cut through its playground. Away from the noise of the traffic I stopped once again and opened my hands. The little bird was completely still. I poked her, receiving no response. The watery pressure of tears framed my vision and Paul tried to comfort me with his words. He pointed out that the last five minutes of this bird's life was spent in a safe and warm place. He reminded me that she was injured when we found her and my gloved hands were a better ending than cold, wet concrete. With his words, he coaxed my tears to stop and I covered the bird with my gloved hands one last time. We continued our walk home and I settled on a small box.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The currents moving through the cave lethargically slithered in and around the Order of the Pteriidae. An orphan hovered above the ocean floor apart from others her age. Her smaller frame and delicate features made her seem vulnerable next to some of the formidable attributes of the others. Bulbous and limbless, her body ballooned out from her head and tapered into a tail that curled back into itself. A thin membrane, hinged to her side, fluttered with the underwater breeze, heightening her sensitivity to her environment. She appeared to have the innocuous demeanor of a seahorse while simultaneously giving an impression of the pernicious budding of a puffer fish. However, she did not emit poison and her expansion only served her in mobility. From her porcelain smooth face, a columnar crown stoically swooped high above and behind her head. It fit to her build like a bone white spine thinning out into petaled edges. Because of her decorous helmet, the mothers gave her the name Merdamure, referring to the sea's sometimes frivolous nature.

It was clear that due to her smaller size and limbless body, Merdamure would not join the guard when she became a sister. She also showed no sign of having the gift of song, a frightful talent. The mothers assumed Merdamure would become a mothers' maid. This pleased them for it meant a replacement for Sister Sardana, a maid soon to be mother. Mothers' maids were rare to the Pteriidae. Orphans were created beyond the order's control out in the wild ocean. A difficult environment, only the strongest survive. Those that endure these turbulent and harsh conditions find themselves culled for the guard or the choir. It is rare when an orphan with weaker attributes survive at such a young state. When an orphan, unfit for the guard or choir are collected, they are treated like a servile pet but secretly revered as student and inheritor of the order. The mothers depend on their maids to uphold the Pteriidae as future mothers. It is from them their hopes lie in gaining a Nacre, a mother of mothers. Their histories have had few transcend to this state and each one sprung from a maid.

The Pteriidae have two mothers' maids, one nearing the end of her sisterhood. Merdamure was the only orphan among the order unfit enough to enter into this familiar relationship. The mothers were covetous towards her and anxiously awaited her maturation. They had been through two generations of orphans which did not produce maids. The ocean was becoming more dangerous and they noticed their numbers dwindle, most acutely in their maids. So much depended on Merdamure, not only in her expected status but in her fertility. The mothers anticipated her germ to produce more maids. Merdamure was their gem. They feared if maids were no longer created, several generations down the line, their order would degenerate into the recklessness and aggressiveness of the guards and the manipulative callousness of the choir. While many of the mothers came from the guard and the choir, once a mother they fully submitted to the order and its future. Even though they carried traits from their sisterhood, their maturation into a matron calmed them into educators which the mothers, who were once maids, were trained all along.

(***This is a snippet to be expanded upon at a later date.)

A veil of dusted light fell through an opening in the ceiling of the carved hall. It's hem softly swayed along the floor, emphasizing the litter of broken shells and the occasional disturbance of particles scattered by slow creeping currents. The filtered beam of light gradated through the darkness, outlining the creatures gathered there and the architecture of the space. The walls had been carved into patterns and symbols. In places, inlaid marble jutted from indentations in deteriorating stone, giving the appearance of a cavernous mouth slowly losing it's teeth. The symbols and patterns indicated a civilization familiar with the sun, the desert, birds of the sky and heat. The creatures, apathetic to these depictions, softly hovered along the sea floor, anchored by their personal gravity. A temple to another world, the creatures knew nothing of this civilization's sunken history. They did not know of the sun's warmth or the earth's dryness. Their world, comprised of constant motion, sent shivers in cold sweeps. The creatures moved with their weather, taking the currents temperature by the intensity of it's prickle. Borrowing from it's sky above, their fluid firmament cast down dull days and swallowed solid nights.

The creatures viewed their world through milky eyes set in a humanistic visage. Almost completely blind, their opaque eyes saw only sizes, shapes, light, shadow and nearby movement. They depended on what they felt in the water's breeze to process the details of their environment. By warmth and movement, they knew when a tribe of Water Wolves hunted nearby and the difference when the wolves' smaller cousins, the Canines of the Crest, frolicked up along the surface. In the water, they could taste the photosynthesis of seaweed and burrowing lobsters in the grit of the sand they kicked up.

Each creature's face, a blank porcelain mask, protruded from bodies combining grotesque features with graceful form. The only similarity they shared was the smoothness of an emotionless face. The remainder of their physicality widely varied in appearance. Each creature, a collage of a being, resembled aspects of their habitat. As if the sea fused each with the best and the worst parts of it's aesthetic self.

They spoke to one another in drawn out hisses and sighs accented with note of technology they did not possess. To a human, above the surface, they sounded like a melody woven into the roar of the ocean. If heard below their sound became piercing shrieks, paralyzing their other world victims. To each other they were heard like haunted whispers encrypted with an electronic tone.

The creatures are feminine in nature and band together in a three tiered order comprised of the orphanhood, sisterhood and motherhood. The orphans are the young and have yet to reach fertile maturity, becoming a sister. Once a sister, they join the choir, the guard or become a mother's maid. They remain a sister until the cessation of their fertility, retiring into motherhood. The mothers reign the entire order, heading as council, reaping the orphans from the wild and educating them in the ways of their order. Every couple of generations a mother transcends the order gaining the Wisdom of the Witch, a comatose state in which all external sense falls inward. Hermits in their own bodies they dream until their last day. They are seen as both prophet and witch. When dreaming they communicate their visions, while a mother's maid gifted with memory records her announcements. They are also feared due to their ability to know the thoughts of those that come near. While physically blind, in eye and body, they possess an awareness and an acute sight that stings the mind. Because of this ability, they are given a wide berth and a solemn respect.

(***This is a snippet to be expanded upon at a later date.)

I sometimes wonder if I am drowning. Time moves over and around me like currents contradicting my direction. The dirt and debris of life get in my mouth. Swallowing on instinct, I choke. Violent spasms of emotion wash through me and I feel that no matter what happens I am going to lose. But, somehow another morning comes. I stand up and my body moves forward, running on memory's fumes. I tread through another day, sinking into another night.

When I was about four or five I almost drowned. I was at an indoor pool and didn't know how to swim. In the shallow end, by jumping up and down in the water, I discovered gravity. I learned that water resisted my physicality. Engrossed in my slowed movements, I absently bobbed towards the center of the pool. With each jump the water rose around me  like a forbidding wall.

I remember those few short moments when curiosity turned to panic. With my head thrown back, face barely breaking the surface, I snipped off a short inhale of oxygen. I immediately became aware of the danger in my surrounding element. When my feet hit the bottom of the pool again, I felt the floor slope downwards. In a desperate lurch I threw my head back again, preparing for another short breath of air. Skimming the underside of the surface, I inhaled water instead. I choked, muscles trying to push water from my lungs, just to claw at another breath of water. My limbs went wild trying to escape my turbulent body. The chlorine burned a cold chemical trail stretching from my lungs up to my sinus cavity. My head felt it would explode while my chest seemed to implode.

I remember the ceiling lights like some unobtainable goal. I intensely focused on them as I choked. High up in a space bloated with oxygen, those lights were where I belonged. I want to believe that I cried during this ordeal, being so young and scared. I imagine shedding underwhelming tears as they were recycled back into my experience. It is difficult to tell whether or not I did. My memory of this event ends there and begins again with a ragged dry heave.

I have never known to whom I owe thanks for my rescue. They saved me from an uncertain end, replacing me back into a world of solid surfaces. I have since tripped, fallen, bruised, scraped and broken through my life  just as graceless and blind as that thrashing child. The capable arms that pulled me from the water have always seemed like some invisible hands of fate. From their rescue a bloom in my awareness happened. I reconsidered the world. I learned to consider myself in it.