Karen: Go to sleeeeep, you are getting sleeeepy

NW: yes

Karen: look into my eyyyyyyyyes, you are very sleeeeeeeepy

NW: yesssssssss i am sleeeeeeepppyyyyy

Karen: you will do everything I sayyyyyyyyyyyyy

Karen: you arrrrre in my powerrrrrrrrrr

NW: yessss i will follllowwww commanndsss

Karen: cluck like a chicken!

NW: bock bock

Karen, to herself: IT WORKS!

THREE HOURS GO BY

Karen: when you awake, you will not remember anything. You will not remember being a chicken, or robbing that bank, or running naked through the halls at school. But you will trust me completely. 1-2-3-  AWAKE!

Karen: there, feel better?

NW: what just happened?

Karen: oh, um, er, nothing.

So I went down to Portland a couple of weeks ago, the place that was built atop an ancient unicorn burial ground (I did not make this up — it’s on Facebook so it must be true — but they only bury the really really ancient ones so they leave the perky young ones to prance around and make rainbows)(unicorn euthanasia)(don’t you love alliteration that doesn’t even start with the same letter? Am I a word nerd or what?) and that pulled me like a magnet all the way down I-5. I awoke that morning, my voice two octaves lower than usual (Matthew said, “Ooh, sexy!” and meant it) and my throat feeling like someone had taken a barbecue grill brush to it during the night.

I was sick.

With a job to do.

Meeting people and being all Professional In a Suit. Also wearing New Riding Boots, even though I had no idea there would be actual horses. Which made my hand muddy when I stroked their muddy necks and tried to avoid their long yellow boot-eating teeth, also teeth that mistake fingers for carrots. Hey, it happened once. Could happen again.

So for two days I was perky and also wise, and talked and talked and talked. Three hours non-stop on Saturday. NINE HOURS non-stop on Sunday. In between sleeping in the Room of No Sleep, the one everyone said casually the next day that, “Oh that? Everyone we know who has slept in that room had trouble sleeping there.” Thanks. Yes, it had a bathroom of its own, which I appreciated. Considered sleeping in it, too.

And then I drove back up I-5, a whole state’s worth of I-5, afterward.

And then died.

But wait! Then I had to pack! And drive again on I-5 to an airport! And sit on a plane with wadded-up airport toilet paper in the pocket of my Holt Renfrew stylish trench, because I had forgotten real tissues that weren’t made of sandpaper.

And then flew and died some more in someone else’s house.

Like I said before, I am an awesome guest.

(By Day 5, I was doing the dishes, so be kind.)

But all that was TWO WEEKS ago. So why am I still sniffling and coughing? I thought I could blame the trees, which burst into blossom while I was away and stand there, smirking and covered with pollen, but for four days I stayed indoors and didn’t even breathe, so it can’t be that. I am tired of coughing up gooey lumps and I forgot to buy real tissues even though I have now been to the store TWICE this week with tissues on my mind and sill I came home with marked-down Valentine’s candy instead. Twice.

Why?

Why am I still sick?

Is a breast pump adaptable for noses?

I do have a nice vase of pink tulips, though. You don’t think it could be those, do you? They’re so … pink. Innocent. Even though I watched the water level get lower and lower and the one tulip with the really short stem drooped over the side of the vase, head down. Downward dog tulip. But I gave them all a drink and what do you know, he’s (yes, I made the tulip a him) standing up again! Yay tulips!

It’s not eBay, is it? Because I left the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show thinking I surely had not spent nearly enough money and by the way I needed two silver chains for the pendants I bought as a combination Christmas – New Year’s – Valentine’s Day gift for myself, maybe with my birthday thrown in. Plus I needed new Tibetan prayer flags, you can never have enough. Also probably something else. You know how it goes when the bidding gets crazy. So I hope it’s not eBay that is causing me to cough and gasp.

Maybe it is eBay. I should pretend it is and that could be my excuse to weaning myself away. I hate eBay anyway. It’s so yellow. You know that eBay yellow? Awful color. Probably causes uncontrollable urges. And coughing. It’s probably the yellow.

Yellow is the color of mucus. Not my mucus, exactly (I haven’t been checking — should I check? What if it’s, like, brown? or black? Sign of the plague? Is this plague?)(IS THE PLAGUE CONTAGIOUS THROUGH THE INTERNET?)(Maybe you;d better stop reading now, just in case)(Hey! Maybe that’s how I got sick to begin with!!!!!!!!), but general mucus.

[Insert military joke here. "General Mucus?" the officer coughed, "Slimy fellow. Slippery."]

Yes, as of tonight I am approximately 6% done with the book I am writing. Congratulate me!

Oh, figuratively. Whatever.

So I brought my virus to my friends, who are cheerfully helping me either feed or quash the little buggers, I’m not sure which.

I have been in bed two thirds of the time I’ve been here. I am a great guest. Quiet, they say. Go ahead, invite me to your house and see.

~~

If you spend any time on Urban Dictionary or listening to anyone who a) has a sleeve tattoo or b) is under 30, you’d know that “sick” has now taken on new meaning. Tell that to the Brits who think it’s a synonym for throw-up. But no, sick now means awesome, which is a word that no one who a) has a sleeve tattoo or b) is under 30 would ever say. Because it’s been replaced. So pay no attention to the arbitrary age screening devices here, it’s nothing personal.

Words are sick.

~~

There’s something awesome — er, sick — about being comatose in a strange bed where people are plying you with strange substances. You give up ownership of your body, your outcome, and just flow with the go. Like turning a dream inside out.

Highly recommended, though maybe with less coughing and nose blowing. Also I would like my sense of smell back, please.

~~

There are still deals to be had at the Tucson Gem & Mineral Show. To you it might be a bunch of rocks but to me it’s pieces of the planet.

Sick.

Nope, I’m afloat on the Wonder Barge of Life. Somebody up ahead (it might be me but I can’t be bothered to get up and go look just now to see for sure) is poling us gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily. And along the sides of the stream I see the things we slowly pass, but I’m not grabbing for any brass rings these days. It’s okay just sitting here in the sun, floating down this stream.

My days are pinpointed by whatever is on Google Calendar, and most days are pretty full. Not a lot of time for floating, but I’m managing meditational runs and meditational baths. It’s okay that I don’t actually sit in the Zen Room and meditate. I don’t need to answer emails, but mostly I do. The bills are paid. Phone calls are made. Songs are sung. Life flows on.

The walls could be crumbling around me, and for now that would be okay. Let tomorrow take care of itself, right?

If there’s anything I feel I could be missing, it would have to be passion. Is this what life is like on anti-depressants? The top and bottom of the graph are cut off? I remember telling someone long ago about the huge advantages I saw to having big emotional ups and downs. I strove to live my life that way. No, he said, he preferred a straight line across the graph. I wondered how anyone could live that that. Now I know.

Everything changes.

Tomorrow I might wake up with my panties in a twist. You never know. The Wonder Barge probably isn’t a permanent fixture, as much as I’m (bemusedly) enjoying this Time In Between. Either way, I’ll enjoy the purple irises on my coffee table.

The pendant said yes.

My questions tumbled out in a heap, and the pendent hung quivering, black cord taut. I calmed down and breathed and asked my questions slowly, one at a time.

I’ve been so tired. Tired and not caring and not sleeping. Not doing. Keeping the blinds closed, especially on sunny days where the slap stings — wasted sunlight? how dare I? — and I close my eyes and sink into the next hour and the next. Some days I eat, and some I don’t. Google calendar tells me when and where I must go, when it is absolutely necessary that I do.

I’m starting to avoid things, like Tai Chi. And people.

Someone who didn’t know me would point diagnostic fingers at me and hurl prescription meds in my direction, but I know myself. This isn’t that.

Last week I freaked out a little about the future and dependency and the next day 100,000 people just perished, just like that. The smoke of 100,000 hearts wisped up into the air while the dust of buildings and crushed bodies and  hopes of today, or tomorrow, or even the sun were blotted out in an eyeblink. And people texted money and wrote and got on airplanes and did something to keep from feeling the WTF and the OMG. And that day I knew that my day-before freakout was a premonition, a getting-ready, and I thought fine, well, you’re done now, you can get back to normal.

No.

I told my pendent-pendulum to get me the hell out of here. I’m done, finis, finito, kaput. Please.

Not that a pendulum that isn’t even a pendulum has any power like that.

Today I went to the beach. Sorry, not a sandy warm, sunny beach. My beach, one of them, is a tumble of lush volcanic flow, suspended in time where it once met the edge of the water. Rock, meet water. Water, meet rock. Hi. The sun was waning but still evident. I squinted at the sea birds rafting on the water’s surface, and closed my eyes and held my face to the light. Breathing. All the while, cells in my body are multiplying, changing, readying themselves for The Next Thing.

The next thing.

The woman lay on her back with eyes closed and mouth open, her body slight under the quilt. Her breaths came hard, ragged, with spaces in between. The sound of her labors filled the room.

We quietly arranged ourselves on chairs we had brought for the occasion, facing the woman in the bed. She kept on with her breathing.

One of us whispered. “We’re here to be with you on your journey.”

Hearts lifted in song, quietly, softly.

Out. In.

Above her body, the woman greeted us, smiling, welcoming. We sang.

Others gathered above the woman’s body. A boy she had played with as a child. Family, friends. All her selves through the years. They crowded in above her, waiting. We sang.

Out. In.

We watched for the fall and rise of her chest, our notes matching a dwindling cadence. The people waited.

“I’m glad you’re here, ” the woman said to me. “No one else here can hear me.”

“It’s okay,” I told her. “This can be time. Look, they’re here.”

Out. In.

Our repertoire complete, we gathered our coats and chairs and left the now crowded room.

Out.

7.0. OMFG. I’ve been in a 5.5. I know that 6-point-something is pretty damaging. Every point-something is a factor of 10 in magnitude. So this 7.0, in a country where most people are painfully poor and (I imagine) live in the kind of rickety shack housing I’ve seen elsewhere in the Caribbean, is huge.

And it is. According to what little I have read (and I avoid TV news like the plague), 100,000 people could already have died. And the inevitable deaths from disease due to damaged water systems, lack of food and shelter, could raise the figure precipitously.

I am trying to figure out how I feel about this. What I feel.

In 2001, when we all saw surreal footage of airplanes flying into tall buildings that had become part of an iconic skyline, I felt something. That night I lay in bed and imagined helping herald 2000 confused souls into a warm light-filled embrace, and helping tens of thousands more through those first days of shock and outrage. In the days that followed, it became easy. All that shock and outrage got funneled into hating someone and something that someone else decided we should be hating anyway.

That’s how wars start.

But how do you hate an earthquake?

We can’t hate the earth, because it’s our home. It sustains us.

Less than two weeks ago I channeled information about people — many people — choosing to exit their earthly lives this year. In working with this kind of information, I try to remain a little distant and not feel the pain and grief associated with such an eventuality. When just one person dies, many grieve. I’ve protected myself from feeling that on a grand scale. My fear is that I’d be overwhelmed by the immensity of such pain on that large a scale. Many people transitioning? There are 7 billion or so on the planet now. A few thousand here or there doesn’t make much difference overall. Many people would have to be … many.

People.

100,000 beautiful, alive, loving people in Haiti died yesterday, ending lives that had love and pain and laughter and tears. And it wasn’t an ethereal Rapture, where they simply got lifted up into some alternate reality. No, a good many of these people likely died in pain. That’s twice as many people as live in the small city that is my home, and it’s pain that I am afraid to feel.

What is compassion?

I think about Haiti, just as I thought about the Christmas tsunami a few years ago. I hear a big ’should’ in my head. I should be feeling this, because I can. It’s my job, my livelihood, to tap into a global consciousness, or into the energy body of a single person. To me, it’s all the same.

And yet, I don’t.

Last night I approached a woman, older than me, who I knew had been having some physical issues. I asked how she was. I could see how she was, could see where there were energy blockages. I asked her permission to touch her, and I briefly touched points on her shoulders and down her back. I asked about her feet because I could feel immense pain there. I wept, not from the pain but from the sense of it.

I can feel pain without feeling it. Strange, that.

And yet I don’t go to Haiti. This makes me smaller somehow, less human, I fear.

Last night I also wrote a column in which I cried about some of my fears. Fears of my own fragility. In the light of the new day I can see that this was, in some way, an expression of my response to Haiti. I know we all process everything that comes into our being — from near or far, it’s all the same — through our personal perception lenses. That’s not being selfish, it’s being human. We can’t help it. So I transferred the cries of tens of thousands of throats into one cry from a single throat, crying, “Who will help me when I have need?”

I could rationalize that just as children are better off when you let them make their own lives and their own mistakes, that I should keep my virtual hands off Haiti and let things transpire there as they will. I am not Atlas and I cannot hold the world on my shoulders. I have trouble some days with my own piece of the world.

At the risk of sounding trite, or incomplete, I can love. In the end, that’s all any of us can do. For some, love will be a $10 donation to the Red Cross. For others, it’s being airlifted along with dogs and rescue teams to pull people out from under buildings. For still others, it’s prayer. And for others, it’s a blink in the daily crush of living. Who am I to determine which facet of love has more merit?

Gray-blue sky, still wind
Buddhist prayer flags hang from branch
Monday morning cars

~~~~~

Sing Us Peace, They Said

Lapping waves at feet
wheeling seabirds cry above
Sun warms driftwood seat

The flurries began that day and it started snowing harder in the days afterward. Sad, lonely, desperate people who wanted fixing or at least hope that they could be fixed. They reached black lonely tendrils to me, tendrils that I should know better than to accept, and soon I was Atlas holding up the world on my narrow shoulders, unable to speak or breathe.

Or sleep.

My childhood was populated by monsters and witches who lived under my bed and in my closet, coming out at night to masquerade as shapes that became chairs and other mundane items when the lights were switched on. It didn’t help that somebody thought it was a good idea to take me to see a bad B-movie sci-fi flick called The Lost Continent that featured seaweed that would reach in through ship portholes and grab people, making a weird rattling sound.

I heard that seaweed this past week, those black tendrils reaching for me choking out light and air until all I felt was the song of the unburdened.

Having dispensed with the seaweed with the handy axe the witches had left under my bed, I noticed that I was snowed in. Six feet of snow covered the front door. Cars looked like hummocks. The air was crisp and still. Nothing moved.

I took a shovel the size of my thumb and shoveled the city free. When people awoke in the morning, there was no trace of white.

And I slept.

The snow started again today, flurries falling on my face and eyelashes. Soon I’ll be sleeping under a warm blanket in welcome darkness. I reach my green seaweed tendrils toward the light, waving tentacles that could twine around a hot air balloon and lift me up, up from the snow, carrying me over pristine high white glistening mountains.

Free to fill my year with the wishes I began with a snap and a bang.

You are not of me, he said. I never came from you.

The woman, restless, moves her legs from side to side in her sleeplike state. Can’t keep a sheet on her, the nurses had told the boy. A chasm yawns in the space where her legs met. Sagging flesh swims there, shapes and color. The boy looks away. I never came from you.

A nurse bustles in with some supplies. A breathing treatment, she says. To keep her lungs healthy. The boy looks on. For what, he wonders. Blood clots in the brain, they had said. A coma. Why treat the lungs? Free. I want to be free.

The staff speaks to her like she is a child. They try to wake her, get her to wiggle toes, to nod yes. Eyes open briefly, looking at the faces in the room. They close again, no change. No recognition.

At last you can’t touch me. The boy stands at the side of the room. He won’t go near the bed. He doesn’t take her hand. He has come to be released of the chains that bind him to her, of the relentless presence in his mind all those years, probing, commanding, all-knowing, all-seeing. He whispers cautious syllables, like sending tiny snowflakes into the room one by one, knowing they will melt immediately in his breath.

Free.

The boy melds with another boy, a boy who has come from a deeper place, an older place. This boy is grey, with dead grey eyes and a dead grey face. No expression. No hope inside, just a dry walnut where his heart had once been. Dead boy looks around the room and sees the future. Sameness. Grey. No life.

I have been waiting for you.

Dead boy surveys the broken landscape of his world. He feels nothing. Is nothing. The woman stirs again, breathing louder, ragged. Her eyes open and close again. Her mouth lies open, a trap. Dead boy climbs inside and dissolves on her dry tongue.

The woman swallows, chokingly. She coughs.

The boy turns away, his heart safe in its velvet box. The woman’s face is someone else’s. He has seen what he needed.

Outside, the cold bright moon is ringed with ice. Birds fly overhead. The boy drives away into the night.