Gris-Gris

My blood has begun to feel like molasses. Thick and viscous, it pumps through my body while simultaneously clogging the works. I feel like a human in slow motion with every movement a monumental effort, only to have my body stop mid action.

 I wake in the morning through sheer force of will.


My brain has gone into some sort of hibernation. This is frustrating because I have things to do. Thinking Things. Things I like. My brain has teamed up with my increasingly slowed down body to conspire against me. There is a rebellion in these bones.

I don't care for it.

I sulk. Balefully.

~~~

On Saturday I woke from a weeks worth of increasingly distraught dreams.  Not nightmares, which have the predictability of my archetypal characters, but dreams of loss, anxiety, sadness and tumult. 

Each evening, a new cast of characters - each less expected than the last - would saunter into my unconscious to have their way with me.

I woke, each time,  deep in melancholy.

I have always been a lucid and active dreamer.  This, however, was getting ridiculous. I was becoming wary of sleep. I didn't want to see those people. I didn't want to relive those losses. Rejection, abandonment, loss - over and over and over, every night.  For every step forward, I was being pushed backwards off of a precipice.

Exhaustion will force me into a defensive and reactive position. My sleep must be protected.

With little else than intuition, I decided to make a dream talisman. This decision was made, spontaneously, as I went out for my bike ride.

I had the vaguest idea of what I was looking for, and no bag to carry things in...so I improvised and used my yoga top. A smooth flat , black rock was the first thing that called to me. I knew I needed a red clover, and a small pine cone too.  I wanted a feather from the mother duck I'd watched in the woods this spring, but could find nothing left around where she had nested. A cluster of wild strawberries found contributed a leaf. A silvery spike of grass; a small white flower and some willow - A white yarrow, a sprig of beech. A cluster of juniper berries came last - all shoved down the front of my yoga top.

I ran upstairs so Terrance wouldn't ask why I had a bunch of things in my shirt. He thinks that I cling to sanity in the best of times, so this would have convinced him that I'd booked a seat on the crazy bus.

I found a little purple gauzy bag  and added my treasures. I added some fur from the heavily shedding Coco and Jackson. They were happy to help in exchange for a bit of dried strawberry.

As I placed it at the side of my bed, I only said "Please don't let me have those dreams again. I can't keep reliving that."

For the past two nights, no dreams.

Yet the weight inside my body remains. I am a golem, freezing midstride, equally befuddled and flustered at my inability to move forward.