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The shock to my body as we tumbled in
I dream of drowned men often; I dreamed of one last night. We were in the wreck of the Terror, which looked in my dreams like the cabin of a much older sailing ship, more than half a reef with flat-bladed kelp and sponges and soft corals, a thick lunar swirl of silt underfoot. The light was glacier-blue. I can't remember feeling cold except inside my lungs, where I was breathing water. If we'd been above sea level, I would have said that he was floating, but eighty feet down he looked like he was sitting cross-legged on the water, watching me. He shouldn't have drowned, if he was one of Franklin's men; he should have died of starvation, scurvy, lead poisoning, exposure. One of his crewmates might have butchered and eaten him. He didn't look like a malnourished corpse; no one had jointed him for his meat or cracked his jaw for his brain. He had a thin-faced winter pallor under a dark scurf of beard and his feet were bare despite the heavy wool of his sailor's jacket, which in the dream told me he was dead more clearly than anything else, because a living man would have had his boots on and all the insulation he could find. He said nothing to me. I didn't expect him to. We were under water. (It made sense at the time.) So many of the dead I dream about are younger than I am and I don't know what that reflects, unless something about historical mortality. The ship around us made sounds like pack ice, creaking, burring, singing. The rest of the dream was something muddy with shouting and stress and I woke with my jaw aching even worse than usual. Nobody in these dreams ever comes with names; they are symbols, composites. I still felt, looking at his face in the silt-falling ice-light, that I should have known it.
I have a smothering headache. Just in time for moving, I may be coming down sick. I spent most of my afternoon at the Somerville Department of Traffic and Parking and then on hold with Eversource and National Grid. I got home, made some more phone calls, ate dinner, felt awful. I am sitting on the carpet square in the summer kitchen, with only the side lights on so as not to attract the vortex of bugs that so badly marred last night; Autolycus has curled himself onto my lap in the computer-displacing way that he seems to find deeply satisfying—of course you love me better than the laptop, which almost certainly is true; I love the information on my laptop and the access, but in a fire I'd go for the cats first of all—and is purring like a drain, occasionally and sleepily licking the inside of my arm. Starboard cat. Hestia settled underneath the bed, just behind me. Port cat. Soon we will have a secure home.
I have a smothering headache. Just in time for moving, I may be coming down sick. I spent most of my afternoon at the Somerville Department of Traffic and Parking and then on hold with Eversource and National Grid. I got home, made some more phone calls, ate dinner, felt awful. I am sitting on the carpet square in the summer kitchen, with only the side lights on so as not to attract the vortex of bugs that so badly marred last night; Autolycus has curled himself onto my lap in the computer-displacing way that he seems to find deeply satisfying—of course you love me better than the laptop, which almost certainly is true; I love the information on my laptop and the access, but in a fire I'd go for the cats first of all—and is purring like a drain, occasionally and sleepily licking the inside of my arm. Starboard cat. Hestia settled underneath the bed, just behind me. Port cat. Soon we will have a secure home.
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I appreciate the moral support. Thank you.
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It's fairly obvious why I would get a dream on back problems, but I don't actually recall ever having had one before, and my back has been an issue for 28 years as of a fortnight ago. I've had dreams where I'm disabled, but that's the first one I remember that's specifically about the disability. I have been giving idle thought about raising something with my GP, but more on the 'hey, this is a thing' front, not 'help, this is a problem,' and I've been noodling it for six months plus, so neither new nor urgent enough to provoke an anxiety dream - and it was a dream where I felt comfortable, not anxious.
Maybe it's all the Paralympics I've been watching.
Good luck with the move, and yay for a secure home!
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That's kind of neat, actually. I found it striking that it was the kind of dream where you could nip out of rehab for a quick drink rather than being the nightmarish sort where it's just hanging around forever to see a doctor and Kafka waves at you sadly from across the waiting room.
Good luck with the move, and yay for a secure home!
Thank you!
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Before we left to find it, I turned and saw my long deceased godmother, who seems to be doing well in my dreams, and waved her little wave to us, as if to say, I'll see you later.
Real people rarely turn up in my dreams, so I will take this as a good omen for your move. My godmother and her husband built their own house, modeled after Frank Lloyd Wright's style, and lived there a very long time. They had long happy lives.
May your new home shelter, sustain and comfort you, provide a haven for the
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(Sorry for the break in the post, the LJ phone interface is not always reliable).
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I like that. Thank you for your good wishes and your godmother's.
(If anything comes of the needlepoint plot, I want to know.)
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Thank you. I just have to get all of my stuff into it!
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They had a guy being interviewed on NPR about some book he'd written, maybe not about the Terror, but maybe about it--definitely about a northerly wrecked ship--and he talked about speaking with Inuit people about their legends concerning the wreck, and he said one was that there was a corpse whose hair had continued to grow, down over his face, so all you could see was his eyes staring out at you. A very Edgar Allen Poe legend.
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I feel very secure when I have both of them beside me. It means I'm going the right direction.
definitely about a northerly wrecked ship--and he talked about speaking with Inuit people about their legends concerning the wreck, and he said one was that there was a corpse whose hair had continued to grow, down over his face, so all you could see was his eyes staring out at you. A very Edgar Allen Poe legend.
Seriously! If you happen to remember who he was, please let me know.
I like that icon.
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And thanks re: icon--I like that seagull too.