I wake up in the cabana again. It's been a long time, maybe a number of years, at least months. I am waking up and I feel kind of terrible, one because it's been over for at least a year and I'm still waking up here, and two because I dreamed about this before I even met her and that means I might have made the whole thing up. I would be okay with having made the whole thing up, except it seems like she's been involved for at least some of it, and that some of it made her life a living hell, because we know too many of the same people, and they talk. And as time goes by, and more time goes by, she doesn't look so good in the big picture of things, she kind of looks a little bit insane and sad.
It's not like that's anything unusual, though. In the time that I started chasing after the Eternal Feminine, I have become a little insane and sad myself, and maybe that has something to do with the moon, that my mother the moon takes us all down eventually. And it just might be that eventually we all become insane and sad at the same time, in one of those ways that everyone wakes up at the same time, and looks at the clock when it's 11:11 at the same time, and it's magic.
That fortune teller, the one with the barnacles on her clothes at the edges of the beach, I can see her in this dream where everyone wakes up, and she would say to me, "Wake up, it's 11:11," and I would wake up and look out on a beach covered with old lovers, and they would be naked like in a big Spencer Tunik exhibition, and they would be covered in an interesting smelling oil that would look interesting in the sun, and they would be saying interesting things like, "Wow, we are all just talking about how sorry we feel about everything and we would like to help you because we are angels in the flesh," and everything after part gets a little bit blurry and it's hard to think any further than that, and I am starting to have doubts about this 11:11 thing.
But I am having a lot of doubts these days. My main doubt this morning is that anything good could come from waking up inside this cabana. It's the one we always rented, La Bruja del Cobre and I, when we were taking our vacations on the beach. None of this is a fantasy, at the core, it all is really happening in real time, except for the part about the vacations, because most of the time both of us do not have jobs at all.
My doubt this time is that I can live here in this cabana, even for a little while, without falling backwards and falling in love with the things that are no longer here. This is really all about falling.
I want to think that she is no longer here, either, but I see her here enough, visiting this same spot where we spent so many of our summer vacations (not really, but that sounds so civilized) ((and it might make me much more attractive, especially to people who are looking for people with 401k plans, and I'm not saying I don't have one of those, but it was just recently that I found out that you didn't have to run that distance to start collecting money, money is so very interesting, isn't it?)). And this time, I see her, because she is not here. There are marks of sand in the shape of feet, like they were prints of feet, or perhaps they are called feetprints. They look like marks left by the dead, and that makes sense, because we are both very close to the dead and that's why we found each other to begin with, and that's also why we lost each other but that's another story that still makes me very sad and it was my fault even though no one else seems to think so.
So her Muertos are still so very close, and they have her feet, and I miss her feet because they were terribly interesting. There was a chain around one that could scratch you if it wanted to, and it often did. And I miss running my hands along that chain. And she's long gone, and has left with a very obvious trace, and it's sad except when I look outside the cabana, I see her there, standing and looking into the sea.
I would like to say that I did not run when I saw her, but I always do, and my heart jumps in a way that is unusual for my heart, in that it seems like the murmur that she left me with, except it hurts just a little when it's related to seeing her, and I don't understand what that is about. I run to her and when I catch up to her she isn't moving, she is stiff and her eyes are wide and she is staring at the sea with a vacant look. This is a kind of catatonia I have seen before, from other lovers who are a little bit in love with death, and the thing that is the most familiar is that it is fake because I see her blink. She sees me see her blink and the jig is up. And the news is out.
And she says, "I want you to take me to the top of the stairs, but turn around before you get there."
"Why?" is the most reasonable question here so this is what I do say, in the form of a question.
"Because if you turn around, then I will freeze, I will turn into a pillar of salt, and then I can finally rest."
This is very hard to hear, because I can see her face in another world, one that is not this one, where she is crying, but she can't allow herself to do that in this one because, because I don't know why because really. Someone once did something that disappointed her, and she made a decision is because, I guess, but how should I know. It's also very hard to hear because I know she is tired, and she should be tired, because things are a little harder for her than they need to be, but that's sometimes the way it is with the children of the graveyard. It is also very hard to hear because it's the wrong story, she's not turning into a pillar of salt, this is the story where she gets lost in the underworld, and can never see Orpheus again and he doesn't get to see her, and it's very sad. It's sad because she has the stories confused, and I can't correct her, not here, because that would be rude, and she would think I think she is a little bit stupid. It's also sad because I turned around a long time ago and lost her a long time ago and I never would stop missing her, even though it was a long time ago.
And what's even sadder is that by now she has started to notice that I have a face painted on my back, and it's not her face, it's someone else's face altogether. I feel like I have to explain, and because this could very well be a dream, there is also an equal chance that it is not, and that's the best place for me to try to explain things.
The face, I explain, in this dream, is only appearing on my back because it is what I have been thinking about lately, and I think it's very good, because it makes me feel good to think about. There was this moment when I lost things and then I found something, and it wasn't until it was a gorgeous storm for a few months and then the storm moved somewhere else (somewhere north, I think, a little north), and it wasn't until later that I realized this important thing. And this important thing, I explained to the Bruja who wasn't made of salt even though she really wished she were, was this: I had been falling backwards into the world that looks very much like this one, courting and being courted by the Eternal Feminine, and this was suddenly one of her aspects that made questions out of her titles, because she was Temporary, and sometimes Feminine, and sometimes many other things besides, and even though I'd heard about this, I had never met anyone who could do it.
Like anyone who has spent any time at the bottom of the sea, she was many of the things that she appeared to be, and many of the things that no one else could see, and by the time that I noticed that the sea monsters that were coming from out of her skirt and coat meant that she was as deep as the ocean, I had already started falling backwards, and that made me sad, because I lose everything that I fall for, at least up until right now. There were also other things that I adored about her: that she had a collection of faces that matched my collection, and she also had so many more that I had not seen, and that meant that if we were ever trapped somewhere between time and space, we could be many things to each other and never get old. I keep explaining these things to the Bruja, and now especially I am trying to explain how this is reminding me of my thumb, that what happened with this sea monster, or mermaid, or same thing, was like my thumb except it happened to my heart, like part of that got taken off, and it wouldn't come back. But it didn't make me sad, I explain, because I think what happened to me also happened to her, and those parts are finding each other somewhere at the bottom of the sea, and they can speak when we can't find each other, and it's a beautiful story, I think, and this is what I explain. And I don't know why I'm trying so hard not to cry and failing miserably, and this Bruja is also looking very sad, because, she says, I look like I may have fallen in love and it's not with her this time. And I explain that, No it's just because there's a tattoo of a mermaid on my back that I look like I'm in love, she's only visible on my back because she is what I think about, and that doesn't mean anything.
It's not been the easiest morning, not by far, and I am more and more upset now when the Bruja is wiping the salt from her face, and is seated on a series of nine rocks, and she's seating me before her, and looking into my hands.
This Bruja, I wanted to be her lost lover forever, but before my eyes she has turned into something else altogether, and change is always hard. She isn't reading the lines on my palm, she is lifting the skin off my bones like it were the skin of a piano on a beach, and she is reading the blood running through the veins.
La Bruja del Cobre is complaining about the cold, and wishing we had more of that soup I made for her a long time ago, and she is reading the blood running parallel to the bones in my hands. "Everyone has their own alchemy, art, love, or money," she says, "and yours is love. But you knew that already. For other people it's art." She is looking at my forehead and remembering something. "For other people, maybe, there's a difference."
It's not like that's anything unusual, though. In the time that I started chasing after the Eternal Feminine, I have become a little insane and sad myself, and maybe that has something to do with the moon, that my mother the moon takes us all down eventually. And it just might be that eventually we all become insane and sad at the same time, in one of those ways that everyone wakes up at the same time, and looks at the clock when it's 11:11 at the same time, and it's magic.
That fortune teller, the one with the barnacles on her clothes at the edges of the beach, I can see her in this dream where everyone wakes up, and she would say to me, "Wake up, it's 11:11," and I would wake up and look out on a beach covered with old lovers, and they would be naked like in a big Spencer Tunik exhibition, and they would be covered in an interesting smelling oil that would look interesting in the sun, and they would be saying interesting things like, "Wow, we are all just talking about how sorry we feel about everything and we would like to help you because we are angels in the flesh," and everything after part gets a little bit blurry and it's hard to think any further than that, and I am starting to have doubts about this 11:11 thing.
But I am having a lot of doubts these days. My main doubt this morning is that anything good could come from waking up inside this cabana. It's the one we always rented, La Bruja del Cobre and I, when we were taking our vacations on the beach. None of this is a fantasy, at the core, it all is really happening in real time, except for the part about the vacations, because most of the time both of us do not have jobs at all.
My doubt this time is that I can live here in this cabana, even for a little while, without falling backwards and falling in love with the things that are no longer here. This is really all about falling.
I want to think that she is no longer here, either, but I see her here enough, visiting this same spot where we spent so many of our summer vacations (not really, but that sounds so civilized) ((and it might make me much more attractive, especially to people who are looking for people with 401k plans, and I'm not saying I don't have one of those, but it was just recently that I found out that you didn't have to run that distance to start collecting money, money is so very interesting, isn't it?)). And this time, I see her, because she is not here. There are marks of sand in the shape of feet, like they were prints of feet, or perhaps they are called feetprints. They look like marks left by the dead, and that makes sense, because we are both very close to the dead and that's why we found each other to begin with, and that's also why we lost each other but that's another story that still makes me very sad and it was my fault even though no one else seems to think so.
So her Muertos are still so very close, and they have her feet, and I miss her feet because they were terribly interesting. There was a chain around one that could scratch you if it wanted to, and it often did. And I miss running my hands along that chain. And she's long gone, and has left with a very obvious trace, and it's sad except when I look outside the cabana, I see her there, standing and looking into the sea.
I would like to say that I did not run when I saw her, but I always do, and my heart jumps in a way that is unusual for my heart, in that it seems like the murmur that she left me with, except it hurts just a little when it's related to seeing her, and I don't understand what that is about. I run to her and when I catch up to her she isn't moving, she is stiff and her eyes are wide and she is staring at the sea with a vacant look. This is a kind of catatonia I have seen before, from other lovers who are a little bit in love with death, and the thing that is the most familiar is that it is fake because I see her blink. She sees me see her blink and the jig is up. And the news is out.
And she says, "I want you to take me to the top of the stairs, but turn around before you get there."
"Why?" is the most reasonable question here so this is what I do say, in the form of a question.
"Because if you turn around, then I will freeze, I will turn into a pillar of salt, and then I can finally rest."
This is very hard to hear, because I can see her face in another world, one that is not this one, where she is crying, but she can't allow herself to do that in this one because, because I don't know why because really. Someone once did something that disappointed her, and she made a decision is because, I guess, but how should I know. It's also very hard to hear because I know she is tired, and she should be tired, because things are a little harder for her than they need to be, but that's sometimes the way it is with the children of the graveyard. It is also very hard to hear because it's the wrong story, she's not turning into a pillar of salt, this is the story where she gets lost in the underworld, and can never see Orpheus again and he doesn't get to see her, and it's very sad. It's sad because she has the stories confused, and I can't correct her, not here, because that would be rude, and she would think I think she is a little bit stupid. It's also sad because I turned around a long time ago and lost her a long time ago and I never would stop missing her, even though it was a long time ago.
And what's even sadder is that by now she has started to notice that I have a face painted on my back, and it's not her face, it's someone else's face altogether. I feel like I have to explain, and because this could very well be a dream, there is also an equal chance that it is not, and that's the best place for me to try to explain things.
The face, I explain, in this dream, is only appearing on my back because it is what I have been thinking about lately, and I think it's very good, because it makes me feel good to think about. There was this moment when I lost things and then I found something, and it wasn't until it was a gorgeous storm for a few months and then the storm moved somewhere else (somewhere north, I think, a little north), and it wasn't until later that I realized this important thing. And this important thing, I explained to the Bruja who wasn't made of salt even though she really wished she were, was this: I had been falling backwards into the world that looks very much like this one, courting and being courted by the Eternal Feminine, and this was suddenly one of her aspects that made questions out of her titles, because she was Temporary, and sometimes Feminine, and sometimes many other things besides, and even though I'd heard about this, I had never met anyone who could do it.
Like anyone who has spent any time at the bottom of the sea, she was many of the things that she appeared to be, and many of the things that no one else could see, and by the time that I noticed that the sea monsters that were coming from out of her skirt and coat meant that she was as deep as the ocean, I had already started falling backwards, and that made me sad, because I lose everything that I fall for, at least up until right now. There were also other things that I adored about her: that she had a collection of faces that matched my collection, and she also had so many more that I had not seen, and that meant that if we were ever trapped somewhere between time and space, we could be many things to each other and never get old. I keep explaining these things to the Bruja, and now especially I am trying to explain how this is reminding me of my thumb, that what happened with this sea monster, or mermaid, or same thing, was like my thumb except it happened to my heart, like part of that got taken off, and it wouldn't come back. But it didn't make me sad, I explain, because I think what happened to me also happened to her, and those parts are finding each other somewhere at the bottom of the sea, and they can speak when we can't find each other, and it's a beautiful story, I think, and this is what I explain. And I don't know why I'm trying so hard not to cry and failing miserably, and this Bruja is also looking very sad, because, she says, I look like I may have fallen in love and it's not with her this time. And I explain that, No it's just because there's a tattoo of a mermaid on my back that I look like I'm in love, she's only visible on my back because she is what I think about, and that doesn't mean anything.
It's not been the easiest morning, not by far, and I am more and more upset now when the Bruja is wiping the salt from her face, and is seated on a series of nine rocks, and she's seating me before her, and looking into my hands.
This Bruja, I wanted to be her lost lover forever, but before my eyes she has turned into something else altogether, and change is always hard. She isn't reading the lines on my palm, she is lifting the skin off my bones like it were the skin of a piano on a beach, and she is reading the blood running through the veins.
La Bruja del Cobre is complaining about the cold, and wishing we had more of that soup I made for her a long time ago, and she is reading the blood running parallel to the bones in my hands. "Everyone has their own alchemy, art, love, or money," she says, "and yours is love. But you knew that already. For other people it's art." She is looking at my forehead and remembering something. "For other people, maybe, there's a difference."
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