Dreaming and Waking

I'm in an abs class at my gym, and I've finally achieved a stable plank with my feet on the ball:



I've held it for about half of the minute the instructor is counting down when I realize that I'm not sure how to get back down. How did I get myself into this position?

I tried a step class once, and it was a complete mess. I am very uncoordinated, and I couldn't figure most of the moves. Mostly, I jumped around waving my arms and laughing at myself until class ended. I vowed to never take another step class.

Nash 360: This class covers all your fitness bases with Nash intensity! Three 20 minute segments of challenging cardio, muscle conditioning, and core training will get you total body results.

Sounds good, and it is on a Friday morning, which I have off of work. I wasn't even alarmed when we all started setting up steps; I'd been to a "Strength and Stretch" class where we used the step as a bench for doing chest presses. But what followed was an hour long step class, sometimes with weights. I'm still very, very bad at step class. I bounced, and flailed, and sweated - even done badly, step is a good workout - and shook my head at myself. I accidentally took a step class: How do I get myself into these positions?

Hatha Yoga: Experience a meditative, calm, yet strong practice. Perfect for beginners or advanced students who seek mind-body awareness and flexibility.

Before today, I'd been to about four yoga classes, all Hatha Yoga, with two different teachers. I'd found them to be challenging in some parts, but mostly relaxing, refreshing, and good for stretching. Today I went to my fifth class, with yet another teacher. Exact same class description as the others, but this was different. I guess the rest of the students are all regulars, so I suddenly find myself in an advanced yoga class for which I was very poorly prepared. As the people around me are balancing on one foot, tying their arms into knots, and pushing themselves into headstands, I hold the last pose I am able to get into and ask myself: How do I get into those positions?

At the end of the minute, my exit from the plank wasn't very graceful - a sort of controlled fall to one side - but it got me down and ready to get into the next challenge.

You have beautiful hands. I want to tell you, but I can't work up the words to the face of a stranger on the bus.

I watch hands a lot when people text, when people hold books, when people fiddle with their coats. Your hands are folded in your lap – so still.

You have very large hands for a woman, with long fingers. They aren't delicate. I wonder what you make with those hands; surely you must create something. They are hands for playing piano, or kneading bread dough, or carving wood.

When we get off the bus at the same stop, I notice that you are wearing sandals despite the cool, damp weather, and your toenails are perfectly polished in red. Your finger nails are plain: clipped short and tidy, with no polish. I wonder if you don't like bringing attention to your hands or if your craft demands practicality.

I hope you know that you have beautiful hands.

I have fairly poor eyesight. I don't see well without my contact lenses and I have poor night vision, so my morning journey from my bed side to the bedroom door can be a bit of an adventure. I've ended up tangled in Russ' robe, I've run into the end of the bed, I've ended up crossing most of the room on the diagonal and missed the door altogether. Luckily, Russ is a deep sleeper and rarely wakes as I fumble and stumble my way out.

There are few things I do before putting in my lenses in the morning, but one of those things is petting Puck, who demands attention and affection immediately upon seeing the first human of the day. That means that I'm living in a blurry world for five to ten minutes at the start of each day.

When the world is out of focus, certain details disappear. Details like drifts of cat hair, a fine layer of dust, and the kitty litter that's been tracked across and then ground into the bathmat. My house looks very clean and perfect through the blur; even though it's an illusion, it's a nice way to start the day.

I am so sore.

My pecs hurt. My shoulders and abs hurt. My back, arms, and thighs all ache. My arms and shins are covered in nasty bruises. I'm having trouble lifting the laundry basket and every time I get off the couch, I groan. I beat the shit out of myself yesterday, and it was worth every bit of pain I'm feeling today. ( Lots of pictures with the story. )

Moments of Devastating Beauty

The sun is setting. The spring has been so cold and drawn out this year that the onset of summer feels sudden. The air's still warm tonight, but there's a breeze tossing the leaves and my hair. Someone's barbequing down the street; the air smells of campfire.

I can close my eyes and be at the campfire. We're far enough from the light pollution to really see the stars, far and cold. The lake is on one side, the tents and cabins on the other. By the light of the fire, all that's visible are the first two rings of log benches circling the fire pit.

There are about a dozen drummers. They aren't all very good, but the ones who are pull the others along. I'm sitting three rows back from the fire, wrapped in my black cloak and my anonymity. The drummers aren't all great, but the ones who are pull at me, make me need to move. The drums are like another heartbeat. I wait as others get up and start swaying. Finally, I drop my self-consciousness and my cloak and I move to the edge of the fire. The flames are on one side, the drums on the other. I look at the stars.

I dance first for the stars, because they don't care. I reach for them and sway.

Around the fire, other dancers shimmy their hips. They bend and twist. Their long skirts and scarves flicker like another circle of flames.

The fire makes us all too hot, and we begin to remove clothing. It isn't a striptease – we shed shirts like dead petals.

My hips circle to the rhythm effortlessly, mindlessly. The world is reduced to the fire and the drums and the dancers. We are all entranced together.

The natural flow of the dancing takes me around to the other side of the fire. The lake is on one side, the fire and drums on the other. There's only the dark water, the fire, and the beat in my hips and hands.

The drummers falter, and my body slows as they work to bring the beat back together. I look up at the stars. All the dancers and drummers together are still only a tiny spark in the night.

Saturday, not yet ten, and it's another gray and sodden morning. Up and out of the house so early and heading to the gym; I feel very virtuous.

I cut through the flat city park in front of the bus station, following one of the many paved paths that cut across the open space. Someone is still sleeping under one of the trees, but most people are up. One bench in the middle of the park has two glass beer mugs and an empty cigarette package laying on it. The mugs have an inch or two of rainwater in them.

It's called "sleep restriction", which makes it sound like something done to a prisoner. My doctor at the Sleep Disorders Program prefers to call it "sleep compression", which sounds nicer.

I think the torture name is more accurate.

When you start a diet, suddenly everything is about food: food you can have, food you can't have, how much to eat, when to eat, counting calories and fat grams and fiber content.

I'm a sleep diet.

The bench is pretty far from the bar. Two people must have stepped out of the bar, mugs in hand, for a cigarette. Must have been a man and a woman; I just can't picture two men wandering that far for a private chat, and it isn't the kind of bar that gets a big enough female clientele for two women to be likely.

There are a lot of rules:

No bright lights, television, or computer for at least an hour before bed. Have some carbs and warm milk. Go to bed at midnight, and not a moment before. Stay up later if you aren't tired.

Get up at 6:30, and not a moment after, even on the weekends. Thirty minutes of daylight every morning. No napping. No laying down during the day. Thirty minutes of exercise in the late afternoon or early evening.

If you are awake for more than twenty minutes in the middle of the night, get up. No television or computer, and no novels; do something boring, like folding laundry.

I'm not good at boring myself; I end up telling myself stories when I try. I think about empty mugs sitting on a park bench.

A man and a woman happen to go out the bar's back door at the same time for a smoke. He grumbles about not being to smoke inside anymore. She has a lovely smile. To keep talking, he lies that he left his cigarettes at home and bums one off of her. She listens while he talks about the weather, the crows, and the library strike. She watches his mouth and his hands. He listens while she talks about the transit system, the squirrels, and the punk show. He watches her eyes and her mouth, and her breasts, when she isn't looking.

He buys her a beer – to repay the cigarette – and smuggles the thick glass mugs out of the bar under his jacket. She giggles as they sneak into the shadows of the park, away from the crowd and the street lamps. They take a bench and drink their beers and smoke the rest of her cigarettes.

Two nights of sleep restriction and my body decides to stop fighting the virus that's been threatening for the past week. I've got a cold, and all I've wanted to do all day is curl up in a blanket and sleep. But I don't, because I am far too stubborn. I've drunk a gallon of peppermint tea and taken Advil for the sinus pain. I have to pee every half-hour. I do anything but sleep.

It starts to rain. His apartment is nearby. They leave their drained mugs and an empty cigarette package on the bench.

It's almost time for my hour of screen-free time. I've got a magazine at the kitchen table, where hopefully I'll be too uncomfortable to fall asleep while reading. I did manage to stay awake on the bus this afternoon.

Get through the next five days, and it'll all be better. So the doctor says.

Did she walk through this park this morning and see the empty mugs and the damp cigarette box?

It's no wonder I don't sleep.

Monday morning. Breakfast isn't until 8 AM, and I packed most of my scattered sarongs and glittery bits the night before, but I'm up before 7 AM anyway. I leave all of my cabin mates mumbling in their sleep - they all made it back to the cabin last night; some for the first time all weekend - and grab my towel and head for the swimming dock. It's empty; the first time in years that I have gotten the dock to myself.

I sit for awhile, wearing only my cloak, and watch the mist race across the surface of the lake and the sun reach above the tree tops. I probably look meditative.

When I finally drop the cloak and slip down the ladder - fast; if you stop halfway, the cold water on your ass or breasts may convince you not to get in at all - it's simply because I can't sit still a moment longer. I do a shallow but rapid breast stroke back and forth to warm up and to out-swim thoughts of Pagan politics and bad pick-up lines.

It takes a dozen short laps, but I finally relax into the water and the trees and the sky and the mountains.

Finally, I get cold. After floating for so long, my body feels heavy under the relentless downward pull of the air. I feel like I weigh twice as much when I pull myself up the ladder as I did when I went down it.

Friday night. This is my twelve time at this Gathering, making me an old-timer here. It's like a family reunion; a very dysfunctional family reunion. It's the fourth year that this camp has been at this site and the paths, lit by long strings of Christmas lights that twist off into the woods to temples and lairs and docks and grottoes, are familiar. I even remember some of the tricky sections where the roots seem determined to twist the ankle of anyone not paying enough attention.

Saturday. We're still arriving, mentally and spiritually, to this place out of place. I hang out in the shade, too lazy to go to any workshops. I catch up on gossip and share some dirt of my own.

I envy the person I was my first year at this place, when I arrived alone amongst the Pagans as a naive seventeen year old and found a sense of community. Some part of me is still that sweet and naive.

A new friend calls me "Snow White" and teases me that little birds sing just for me and squirrels frolic at my feet. I think of a certain Snow White scene from "Shrek 3".

I say something a little nasty about a difficult member of the community and get rewarded with a big laugh. It's funny because it's true, and because it's sweet little me that said it.

Don’t mess with Snow White.

Saturday night. Or Sunday morning; I'm not wearing a watch. There's a fire, hot in the cool night, warding off the damp and the exhaustion. The drummers are maintaining a beat well despite scotch and wine and beer. I dance in the circle of dirt between drums and fire until I'm too hot, then I remove my shirt and dance some more. My hips know the beat my hands can never quite find. All around, the shapes of other dancers and the drummers' hands in the firelight. Through half-closed eyes, I see the half-round moon rise above the trees and shimmer on the lake.

As the night wears on, some of the drummers leave the fire, and the less experienced drummers left stumble more often. I begin to feel the ache of my legs from the length of time I've been dancing. An hour, two hours? I've lost track. I trance out and return over and over, never quite reaching the other state but always close. My body flirts with the drummers, trying to re-create the rhythm when they falter.

There's need and desire in the night, and it isn't all mine.

A young woman - 21, she says - with a carrying voice and too much to drink tries to lose her virginity. She pursues one man for several hours, flattering and teasing awkwardly, even as he tells her over and over that he is not going to sleep with her. He tries to spare her feelings, but she simply does not stop until he actually leaves the fire on an invented errand. He leaves her on the lap of a sweetly monogamous man who tries to soothe her ego only to find himself on the receiving end of her attentions. He talks about his wonderful girlfriend a lot.

Two people at the far side of the fire dance around each other, gradually becoming intertwined. They leave for the shadows before the rating reaches X, though she is topless.

An intoxicated pirate rawly propositions a friend. It seems that he'll take any to his bed, but none seem eager; we laugh at him in the morning, both for his behaviour and for his well-deserved hangover.

Sunday morning. Around the campfire, people cradle their coffees and their heads. I get a few (mostly mock) glares for my cheer. The young woman from the night before pokes at the embers and casually drops that she did get someone to bed the night before, though she doesn't say who. I fill a large garbage bag with cans and bottles and carry it to the main lodge. I pass a cabin mate who is heading to bed.

Monday morning. The closing ritual is simple and bittersweet, and followed by a whirl-wind of packing up our own cabins and the rest of the site and trying to say good-bye to as many people as possible. Garbage and recycling gets gathered up and all the Christmas lights and tent decorations are bundled into plastic bins. From magical space to just another children's camp in just a couple of hours.

Some of us caravan off site and meet at a White Spot restaurant in the nearest town. Over burgers and milk shakes we start processing, decompressing, and planning for next year.

It takes time to pull myself out of the Gathering mind space. My spirit feels heavy under the relentless pull of the real world. I feel twice as heavy coming out as I did going in.

I took one over-the-counter sleeping aid last night; after, my edges felt fuzzy, like my skin wasn't containing me properly. I still didn't sleep properly. Today I tried to compensate for my exhaustion with coffee. I had two whole cups, and then I was jittery and shaky and...

A customer ordered four pounds of butter this week. Why would anyone need four pounds of butter? He only ordered a dozen eggs. What takes twelve eggs but four pounds - four pounds - of butter?

This seems like a food mystery in need of a food detective. Unfortunately, I am not a detective.

I'm a spy.

I'm a food spy.

This afternoon, I snuck around a West side grocery store in a state of caffeine-induced paranoia. I watched over my shoulder all the time, jumping at shadows and scurrying away from every person wearing the grocery store's colours. Every time anyone approached, I would hastily grab the nearest item from the shelf and pretend to be studying the ingredients. Then, if the other person didn't leave right away, I would casually wander off.

I now know all the Happy Planet ingredients. That stuff's popular with the yuppies; I had to casually wander away and back again four times. I bought a "man goes blueberry" because it doesn't have any bananas in it.

I'm a food spy: stealthily recording the prices of juices and crackers for a competitive pricing secret shop.

I think I need to go coffee-free tomorrow.

As tagged by katz_purr: Once tagged by this entry, the assignment's to write a blog entry of some kind with six random facts about you. Then, pick six of your friends and tag them; no tag backs. This explanation should be included.



I own a whole drawer of jewelry and accessories that I use for costumes. When I wear bracelets, I start gesturing more frequently, and increasingly randomly. I don't just talk with my hands; I also start thinking with my hands.



When I was a kid, I used to give a little curtsy every time I said "thank you". It was an entirely subconscious gesture that I had for years. Now I just say "thank you" too much. ( Four more facts with pictures )

Bonus random fact (without picture): When I get confused or stressed, I tend to flap my arms like I am trying to fly away. I've done it for as long as I can remember.

I pull a pen out of a box of black pens. The cap's black; the end of the pen's black. I jot down a note; the ink is blue. I just stare at my handwriting on the page, knowing that there's something odd about that, but not being quite sure of what.

I'm sleep-deprived. The technical name for what I've been experiencing is hynagogic hallucinations, which sure sounds important. The experience is surreal, a dream, complete with dream logic, superimposed over the real world.

I'm talking to a customer on my headset while in bed. It doesn't matter that I am naked; the customer is on the phone and can't see me. Poor Russ tries to tell me that I'm dreaming. "Be quiet, Russ; I'm on the phone."

Someone's in my bedroom, watching me. Though they don't have any obvious malicious intent, I'm not going to be able to rest until they leave. I throw tissues at them, to get them to leave. Russ, my long-suffering darling, thinks that one's particularly amusing, once he gets over his annoyance at being woke suddenly by his bedmate sitting bolt upright in bed, chucking tissues at the door.

I have a long, involved discussion with barry_macneil in my sleep. I'm awake enough to know I'm in bed; asleep enough to dream him into my bedroom. Awake enough that sleep-deprived Russ has to listen to my side of the conversation; asleep enough that I don't remember anything about the conversation after.

I'm not fully asleep, so I don't ever feel fully awake after. My black pen with blue ink becomes surreal and develops symbolic importance without any meaning.

My dreaming and waking life slide into each other, and I drift from one state to another, never resting in either.

I want black pens to have black ink, and for no one to be in my bedroom tonight except Russ and I.

I am really, really tired.