15 November 2005

The Wind-Up Bird

These days it seems I can't escape my subconscious. Every night I go to sleep and have dreams of her and I getting back together. And every morning I awake only to be left in her absence, her imaginary impression in the left side of the bed. Her smile still burned in my eyes, her voice still ringing in my ears, her words in my heart. People talk about lucid dreaming, about being able to control things but it's something I've never been able to do.

I finished a book last night. A book that was hard to pick up after she left. A book that was both the best book I've ever read and the most difficult. This book, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, it was mirroring my life. It just got too bizarre and when she left, so did my desire to finish it.

Yesterday I picked it up again.

There's a quote in there toward the end that left me eviscerated. It tore me open when I read it. There was no precision as if it had taken care and cut me open with a scalpel. No, this had all the care and comfort of a shotgun blast aimed at my chest.

"People were no more than dolls set on tabletops, the springs in their backs wound up tight, dolls set to move in ways they could not choose, moving in directions they could not choose. Nearly all within range of the wind-up bird's cry were ruined, lost. Most of them died, plunging over the edge of the table."

If you think of the bird as fate, you get the metaphor. These people were made for ruin.

I talked to a friend last night. She told me that one of her friends has this dad and every weekend she goes over for dinner. Well, her dad has taken to making salads before the main course. In regards to lettuce he always asks her, "iceburg or Dole?" The thing is, they're both the same. There is no choice. So what he's saying is, you better just accept it, cause it's coming anyways.

These days I have to give myself over to the flow. There's an ocean of people out there who all share my fate. There's no lucid dreaming, no fighting it, no changing it. Not for me.

Amelie has stopped running to the door everytime she hears the honk of a car alarm being armed. Maybe it's time I should too.

I just have to let go and hope I don't fall off the edge.

6 comments:

DelTron said...

There is a fear of falling and an anticipation to jump...

You are at the point in your life where you are given these two options... While they can both seem to have the same outcome, just as in the case of iceberg or Dole, it how you approach them that makes all of the difference...

Anonymous said...

I worked with a guy named Bill once who used to tell us about this sourdough bread dough that he had. It was some special bread and the dough was given to him by a friend. You were supposed to pass a portion on to another friend before using it and keep part of the dough for the future. (Apparently it expanded all by itself.) Anyway, his friend called him up one day to ask if he had any bread dough left, that his dough had dried up. Bill replied,
"My dough dried up the day my wife left me." Thought you could relate.

kittens not kids said...

oh the half-empty bed...i still sleep only on one side of the bed and even though i don't want my exboyfriend in the other side anymore, i still feel that emptiness constantly.

i want to believe that there is some value in dreaming, that it's some way of processing or dumping or reshuffling, filing and sorting, all the thoughts/feelings/emotions/junk of your life. if you could control the flow of all this dreamstuff then you'd disrupt the process. if it made sense to begin with you wouldn't need the dream, right?
of course my dreams never work out that way, they leave me sad and lonely and wistful, sometimes angry, sometimes scared.
trying to get back on my own feet i keep stumbling stumbling and i think if i just sat down it would be better but i don't think it will.
sad neruda quote: loving is so short, forgetting is so long.....

Jon said...

I still sleep on the same side of the bed. "My side", while hers is taken up by my cat and pillows.

This is fine. I'm not lonely. I like my side of the bed. I sleep very well.

Lesson: The relationship has changed you, and it's okay to accept some of those changes. Don't waste time running upstream.

DelTron said...

I think you should listen to Kevin...

He's the one with the heater pointed at your griddle-piece...

jenwildcat said...

Here's to being stupid and desensitized. What were we talking about again?

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