Dreams. – The blind leading the blind.
Last night I experienced another strange dream. This dream was most disconcerting because I recognized myself as myself, and as I am now. I was blind for some reason, or going blind. My vision was rapidly deteriorating as I paced the halls of some institution I did not recognize. I found comfort in the color of the carpet, an industrial green, blue often set in these kinds of places. For a long time I was lost in the halls, or maybe I was in one hall going back and forth – of this I cannot be certain. This was strange because I had no memory of not being in them, or in this place I did not recognize. But then there was a puddle that started to grow in the carpet and each time I passed and felt it squelch under my feet I was disturbed. And it started to get bigger. And then I was alone in the rain outside, naked with only a tatty pair of underpants which had a tear by the elastic. And in the cold my shoulders raised, and my arms shivered around me. My skin was saturated with color but my eyes were shut and my complection gray. And then I was jolted out of this reality by a voice, and touch, someone was holding my shoulders now, and it was not me. And I was alone in the hall, standing in the puddle. Lifting my feet and letting them drop. Listening to the noise and shivvering towards the face of the wall so that the drips from the ceiling would land on me instead. I could see the floor, and I could see the wall, and at the same time I knew that I could see nothing. And the nurse, the woman led me away from the puddle and took away my wet slippers. I do not know how she did this because I did not sit down, but then they were gone and the woman muttered to me, and her voice, and I did not listen but only heard the peaks and lows of the tone from her throat. The carpet scratched gently against my toes, and the saturated pads of my feet felt the raw of the air wrinkle when they lifted. Then I was in a room and the floor was cold and smooth and made my feet squirm. The air was stale, and I was in a hospital gown and shared a room and someone else’s situation. I was by the door, and I could see a man with white hair in clothes and he lay in the bed with his eyes shut and turned speaking softly to a naked woman. The bare body was curled in the smallest section of the bed, it’s spine arching out from beneath the skin like small mountains around an earth. Crunched against the bars on the bed so frail, fragile and small, the muscles hung loosely from her frame. The age ascendantly obvious. Then I was next to my bed, and I knew the woman. I was getting into my own hospital bed. I called out ‘Trisha is that you’. Her face turned, or I saw it without her body when she responded. I was at ease and I knew her, and her curled form relaxed. She laughed and was at ease. There was I the carer in the opposite bed in a room for the cared for. My compulsions were to apologize, my lack of contact, my good friend. My heart swelled and my mind collapsed. All lapsed into confusion. I was alone in the shower getting hit by the water, and it chafed against my skin. My hair long and my head hung. Someone else was meant to wash me. Where were they. And I was in the tub, with my head held by the water, and my back held out clear for someone else to scrub. There was confusion, and an over powering sense of shame and loss. I knew where I was. I knew where I was. But I didn’t. I found myself being stirred out of a trance and a conversation with a woman, maybe Trisha when she was a nurse. Some woman who reigned familiar in this world but I did not recognize, and she warned me about being blind, and the visions that are not vision but imagination, she told me to be wary of my imagination and my subconscious dreams so that I do not slip away to a world where it is somewhere else. I was in the room that was with Trisha, and I called out to her. She said she was Trisha and her voice was the same but her face wasn’t. This was not the woman I knew. Now she was stronger in body and around her muscles held tight with fat was a different yellow complexion. Her stories were strange and unfamiliar, and instead of the white whift of hair she had strong brown locks. I was confused and I was lost. This woman was visiting me, and she was not Trisha. I said who are you – and she faltered. The room went silent, I knew her, she was not who I knew. I could hear her eyes well, and her skin rise to the sensation of damp. Something was wrong. Something is wrong. My toes curled, my eyes stretched but I could not see or feel. My hair was gone. I am here. I am here. Loss and confusion. The sound of the television, everything went. Fear. I saw a face, the same face. Not a scary face, just the face of a woman. A middle aged woman. In the mirror, on the television, on the face of Trisha who was not Trisha. Everyone I spoke to would have a flicker of this face. As if her appearance was turning on and off. Then it was all the faces on the television, all the faces I had ever seen or knew, like scrolling photographs quick. Then the woman, she was sending me a warning – a message about my mind. Am I loosing my mind. It is not her words, because she did not speak, only flickered but the bulk of the warning I interpreted as, beware the abscesses of the mind, when you cannot see the visions may not be vision.
Heather Dalton 