Getting My Land Legs

photo by Federico Erra.

My creative funny bone has not been smacked in quite some time. How do I get back to that place inside my head, how do I find that playground of my youth? My lack of inspiration is evident even in the storyline of my dreams. Now, when I feel bored, I reach for the cheap escape of “Desperate Housewives”, or catch “Sherlock Holmes” at the discount theater, or I play hours of solitaire on my iPhone. I search for high-priced gadgets to distract me, while what my soul really requires is something as simple as pen and paper. We compromise: an hour on my laptop for a little stream-of-consciousness. The lowest priced effort for the would-be writer.

Out of the morning mist emerges a tea house, about a hundred yards from the docks. Inside gather Harajuku girls, professors, grandmothers. Drifters slink to the shadows of the back room, sipping their oolongs and nibbling dried scones like the rats down at the pier.

In the front room by the portrait window, huddled in overstuffed chairs with their feet propped on footstools, the silver-hairs click their knitting needles and unravel infinite balls of yarn. I sneak down the back hallway towards the store room, riddled with crates of tea. There’s a cracked cellar door leading to the basement, where century old wine casks lay broken amid the cobwebs and dirt floor, the stains of their contents still discernable on floor, or is that blood? In the center sits a small round table with the melted stub of a candle where the tea shop owner escapes from the bustle of the shop to read through his wife’s diary.

I leave through the coal chute and head further inland. Dogs bark all over town, lunging into the dark but snapping back in mid-leap as they reach the end of their leashes. Dark clouds roll in, electricity in the air, green skies ready to hatch. Children on their bikes pedal hard for the hill from which to watch the storm pass. One giant lightning rod, that hill. They don’t know the danger in which they put themselves. Twelve years ago Sally was struck and lived, followed by her prolonged hospital stay with her fried nerves, muscle twitches, blackouts. People plied her for visions embellished on her through the lightning bolt. She waited for supersensory abilities, but no such magic came. She told them that the rare honor of being struck by lightning and living was like a steel rod being pounded from the crown of her skull through her spine and out through her heel bone, and that was all, yet people still asked her if she could pass on a message to their dead mothers, what day of the year they should plan for their wedding to ensure a lasting marriage, or where they could find their car keys. In frustration she started to make up answers. She was right almost every time.

Abuse the Brain, Hobble the Mind

photo by maytevidri OUT GR & MDZ.

My mind is hobbled. Why must I jam pointed objects into my brain all of the time? Why do I throw old blankets over it and kick it around? Why douse it in alcohol, prescription drugs, late-night TV, and then set it on fire?

My mind is my adversary. It wields too much power over me, too easily breaks me into submission. I hate the shadow it casts over every sunny spot in which I pause to stand awhile. It bickers constantly with me and won’t listen to reason, and I believe that if I dull it, life will be easier. Easier to live, yes, because it was so incapacitating to have these obsessions, these glaringly bright epiphanies shooting off like firecrackers, that…okay, just shut up now. Let’s not get into all that. Best not entertain these thoughts because then they will become encouraged and verified, they will gain confidence and think they can just butt in any old time they want when all I really want is a little peace and quiet.

So I manage to dampen it, tamp it down. Drink does not help really, let’s be honest. While it gives me a vacation from my mind, it also opens floodgates of feelings, something I’m told are “emotions,” and now I have to deal with a whole new sensation. This liberation is too hard to shake off when the drunkenness wears off.

So with the abuses of the brain -- a smidgeon of serotonin uptake inhibitors here, a dose of neurotransmitter suppressors to the limbic system there -- I end up with a brain that barely limps along, and when I want to put my full weight on it, it can’t hold up. Today is one of those days. I awake from a ten hour sleep and find that it is impossible to get out of bed.

I know what you’re thinking, but keep your clinician to yourself; I’m not particularly sad. It is much more physical than that. It has less to do with the mind and more to do with the brain, like I said, before, that time with the metaphor, that thingy...well you get the picture. It don’t work.

I call in sick to work, barely make it out of the bed to the sofa. The sun has spilled light all over the living room floor. Have to clean that up later, but for now, I want to watch out the window for a while. Two boys are running across the park with red plastic sleds in hand, heading for the snow covered hill. Their names? Let’s see; Dan Blom and Edward Jowicke. They skipped school and run with so much energy for the top of the hill. They know when they slide down and get to the bottom, they’ll get detention, but who cares? It’s worth it. Look at them go, bouncing over bumps, the scrape of packed snow speeding under them, their laughter traveling across the snow even while they slide down to their demise, but it was fun for a while. So what if they get locked away in a detention room? As soon as the principal turns her back, they will make another escape.