Tag Archives: dream

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nebulous

For the Daily Prompt: mnemonic.

I know lots of mnemonics. The first that I learned is “Every Good Boy Does Fine”, for the lines of the staff of the G clef, for playing my flute. Medicine is full of mnemonics. An out of date one: Shock, shock, shock, everybody shock, big shock, little shock, shock, shock, shock. This used to be the order of shocks and the medicines for cardiac arrest. It has changed…

…but I would rather look at the photograph than think about mnemonics. It is not a nebula, but that is a star. I took this with my cell phone when it was almost too dark, so the nebula like shapes are the tops of trees, a block from my house.

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Dream log: June 20, 2017

I am with my father and my sister. My mother is not around. I am not sure if she’s gone or dead. Dead, I think.

My father has gone off. My sister is 3 or 4 and I am 6 or 7. I am taking care of her. We are at a park and I am trying to get food. It is Thanksgiving. It is not cold, it’s warm. There are large family groups at picnic tables.

My technique is to move in on a family group. We play near them and I listen for adult names. We play close enough that I can hear but not close enough to impinge on the group. When they start to clean up and take things to the cars, I am ready. I slip in and hold my hands out for a bowl. The adult looks at me. “Aunt Norma’s.” I say confidently, because I know which bowl belongs to each adult. And which bowl I want. The adult hands me the bowl. They can’t remember which kid I am, but I know Aunt Norma’s name….I head confidently with the bowl towards the cars and quickly slide it under my loose sweatshirt. I bypass the cars and head around to my sister.

Now the game changes a little. We have a couple bowls so she guards them. I work the next table alone and score a left over turkey.

The problem now is that we cannot carry it all to the car in one trip. I debate about safety. We are living in the car. I tell my sister to stay with the rest of the food and I leave her, carrying the turkey. It’s still light and there are still a lot of people around. She is sitting on the curb, bowls behind her, between two family groups. I will get the turkey to the car and then run back to her. The two of us can carry the rest of the food in one trip. Then we will have food for a while. She should be safe.

I wake up.

I took the photograph within the last month. What and where is it?

 

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Will you dance?

For the Daily Prompt: filthy.

I am with my EX. He has that wicked trickster expression, which can mean fun or trouble or both.

“Let’s go.” he says, “Dancing. I have something new to show you.”

I go, warily, choosing boots rather than high heels. I love to dance, but I know that expression. There is a twist here. He is messing with me and I need to be careful.

He leads me into a park. We go through various sections and into a part with a rectangular green. The rectangle is broken by a hole in the corner, shaped like a billiard pocket. It is not very big and about 15 feet deep.

“Wait,” he says and goes down the steep muddy slope covered with leaves… and right into the mud covered wall, completely in. The earth struggles and then he pulls back out, covered with dirt and filth, frankly. It stinks. He taps a grayish structure beside him, and it lights up with soft light and starts playing a Charleston. It also moves a little, parts moving against each other, more awkward blobs than humanoid. And around me, three other statues also light up and move.

And my EX is climbing back up the muddy wall towards me and sinking in up to his waist with each step. He will be at the top soon. The Charleston is a cheap tinny version.

I am trying to decide: Will I dance?

I wake up.

Will you dance?

I took the photograph in 2014. My daughter was on the Killer Whale Mountain Bike Team. This is her coach, annoyed because he had to drop out of the race. He was riding with a belt chain, but the mud was so deep that it packed the chain and he couldn’t ride. My daughter finished the race but said that there were many sections that they just picked up their bikes and tried to run through thick sticky mud six or more inches deep.

 

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Dream: home surgery

Yesterday I ask a friend to drive me to pick up my son, on his way home from college for spring break, an hour to a nearby pick up point and back. I can’t walk without limping horribly: apparently the recent stress in clinic has made my muscles mad.

F. drives. He has just finished reading Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Experience and American Prospects, by Dmitri Orlov. Mr. Orlov says that I, as a physician, should start moonlighting as a midwife for barter to have a back up plan for when the economy collapses.

I laugh. “Not very helpful where the median age is 55.”

“Not to mention people want to use their pathetic health insurance.”

Home and I go to sleep. Dream: I am at F.’s house. There are two other men, one of whom needs abdominal surgery. We argue for a long time but he has no money and finally I agree to do surgery with F. assisting. The other man is to help hold the young man down. We do not, of course have anesthesia. I go over what I am going to do, force them to pay attention, discuss sterile technique, boil everything. Not ideal….

We don’t have a cautery or suction either. But there is almost no bleeding and the two things that need to be removed come out easily, I am very veryΒ  gentle, so I don’t cause other things to bleed. Never mess with the spleen.

Now I need to close the abdomen and I don’t have absorbablesutures. I am going to do a figure 8 from the surface, in skin, out the abdominal fat, across into the fat, down through the fascia, crossing very delicately up into the fascia on the other side, out the fat, in the fat on the other side and out the skin. Then slowly pull it tight, tight, and tie it off. It’s thick nylon. Nonabsorbable. Usually you would take the nylon out in 7-10 days but I am wondering how long I would need it for the fascia….I thought that would take 6 weeks to heal. I am worrying.

But now F. and the other man are not holding my patient, they are backing off and congratulating each other. My patient gets up off the table. “Lie back down!” I say, “Your guts could fall out the opening! We haven’t closed! F!” Surprisingly his guts are not falling out, but it’s because I have done such a beautiful low abdominal incision, bikini style. “Get back on the table or I will make you go to the hospital to have it closed!”

He reluctantly gets back on the table. F. and the other guy are still being morons but are calming down….

….I wake up.

 

The photo is in my yard during sunrise last summer: spring forward today….

music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEi_4Cyx4Uw

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Sea of Love

I go in the sea
of dreams
open the chest
the trunk
the saddlebags
Empty the dirty laundry
Of emotion
On the floor
Grief and joy
Fear and hope
Mine
All mine

There is a place
Beyond words
I see you in that place
It is very old
And very young
It is so frightening to go there
Lose words
The first time
It is haunted and hunted
Are you aware
Of that place
Do you go there
Of your own volition?
Or do you struggle
Fight and suffer in the
Choppy boundary between air and water
Fear drowning
Water surrounds you
Above you too
You are in the wordless place
Over your head
Are you too deep?

Open your eyes
In the green water light
A mermaid waits to lead you
To a rope to a raft
And me

But first you must open your eyes

 

I did not take this photo: it was taken at the Weyerhaeuser Pool in Seattle in 2009 at the National Junior Synchronized Swimming Competition. The professional photographer asked our girls to jump in so that he could get some practice shots from the underwater window. No one else was allowed down to that window. My daughter was in her third year of synchro and already so comfortable in the water that she and the others just mugged and played….

First published on everything2.com.

The Honeydrippers: Sea of Love