Freed from the Underground
Email william2fday@yahoo.com
Bill_Day
The Visitation: A Dream
At one time, when the brick was new, in the late nineteen twenties or early thirties, it must have been a beautiful single family house. Now, even with the newly painted trim and with a Victorian charm, it is a slightly degenerating, three apartment orange brick building within walking distance of an established New England University.
I've rented the basement apartment. It was inexpensive enough, with no shower or bath but large for the price,...... gloomy and large. Two bed rooms, a living room, kitchen and what once must have been referred to as a water closet, but now would be one-half bathroom.
Starting with the front door and working back to the kitchen, throwing out everything that smelled, looked scary, or was useless, it took me three days of scrubbing, with all windows, front and back doors open, to make it breathable and nightmareless. Rugs were removed, floors vacuumed, then scrubbed; mattresses, old pots and pans, dishes piled neatly up the stairs for removal as the landlord wished. Scavenging through salvation surplus stores, used furniture and appliances stores, I even found a new, old stove to replace what I was afraid to clean. All of this was proof of me remaining for at least next two years.
The apartment was still dark, but I felt safe in the dark. Cleaning the windows, light shades, increasing the wattage of the bulbs, where I wanted, made it almost comfortable. My desk, computer, and bed from home made it my residence, home, away from home. It was cozy, not gloomy any more.
After careful thought, I put my bed in the room off the main street. It was judged to be the brightest. But as a late sleeper, hating mornings, not feeling quite alive until ten and three cups of coffee, I found the light gained was a loss of something far greater. I like the luxury of awakening in the night, futzing around, thinking about dreams, reading or whatever without the anxiety of knowing I had to arise at a set time with a set schedule. Getting jolted out of bed by alarm clocks or any sudden awakenings was and is one of my greatest dreads. I like to lounge in bed, plan the coming day's events; and only then from inspiration, from a want or need, mainly to go to the bathroom, to arise and go forth into the shinning new day for an appointment, would and could I proceed.
But the noise and light from the street would awaken me too early. Usually a loud delivery truck would startle me from my rest. I would try to return to sleep but morning rush hour made me nervous: everyone out and about, and me still resting. Rather than day dream, I would listen to people walking, especially high heeled people, walking pass my basement window. If they walked too close, a shadow would pass through the room, like a fleeting storm cloud clapping thunder, covering the sun as it went
Without much preparation, I moved into the other bedroom across the hall. It was windowless and must have been used for years as a storage room in the original house. It was when I was placing my bed against the far wall, I noticed a door, a side door. Without giving it much thought, I put a pillowed chair near it, with my dresser next to the chair, and my bed on an adjacent wall. I barely could place a lamp near the bed for reading much less a bed side table as in the other room.
Reading and sleeping, what else did I need to do in this room? It even became a habit to change clothing in my first bed room, for this one was without closet … and colder.
By the time I was somewhat settled into my abode, the semester was half over and I was so far behind in my studies, fear drove my course. My pattern of existence became home as soon as possible to study, fix dinner, study, read in bed, sleep, then my half an hour to hour in bed in the morning.
Winter was laden heavy when I ventured out. The apartment was now colder. While trying to study in the living room, I could hear the landlord right above me shuffling, coughing, and I swear, spitting on the floor or worse. Retired from years with the railroad, he must have been an eighty year old man with terribly bad living habits.
When my fellow colleagues asked me to study with them in the library, I happily said yes. And for a couple of months, we actually did study. But it developed into a tutorial session, me doing the teaching, then on Thursdays and Fridays taking off early and drinking at the local pub. This was fun for a while, but Fridays became lost and Saturdays were recovery time.
At the first wisp of spring, I opened my apartment, aired and clean it and happily returned to my self-created dwelling place and my seclusion.
It was spring break, when unused-time began to burden me: with only one paper left to write, my extra interests satiated with nights in the library, and even an attempt to pub-it a couple times with remaining friends didn’t gratify my pending surplus of time.
I would fall asleep early and awaken the same. A dreadful situation.
Maybe I was lonely? I decided to spend an extra hour paying my rent to the old codger upstairs. I thought, he might be interesting, and we would begin a relationship. I mean as old as he was, something exciting must have happened to him, and if goaded, he would probably reveal some internal secrets, some interesting and informative aspects of his life.
But his apartment was as bad as I imagined. I didn't hear any sloshing sounds from spit laden rugs but a definite smell of pee.
Standing in the foyer, smells, locked too long, poured forth through his front door. When confronted with a larger than imagined man, and older, I meekly stammered, “Here's my rent for the month."
"No need to knock. Just stick it in the mail box, like you done. It will do good enough...."
We were both silent. I was a rat in a school psychology experiment, caught between my goal to find out about him and the shock of the electric grid, the smell. I was frozen. And he was closing the door on me.
As an additional jolt, he reopened the door. I stepped backwards and gasped.
"Say," he said, "how long was that contract you signed?"
Oh, I thought. I regained some composure, "The rental agreement? Two years, with an option, for a third."
"Oohh...cause someone's interested in buying the house. Thought I might sell, but where would I go? A rest home?" He began to laugh. "Maybe to Hawaii to see those hoola girls." He laughed again but not as cynically. "We'll see......
"But no need to knock, just stick the check in the mail box, over there." He nodded in the direction of the main door and closed his.
Turning around, walking down the stairs, I thought, I must have been saved by renting to college students for more than twenty years. We all look and act the same.
Down in my dungeon, I crawled the internet while making dinner, played some games with distant game players while eating, did some research for my paper by reading some related papers, shut down the computer and went to bed, afraid to check the time, for it was probably way too early.
Twice I awakened, once from a dream where I entered a time portal visiting a rare and beautiful place, which I really couldn't describe except it was in full vivid color, with a predominate smell, not quite sweet,.... but sort of, and definitely musty.
Since spring vacation, my mornings in bed only ended when interrupted by the need to pee or phone calls, which I wished to answer or when boredom: my dreams analyzed, my day's plans well excursioned, and no day dream's left, would lead to my more basic needs which would surface to my consciousness, and I would rise slowly .
This morning was no different. After interpreting the portal dream as the computer and the net game I played during dinning, I even let my imagination create faces on the wall paper next to the door, as I sometimes do, to try to see if they revealed my pervasive mood.
Beyond that door was a voice, calling, once, twice, a name I couldn't understand; it definitely was not mine.
What was through that door? Why hadn't I opened it?
Without realizing it, I was out of bed, at the door only wearing my blue jeans. It was less of an outside door and more of living room door, painted in an off white, dirty cream. The turning knob created a creaking sound then a high pitched squeak.
Oh hell, this door has been unlocked all this time. It's almost too easy to open.
An aluminum screen faced me diffusing the brilliant, outside light. Unable to see through the thin mesh, I reached for the handle. I shaded my eyes. The screen latch was broken. My hand backed away revealing signs where a screwdriver had pried the lock and had undone its usefulness.
The second I pushed where the filtered light flooded, a gust of wind caught it, flinging it opened, almost as if on its own.
The voice calling was clearer. "Caro-line, Caro-line" he called in a playful manner.
It was the back yard sweeping downward, and I was surrounded by the tops of huge yellow and white spiraea bushes, larger than I have ever seen, ten to fifteen feet. Looking down into them, their branches bent created almost canopies.
I heard a young girl giggle as the man was slightly running, weaving in and out of the enormous bushes calling her name again. "Caro-line."
How many bushes could there be? I walked down the hill constructing my own path until I was out of the grove. Ten, maybe even fifteen of them. The area between the two buildings was filled with these yellow and white dancing giants, arms swaying upward, this way, then that as the wind dictated.
This is valuable .....the beauty, just feet away from a busy city, ….the secludedness, ...... and the landlord mentioning he might sell flashed in my mind.
My feet felt the rock under them. Realizing I was out here without a shirt or shoes, I returned staying close to my building. It was difficult, but I didn't want to see either man or girl.
Two days later, while in bed I placed a prolonged visit into the grove into my plans. It was a luncheon picnic, nothing fancy, but rather than eat in the kitchen, I took my food outside.
Only opening the door again reminded me that I hadn't locked it or fixed the screen, which kind of amazed me.
I ventured into what I thought was the middle of the grove, sat and ate. This was an entirely different world. Nothing else existed. Even the noise of the city was smothered. Only the living, moving bushes could be heard. An entirely different universe with brightness as I lay on the ground looking at the sky through a yellow chaotic, changing patterns, filled me with smells and sounds all their own. Time seemed to cease, then start again.
The book I brought beckoned me, and I followed into the familiar pages, until the stillness and heat of the late afternoon made me uncomfortable enough to stand and wander down a blond rocky incline and out into a slight breeze.
Looking back up the embankment, they were fountains spraying upward, large fountains spewing white and yellow liquid which evaporated before reaching the sky.
Eddies of wind played between the two buildings making the gigantic shrubs move in their individual manners. Some swayed, dancing merrily. Some bowed, branches touching the ground. Some called laughingly to me to return. .
It was day time, with the day's heat, the day's light when I walked down the hill, then down the ravine to the river - and it was dark, silent and dark, when I reenter among what were now friends, . . My steps were an intrusion breaking their serenity.
In the middle, probably where I was this afternoon, I gazed up at the stars then sat for a moment. Was that a shower I heard, mixed with a singing voice? Standing, I silently moved in the direction of the noise. It must be the other building. A strange voice seemed to blend with shower water hitting metal, then it lowered almost an octave.
Steam was wafting from a half opened bathroom window, eight feet from the ground. At one time this must have been a doorway, for the window was the top section in an archway through which needles of light were piercing. A woman was singing.
Without a thought, my eye followed a single stream of light. I walked closer until my face was pressed against a boarded partition. Yes, a young woman, rinsing her hair. Her nakedness was a ripe peach, glistening with water.
Startled she back away from my sight. She couldn't have seen me, or could she have?
I stepped back from the peep hole. She must have heard..... or sensed me. Looking up at the window, I thought, no......probably something in the house....
"Well,............what are you doing?" Her voice preceded the lifted window and her towel wrapped head.
"I'm sorry," I said softly and with guilt and backed quickly away "I didn't mean.........."
"Well why did you do it then?"
"I wanted to see you......" I stopped myself and started again with as slight stammer. "I wanted to see who you were." This statement was sincere, without guilt. So I went on. "I was over there, in the middle, looking at the stars, when I heard you."
"Aren't they amazing? I mean really amazing. They are real, living beings........... that's kind of a stupid statement.......... but they are," she said, maintaining her excitement. "On certain days, when the wind blows, and the long spindly branches whipping together.... why it's like fire...........flames flapping.....white and yellow flames reaching up to my window."
Her scene flashed in my mind. "Yes, I saw it. It's the unity of fire but also the chaos of flames." My mind seemed to pour words. "Yes, it's nature - the amazement of nature, too detailed, too intense to have been a vision."
"Sometimes the plants almost stand on end, sometimes, dancing, dancing. I sing with them and they dance."
"The wind must come up the hill or a strange vacuum current between the houses lifts them straight up."
"From my room, its like thousands of people singing alleluia, with hands held high, singing, dancing, praising, swaying all together, yet separately, singing the praises of the Lord."
"Yes, individual living beings, praising their lives......."
"But hidden from everyone, so they can sing and dance as they please."
"Come down," I pleaded. "Come join me."
Her head came further out from the window. Her intense stare penetrated the darkness. Her eyes almost glowed in the shadow of her face. Without saying another word, she disappeared. Expecting a long, and maybe fruitless, wait, I sat, facing the now silent grove. But she was almost magically beside me, sitting, shoulder to shoulder, looking into the underbrush.
In a whisper, she said, "They move with life. The wind doesn't necessarily move the branches, but internal motions seem to, a living will.”
For the longest time we say nothing. The towel is still around her head, and she is wearing a bathrobe. I place my arm around her and pull her closer to me. In among the musty pollen smells, she is the smell of a flowing brook.
Is she still with me? Has my embrace offended her? I try to break the distance between us. "Isn't it amazing, this is what we share and have shared without knowing it. I mean,....it is amazing what we share,.......it's here,......... now."
"It's a vision we have between us," she answers in an angelic voice, the voice of her song. "But I've known."
Excitedly I continued, "You verbalized and I saw it, … felt it. We can share the same things in our head, feel them in our minds," but stopped.
"You've seen me before? You know who I am?"
No response.
"Have you seen me on campus?"
No response.
Slightly nervous, now, "If you have seen me, tell me............ No, I would have noticed you. You are beautiful." And she was. I was looking directly into her face.
We both rose at the same time, and with my arm around her waist, we walked back to my room. Then we were laying on the bed.
"This is my first time," then realizing what I had said, although it was true, I quickly explained, "I mean, it's the first time, I have listened and really known, felt what was said. It's the first time, I have said something, and known, really known, not only was someone listening, but heard and understood, felt and shared."
"It's the first time I've made contact with another human being in this manner- truly trusting and touching another person."
My mind went blank, a puzzled blankness.
The moonlight shined through the opened screen door, creating another white doorway on the floor.
I was still dressed but she was unclothed in my embrace. Both towel and bathrobe were somewhere under her.
Afraid to move, afraid to acknowledge where we were, afraid that something,...... anything could and would break this moment, tear it away from us, we were both, Lila, the stillness in the night.
"They seem to know," she spoke without words.
I held her more tightly. She pressed closer - still
Sometime later, the screen door creaked. Started, it awakened us from our non sleep. And we both knew the flaming dawn had begun. We looked at each other's face and saw because the defused light of morning was everywhere.
She pulled away, touched my face and said, "I have to leave. I have to get back before the light awakens everyone"
I knew then. I knew it in her face. I didn't say a thing, for I knew. I just slowly released her and listened to her depart.
Even her standing beside the bed tying her robe and replacing the towel around her head, the moment has gone. It's ended. Not wanting to give it up but willing, because this is the way it is. This is the truth of the matter. Even the most magical, mystical, spiritual moments don't last, can't last, must end, for we would not know them, want them, and let them come again if they were constant.
Her being, the ephemeral phantom that it was, whisked away and closed the door silently behind her, creating a dark night because I had this feeling I would probably never see her again.
Within a week, I was on the walkway in front of her, “their,” house. Who was she? Who were ”they”? What were their relationships within that house? But I didn’t walk the walkway to the front door for what did I really want to know?
I was still filled with a deep happiness. The flowing brook that was she is now a stream in me. We had shared, experienced. We both have what we have because of it. Even the most magical, mystical, spiritual moments don't last, can't last, must end, and I didn’t want it to end. I didn’t really want to know the reality. I wanted what I had.
