I had a rough night last night, did not get much sleep, and so I ended up napping about 4 o’clock. My last dream of the nap was vivid. It was nighttime and a woman (my mother I think) had thrown a baby into the lake. A friend and I stood there on the dock in shock. Then we realized that he would go find assistance and I would go into the dark water.

First, we stood and looked for the rings left from the baby’s plunge into the water, and I aimed in that direction. I opened my eyes underwater, but of course there was nothing to be seen in the dark. I still, however, immediately found the baby, sort of floating near the surface.

And then I began rescue. I pounded heartily on the baby’s back to cause vomiting of lake waters (all over me). And then some mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Cold baby.

And then I woke.

Looking back of course my first-aid technique was all wrong (I may have sensed that even in my sleep), but what a marvel that I had plunged right in the cold, dark waters, and then actually found the infant and started revival efforts.

Weird, and interesting.

∞ ∞ ∞

On another note entirely, a little bit ago a friend sent me a link to a poem. It is pretty heavy, but some messages are.

The Dream

I dreamed that you had ceased to love me—
not that you had come from other beds
back to mine, or gone from mine to others,
just that something in your heart had stopped.

I willed myself awake to find you still
beside me. It was just a dream, I thought,
yet when I turned to kiss you, in your eyes
I saw that you had ceased to love me.

I willed myself awake a second time
to find myself alone, as I have been
these many months, but did not know if it
was terror or relief I felt, and whether

dreams unfold the past or make the future
plain. I dreamed that you had ceased to love me,
and know when I see nothing in your eyes
I can’t dream myself awake a third time.

—David Solway

I lent my phone to my nephew yesterday, and today when I went to check my ToDo List I found this message.

Have you ever wondered about the real origins of snow angels? You know, that laying on the snow and flapping your arms into wings, leaving an impression of an angel?

My cousin, Shanti Perez, award-winning author, blogger, and Etsy shopkeeper, wrote this piece. It might just explain how snow angels first came to earth.

∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

The stars and the moon were the coldest blue they’d ever been–at least since she could recall. Blue like oxygen-starved lips. Blue like the under belly of a glacier. Blue like butterfly wings. And looking at the frigid sky caused her to think of loneliness, of the distance between where she was today and who she’d loved yesterday. Eagerness had vacated her heart. The air molecules had slowed, suspending the link between here and there and, with a sense of infiniteness, she collapsed upon her back, breaking through the hard crusty layer of snow, into the soft powder beneath which sprayed up around her the snow–a thousand points of light. Looking at the night sky, to her, was to ponder the question of mortality, a full realization of impending death and insignificance.

Oxygen-starved lips. Some people have them long before they die. Poor lung function. Cold. Poor circulation. Others are found, their lips a dark blue, blood pooled in their calves, buttocks, and along their back by the force of gravity. In this way the tides, moon, and stars are all a part of that pooling of blood, that pull that keeps the earth in orbit, the moon circling, the stars in their distant galaxies and the only thing keeping her blood from pooling was the beat of her heart, its gush-gush, gush-gush ka-thump in her chest.

Some people are cruel. They have nothing to do with the pooling of blood in a corpse’s feet or the frozen stumps jutting out of the snow like perched wolves. They would lure her with fourteen bright red roses that, against the white crystals of snow, would warm her body with hope. They would whisper something almost inaudible in her cold ear. It would sound like, We insist. They would not hold her hand in death. But, they would scream how much they hated her for leaving, for going to the north of her mind, alone, in a blizzard and for not returning. And she would have to tuck that hate away in a steam trunk. Put it in a basement room. Leave it until she could forget.

The tail of a shooting star glided across the sky. It didn’t seem real here, her body wrapped in a snow suit and coat, her hands buried deep in her pockets, her neck wrapped in a scarf, her head cozy in a wool hat. She thought of how she could have lain down in this same spot, in this part of the wilderness, twenty five years ago, and looked up at the sky during a cold winter night, but she hadn’t. She thought of how the sky would look the same now as it did then, yet everything had changed. She could feel the emptiness of the cabins up the road; she could imagine wind howling through their broken windows. These windows she’d once approached from afar, in the night, comforted by the glow of amber light and the smoky haze from her grandfather’s cigarette, to find love and acceptance.

And the holiday drives of ten hours or more when she and Minh brought the ham for her grandparents who were so old and forgotten, if she and Minh hadn’t shown up, they may have ceased to exist and then she would cease to exist, and where would Minh have been without her? Minh with his sparkling eyes and quiet patience, always doing dishes or asking if anyone was hungry. Minh, the love of her life, a now non-existent being who almost seemed to never have existed. There was no turning back. No putting out the fire he’d died in three years earlier.

Perhaps, she thought, a part of him is in the air tonight–a fragment blown into the atmosphere, floating up there, twirling and gliding on the jet stream, until now, when it settled to earth, sucked into the moist pull from my nostrils.

Everything important to her that had existed within this landscape was gone now. Yet, the trees were important, the sky, the cabins, but they were vacant without the gush-gush, gush-gush of her loved ones’ heart beats, the electrical pull of their warm bodies, the sounds of rustling and activity generated by their presence. Only she could view the aftermath: this cold blue balance of white snow giving way to night sky, the moon pronouncing stillness beyond necessity, the stars twinkling in reply to the frozen crystals on the snow. There was nothing more than this. Lying here now felt like being alone on the moon.

They wouldn’t appear as dark shapes, at first in the guise of stumps, moving slowly over the horizon, casting long shadows in the moonlight. They wouldn’t place their cold fingers on her or ask her to follow them into a tunnel of light. But if she closed her eyes and cleared her mind, she could feel the old days through this place. She could imagine the cold winter nights when she and Minh unloaded groceries from the car, having driven for the holiday from Seattle, her grandparents standing on the porch, their breath striking out, backlit by the porch light. The now empty porch with its broken boards and missing door, a symbol of lifelessness. Blank space where the table used to be, where they would all sit next to the roar of the barrel stove, and play rummy.

She had a photograph of her grandparents waving goodbye from the front porch on a sunny June day.

Goodbye, grandma! Minh would say. He’d hug them both as if they were his grandparents, because, according to him, they were. That’s what he called them. And she could see the life in their eyes, perhaps a bit of sadness at the fact that they were leaving again, but that they’d be back–soon. And she and Minh did come back until her grandparents died, and then Minh died shortly after in the house fire. Now it was she who came back alone this time.

She wondered what would happen if she fell asleep, right there in the snow. She was warm and drowsy, the moon casting its stillness across her bundled body, and love behind her, lost to the dark.

∞ ∞ ∞

By Shanti Perez, all copyrights held by the author

I am medium about Christmas. I don’t do the Christ child thing–never have really. But there are people with whom I have spent dozens of Christmas holidays, and we have a trove of traditions between us, and in that regard, I do enjoy this season.

My husband does not “do” Christmas. He has some poignant stories from his childhood, and I don’t think you’d blame him for his aversion to this “celebration” that for him, quite probably never was a good time.

I have never had issue with him not attending family events with me; to each their own, eh? But I have missed his presence during the holiday gatherings, and I have been sad that he does not have the array of pleasant associations to this season that I have. I mean, “pleasant associations” are enjoyable, and I want loads of joy for all people; that’s my nature.

You might expect that now that my husband and I are split that I would have some sense of relief about the holidays this December. ‘Cause like I said, while it was never a big deal for me that he didn’t join my families’ festivities, I was sadden by his aversions and aware of his absence.

But. It doesn’t seem any lighter without him. It is almost like he is doubly absent now.

So I am in the midst of “brokering” a couple of transactions, having to do with one friend or another having something they want to be rid of, and another friend (or another), needing that something. I am sending emails back and forth and back and forth with questions and details.

And I am doing these tasks all in the midst of me trying to divest of my own stuff. And so I got to wondering, why am I diverting my energy to these transactions when I have my own gawd awful huge piles of stuff that I need to be rid of?

About as quickly as those thoughts crept in, I realized that my stuff doesn’t mean boo; relationships are everything.

A few hours later, I was sitting down with two other friends, who were treating me to their good company, and some kick-a*s mac&cheese, plus an opportunity to meet a friend of their’s–who just might be able to help me out.

And that’s how it all goes ’round.

∞∞∞

Photo: stuff like that by Derek E. Baird and used with Creative Commons license

I guess my husband didn’t appreciate my publication of the link to his love-wanted advertisement; he has deactivated the profile.

I don’t get it. Doesn’t he want more promotion of his quest? You know, stretching the dollar value of his membership and efforts at putting together his little self-promo?

What do you think? Should I publish copies of his advertisement here? I guess that would be wrong, I mean, because he has hidden the profile for now. Hmmmm.

Although, based on his history, I don’t know that he really has any connection to right vs. wrong. Ah. Lucky for him I am really striving to be a good person in all this. (I suppose actually, that should be, “Lucky for me.”

For awhile now I have been thinking about sending an email to this certain someone and expressing some of my concerns. But I can’t seem to get myself sorted out: am I doing this for her, or am I doing it for me? Am I really concerned about her well-being, or am I just serving my own interests?

Until I sort this out, I guess I will just keep biting my tongue.

I know. I know. So unusual for me. But, it’s the month of mitzvah, and I am really trying to follow that sage clichéd advice: if you can’t say something good . . .

Photo: Tongue again by Adam Lederer and used with Creative Commons license

Of course the title of my post calls to mind Sinead O’Connor’s song, Nothing Compares 2 U, and while her lyrics are not 100% apropos for my thinking about my own life right now, the poignancy of her song accurately pulls the strings of my heart, on this, the 3 year, 7 month anniversary of the beginning of my relationship with my husband.