Dream in which my happiness is nearly obliterated by a submarine.

In my dreams last night there was a submarine, sinking to depths right in front of the window at our former cabin on White Iron Lake outside of Ely. The water was clear, but black. The submarine was hematite in tone. The second it was completely under water, there was something like a sonic boom, and the cabin rocketed into the air and spun around (curiously, it was as if it were attached to the earth with rubber, so it never fully separated, and the whole structure bent like bubble gum), landing back on it's moorings shakily and with the foundation far from intact. My grandfather and father were there, and women that must have been my mother and grandmother. My grandfather, in his always calm, rational manner, plainly stated the the submarines were not to submerge so close to shore (in the dream, the cabin was directly on the water line, however, and there was no shore; to the right out the window were large, craggy cliffs, and the water lapped at the pane directly in front of me) and repairs to the structural damage must be attended to immediately. That was when I noticed the crack under the window before me, which I nudged with my toe as water began to seep in.

And there were airplanes that I missed, happily, as panic set in the second I realised I was supposed to get on a plane (something I will not be doing for a good long while). There was also a boat, made of corrugated plastic, like the bins the Postal Service uses for mail, that I rowed over to the craggy cliffs, where David and Brad were living some variety of sad, crazy Peter Pan life.

Though I can't quite make sense of it all, I've thought about it all day and I think it accurately portrays almost every facet of my life. But, as dreams are wont to be, this fact is not possible to articulate. Curious, though, that a dream which details my current love situation offers no appearance of the love in question.

I do adore me some dreamings.

I Told You So (Panic Attack)

The poem came immediately after stating that poetry was coming. That's two poems now in a month, and several art pieces. This, for me, is highly productive. The previous poem written on a page of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, while on the curvaceous, scenic road from Ely to Duluth that always makes me have a bit of a panic, despite it's loveliness, if I am not constantly sipping water and/or singing. When I was younger, when the particular problem first began, I remember Celine Dion on the radio. Then it was my Tori's Under the Pink on cassette, foisted upon my parents lest they have to deal with a freaking out teenager. It should be noted that I had no idea I was having a panic attack, something that had begun intermittently before puberty that my mother would hand me a paper bag for and send me outside to breathe. In late teen years, she resorted to giving me Xanax (while also telling me to go outside and breathe). It was always very matter of fact. I never understood why she failed to inform me that what was happening to me, the I can't breathe feeling, the overwhelming head-maelstrom, the sense of total doom, that it was something silly that I could plainly understand; my body producing too much epinephrine. This being a facet, evolutionarily speaking, of the "flight or flight" ha "FIGHT or flight" response. Which, it's been argued in some of the things I've read, is not the accurate interpretation as invariably, when someone experiences such a rush of epinephrine, they are somewhat immobilised by their panic. So what purpose, exactly, does a panic attack have?

I don't know. Writing this has put that old familiar feeling in my chest, a firm grip in a negative way, on the old blood pumper. I will get the fuck out of this house once I'm done with this blog (and a shower). Sarah needs some Cheerios and the dishes won't get done if there ain't no dishwasher detergent.

But the poem(s). Without further ado, poem one is about Andy, written on the road.

He wears his neurosis on his sleeve,
by an invention of his heart.
With a tug on one,
the other falls apart.
It is not foolproof,
this failsafe he's set;
He's already told me he loves me,
He just hasn't said the words yet.

10.18.09

And last night's, with a first couplet that's been in my head since Andy chose to take the route he has with us:

Any who run from love
be hung from the rafters
Any who stifle love
crucified on the mantle
Any who lie to love
dragged behind a truck
Any who "deserve" love
a shard of broken mirror
Any who ignore love
murder murder murder

11.14.09

Ex Implosion.

And as quickly as I was pulled in, and he was pulled in, the feedback loop gained fever pitch and now the whole damn thing's ex/imploded.

Ex-Imploded.

That is one thing I should definitely know better about. The ex always wins.

I lose.

Which isn't to say he's gone back to her. That's what she'd like, but it hasn't happened...yet. He wants to be alone to be upset about the aftermath of her, he doesn't feel it's fair for me to be around when he's got to deal with it. She cropped up on Halloween, wearing no costume, but she may well have been sporting some mask with warts and her long red hair filled with bats and spiders; she continues to bewitch him. Double, double, toil and trouble...

My head hurts trying to wrap itself around this, which shouldn't be hard since I've been through this half a dozen times already. "I'm over it" becomes "I don't want to be with her" once she's appeared somewhere out of the blue--and in this case, began texting/calling/emailing and finally lured him to their old place, a place of comfort and nostalgia and memory to tell him she loves him dearly and would do anything to get him back--and despite insisting no interest in returning to that past, it always turns into some level of not being able to handle it, "it" being my relationship with them, or their scattered, damaged feelings for that now proverbial...her.

And it's galling because I go through that constantly. I'm always muddling through the leftovers for an ex, to varying degrees, and it's often the new, differently loving relationship that makes it possible for me to sort those feelings out. There's safety in the walls of an embrace that lets my brain seek out the dark corners where some as of yet unrifled memory lies. I know the panic, and the torturous detritus, I know that it doesn't mean I want them back.

But I lose.

He and I haven't been as connected the past two weeks. Shortly after we got back from our magickal Ely weekend playing Scrabble in the woods, I went a bit dead. Got all distance-y, felt little more than the concept of feelings other than a general sickness in the gut. It is telling that the ex showed up just a few days after this feeling set in; it seems to me a bit of pre-cognition was on the wind and the universe was letting me know something was shortly to become amiss. But, I was also, somewhere deep in the subconscious layers of this love, freaking the fuck out. We began so hard and fast, I told him I loved him on the third date, I spoke of marriage and babies and life forever. I got so excited because it seemed...possible. For once. Really, truly possible. We get excited about the same houses, the same neighborhoods, the same way of living, the same home decor; old things, dead things, weird things, dilapidated things. Walking or driving about is a homey adventure with him; calling out houses we're going to take over and make our own. I've thought I was bound to marry a couple other people, but in hindsight, and even in the course of the relationship, I could have given you a hundred reasons why it shouldn't happen. One didn't believe in love; wanted to raise his children without the word. The other found very little more than a passing interest in all things sexual (a champion snuggler, though). Both of those should have been known deal breakers from the start, but I'm stubborn, and I was deeply heartbroken by the dissolution of both of those relationships, which were both my decision to end. The only red flag in this current love has been the ex, which is always a red flag, but again, I'm stubborn, and I fell for him, with all his Sarah-Manual reading/knowing/intuiting ways. And neither of us has been much like anyone else we've ever been with, which adds a sparkle to it--New! Improved! love. But I did freak out, and I felt myself reigning in previous Big Statements of Marriage, Kids, and Forever. Of course, this was happening simultaneous to the ex wreaking emotional havoc on him, and the past couple days he and I have been working a disastrous feedback loop, which feels like a sort of heaven in comparison to the dead, distanced feelings I've had the past couple weeks, but I don't much like this opera either.

A walk down by Minnehaha Creek, discussing how rad it would be to come across a dead body down there but how it would be unlikely given the fact that the hoi polloi would be unlikely to dump a body in the land of the bourgeoisie. That was ideal, that was Andy n me, that was Friday. Hot chocolate, snuggled under a blanket, reading our respective books (2666-his, the God Delusion-mine) was lovely too. That was only Sunday. Monday night we had a fight over the phone, due mostly to my menstrual state, which led me to get my panties in a bunch quite a lot more than I likely would have; I just wanted to fight. Well, it sent him into another tailspin.

Too much can happen in a day.