Navelgazer

thisbe is showing me around her house– it must be her house in new york, for her mother lives there, too. it’s full of little triangular nook & cranny rooms with rocking chairs and desks and doors that open to the outside shady spaces under the trees.

I have a hideaway up a kind of petrified tree inside the building right above the most populous room. I have a difficult time swinging myself up to climb the branches, and I wonder how I’ve done it so many times before– is there another way, or am I just getting old? once I’m up there, bits of paper slip down into the notches of the branches and onto the floor below– they are old love letters, and I have to climb back down to rescue them before anyone reads them.

my family is clearing out my parents’ house, and I have to go pick up odds and ends– old clothes and things inherited from our grandmother– mostly old china I don’t even want.

I’m scooping up handfuls of large nails and a crowbar with some dire intent– I don’t even know what it is. I walk toward where I think my car is parked, past some kids and people on the neighborhood street, and then realize that isn’t my car at all and have to circle back. the house is in a severe state of disrepair. there’s a recent snow on the ground, but it must have been raining for days previously because the ground is all soft mud. I’m crossing up the driveway to where the car may be parked at the back when my feet squish down in the morass. at one time the driveway was bricked, but many of the bricks have gone missing, leaving a pool of black mud. I walk farther back, gingerly along the scattered bricks, until I can see there is no car parked back there. then I reach down and fish up a couple of old logs out of the mud and stand them against the fence. they look like gnarled old men, and I realize they are people, sleeping, whom I must awaken through some arcane process. there is writing across their foreheads, and it seems to mean something to me.

my throat is full of jagged, splintery pieces of metal– I keep coughing, hacking and pulling out shreds of steel wool and thick pins, bits like watch parts– it’s all jammed up in the middle of my esophagus, and I have coughed it up painfully, raising it only slightly but enough so I can reach in with my fingers to pull the pieces out. it’s terribly uncomfortable, ghastly to feel the sharp, metallic scraping, but also exquisite relief to have each piece out. sometimes, if I’m lucky, several pieces come away at once. each bit frees my throat by degrees.

I’m peeling an excess layer off of the inside of my mouth. it cuts very close to the new skin underneath, so is nearly excruciating– but, again, a relief to be free of the blockage, to be clear and vivid once more.

there’s a panel we’re each given or set before which has seven categories, buttons or flaps, each with a little representational icon, used for testing our character and priorities. as you address each category, it sets up a little scenario and then records how you respond to it. I know one of them involves money, but I forget the rest.

I’ve gone back to boarding school for another year, and I somehow overhear something about my not being special, being unremarkable in some way, and I am absolutely livid. I go to my room to unpack, innately taking solace in my living space, and learn that, as an art student, I’ve been given a second room– as a studio or creative space, tho the layout is identical to a typical dorm room. for a moment I consider the dilemma of somehow fitting out and splitting my stuff and self between these two rooms, and in the end simply move into the creative space with a kind of “so there. just let them try to tell me I can’t do this” attitude. the more I take possession of the space, the happier I am.

my friends live upstairs in flats on floors above me, and I live down below, by myself. there’s a sense of outsiderness and former friendships broken or bent. they’re building slides up there down to the ground and painting them with smooth blue and black paint. it’s a big engineering project having to do with somebody’s injury or disability. I learn that one of the guys up there is unhappy, having a hard time– broken up or family bereavement or the like– I go to see him, want to put my arms around him, to pull my strong heart out of my chest and put it in his as a backup– but I can tell right away that, tho he is a friend, he doesn’t care like I do, like I always have for him– and I give him a squeeze and go away again by myself.

my sister and I are in my parents’ basement, in the former luggage room, checking the big shadowy equipment. our parents have updated things in recent years, but the equipment still looks ancient, dark and shadowy and bulky. we’re fussing with the hot water, trying to get it upstairs for bathing, and I decide to just bathe right there in a trim slingback chair device that seems designed expressly for the purpose.

I see a baby hippopotamus being tumbled and bounced down a rolling river, round keister up in the air.

and then there are rapids full of dogs and cats on floating debris, speeding toward some ominous end– too many too far away for me to save– but some jump off and brave the rapids, swimming, and run off into the wilderness, shaking the wet from their fur.

at some point somewhere I’m pretty sure there’s a purple rhinoceros.

finally, I’m walking along the wooded shore of lake superior when I glimpse something odd, something my eyes and brain together can’t quite make cohere– what *is* that big blue round thing standing in the shallows, turning slightly as if it were… paddling?? and then I see an odd curl– is that a plume?– on top of its head– and suddenly the whole thing coalesces: it’s a big round bird, like a cartoon partridge but enormous. and it is a vivid blue. right as I come up on it and am able to see it more clearly, it startles and paddles out to sea.

just then a couple of huron mountain environmentalists come along with boogie boards, see the bird with an intent recognition that causes me to realize they’re come specifically to see these birds (by now I’ve noticed there are more of them, a flock all paddling the tree-hung shallows)– they’ve tracked them to this spot. the people throw off their gear hastily and make for the water to slip in and get closer to the big blue improbable bobbing birds– I try to ask a few questions, but the woman is distracted– her eyes never leave the nearest bird even as her hands are hurrying over her gear, unfastening straps– and her answers to me are hurried as well and abbreviated– I stand and watch the two people paddle out quietly, lying low on the water, and then I turn and continue on along the overgrown shore.