Tomorrow, I fly to Pennsylvania for a wedding. I never know what's going on. It's not because the information isn't there, it's just because I have so much on my mind that I tend to forget things. If they told me where the wedding was being held, I can't for the life of me remember.
"Where are you going?"
"I don't know."
"Where are you staying?"
"I don't know."
"How are you getting there?"
"I don't know."
"Er . . . I hope you at least know what time your flight is."
"Uh, let me get back to you on that."
In this frenzied moment, I think of this past weekend-- or was it the weekend before? --which was one of the most relaxing weekends I've had in a while. I finally got to go to the beach!
I think the relaxation was more about my mindset than anything else. I'm trying to change my attitude, and it isn't easy, but I think it's beginning to pay off. I won't bore you with the details.
I went to the Palm Beach County Main Library to conduct research for my novel, Crossing Roads in the Rain. I was more than a little disappointed that they didn't have what I needed, despite their expansive genealogy section. The unfortunate thing about Florida history is that, in many cases, the blacks are forgotten. Mostly just the really, really poor ones. There were a lot of very poor blacks in the area when the 1928 hurricane hit. That's what my book is about. I aim to educate as well as entertain; Crossing Roads in the Rain is geared toward a Young Adult audience. I think it will be very successful.
Yes, it has been a busy week. I have a lot of projects I'm working on right now, but I am hoping to have a fun weekend and try not to think about all of the current stresses and pressures in my life.
I am still here. It's not easy lately-- thinking of things to write about. I could write about everything that goes through my head, but you would be shocked, or bored to death. I'm going through a lot of personal issues right now, and my writing has fallen to the wayside. I am still managing to have a fantastic book release on June 13-- Check Out Time is coming out! Through Oaklight Publishing. I am very excited! Still, finding time to write is the most difficult thing these days, especially when I spend so much time editing the work of other writers.
Sometimes I feel so very alone. Last night, I dreamt that I was on the top of a scaffolding. There was snow everywhere. It was like a construction site-- high up, vast, and I had to be careful so that I didn't fall. I was supposed to run these wires, communication lines, across the top of this half-made building.
I wasn't worried about falling. I was worried about the two men who were working opposite me. They kept leering at me. One of the men, I knew, wanted to catch me, cut me up, and consume me. The other man seemed to want to watch.
I kept waiting, hesitantly, continuing my work, knowing that I was in danger. But my Dad had promised that he would come help me. He was down on the ground somewhere. I knew I was in danger, and he said that he would be there to protect me. I waited, and I waited, and he still didn't come up. I was growing more and more worried.
The dream ended, and Dad was still down there somewhere, on the ground, so busy that he hadn't gotten a chance to come up yet.
The realization. The memory. The recollection that things are no longer as they once were. I started crying this evening and realized that it was Dad-- I miss him. I've had so many strange dreams recently. I dreamt about Dad. I dreamt that I lifted my hand, and magic sprung forth, and a beautiful rainbow danced from my fingertips. Last night, I dreamt of blood, and I can't remember why. I woke up cursing my alarm clock, as though it were a sentient being that I could blame all of my problems on. Alarm clock as scape-goat.
March 13: I decided to embark on a spiritual transformation.
March 17: I was very depressed all day. Then I realized that it had been exactly a month since Dad died.
March 19: I decided to burn my old journal entries, the ones that reflected a certain desperation buried deep within me, the ones that are no longer conducive to my healing. When cutting out these pages, I realized that they were written on March 19, 2011. On this day, it was exactly a year since the worst of my depression, and I am finally moving away from it.
March 24: A day before the 25th, almost exactly a month since my birthday, I realized that I don't remember how old I am. Dad died the week before my birthday, and although I received birthday cards and well-wishes, it just wasn't important to me. The only thing that mattered was Dad, and when I was younger, my father was still alive. Therefore, on some subconscious level, I suppose I decided that if I remained the same age, then Dad would, too.
It creeps up on you-- this realization that grieving is not yet over, that the shadow has not yet passed. That favorite song I mentioned? Two years ago, I listened to it over and over again, and I cried every time I heard it, because it summarized everything that I was going through. Maybe I'm still going through it. Maybe it never really ended. Maybe everything has only just begun. Only this time, I am a different person, with a different outlook, and a different approach. I just hope that everything works out the way it should. Maybe it won't be the way I want it to work out, but it will be the way I need it to.
There's an odd energy afoot today, and it all started with the rain this morning. It was almost as if the rain was washing everything out, forcing it into the open. I went out for lunch with a couple of friends, and I drifted back in time. No, I didn't drift-- I was thrown. I had one of my flashbacks again.
Rather than merely recall something, I experience sudden and visceral flashbacks. It's as though I'm shoved back in time, and I'm really there. It begins with a scent, or a sound, or a visual trigger, and my face suddenly goes blank. I feel like I'm shifting out of my body, and the present day disappears. Today, out to lunch with my friends, sitting in a cafe, surrounded by classy-looking posters and a French motif, I flashed away.
This also happens in another fashion-- I have flashbacks, but I also have flashforwards. I call them future flashes. Nine times out of ten, my future flash comes true. It's not something I can control. In other words, I cannot see the future-- but there have been times when I have predicted it. There have also been times where my future flash has led me to make a decision to change the predicted outcome. Life is a combination of fate and choice.
In any case, today's flashback was caused by a sound-- music. I heard a few notes in the song that played in the restaurant, and those notes had a striking similarity to a few of the notes in the beginning of On an Island by David Gilmour. That song is very special to me.
My face blanked, everything else disappeared, and I froze. Then, I was in Portland, Maine, in 2007, sitting in the bar, eating my dinner, and drinking a beer. An instant later, I blinked, and I was back in Tequesta, sitting with my friends.
Flashbacks and future flashes occur in accordance with moments of extreme importance. That week in Maine was one of the best weeks in my life, and there will never be another like it. After my flashback, I was overcome with a moment of sorrow mixed with thoughtful reminiscence.
Once home, I slept. I was so exhausted, and for no real reason. I remember, vaguely, dreaming of Brian last night-- a schoolmate who was killed with his girlfriend over the weekend in a car crash. I keep thinking about that. In my dream last night, I remember talking to him, but I don't remember what I said, or what he said.
A strange energy drifts around me today, and seemingly around everyone else. Perhaps it has something to do with the advent of the New Moon.
At school, a strange man talked to himself in the hallways, and sang and danced in front of the windows. He wasn't a student, just some drifter, and he was hungry. Before he left, he discarded two empty coconuts in the lobby. He was wearing a face mask around his neck-- who knows why.
We tried to do a cylinder compression test on a 1973 Maverick. I sat behind the wheel when they pushed the beast out of the shop. I wonder what it would have sounded like, if we could have turned it on? Dad would have gotten a kick out of seeing me in that car.
There was police tape all around the KFC on Avenue S and Blue Heron. Cops with big guns were wandering around the parking lot, and a helicopter was circling a few minutes down the road, shining a spot light into the darkness. Who knows why. Maybe I will hear about it tomorrow. There's strange energy around us today, and it seemed to begin with the rain.
There was a bite in the air that reminded me a little bit of summertime in Maine-- I miss that. Flashback, flashforward. It's all the same in the end. Just another second, in just another minute, in just another day. And it always begins with the rain.
rhaniha
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