5:06am. My eyes open. The smoke alarm in my bedroom has decided to run out of batteries. And every minute or so it informs me of this with a shrill beep. Also, a feral cat is wailing outside my window. I try to decipher the sound, as if my hearing doesn't trust my judgement. Could it be a child? The kid upstairs? Waaaooooooooohhhhhwww. No. Definitely a cat. I imagine it laying belly up on the concrete giving birth. Or being raped from behind. Poor kitty. Beep. Waaaaooohhhwww. It's obviously in distress. Beep. In a flash, the image of my own cat giving birth appears. I have this file stored from 1995, the year I came home from school to play midwife to our cat in my closet, her choice hideaway for delivering kittens into the world. The wailing continues. The sky is still opaque. Though, gradient. Beep. I reach for my phone. 5:06am. My dream keeps playing, not bothering to wait for me, knowing I'll jump back in when I'm ready. Partly anxious to slip back into the stream, worried about losing my place. After another audible wail, I set down the phone, dive back in. The beeping dulls. Half way there, I wonder if these two sounds, piercing and disconcerting, are a something of a sign. I briefly consider shaking off sleep to meditate, feeling as though I'm receiving a wake-up call from beyond. The film I fell asleep to addressed the 2012 global shift. I remember this unsettling feeling the film gave me, my culpability, my contribution to the ecosystem's unraveling. Residue of one world remains as we transition into another. The battery's dead. The alarm sounds. Nature protests. How am I going to help? My grip on material reality loosens. My concern for the cat's welfare turns into a concern for my laundry and that strange street, the building I've moved into. I'm back in my dream. Heavy and blissfully out of control. Puppeteer and puppet at once.
0 Responses to 'The Third Hand'