The Vessel

It had been a long day. She had day surgery.

Kat went to bed early, at August sunset.

~

She lived by the ocean, close to the naval base.

The quiet of the night hummed with a pulse.

Sirens moved over the waves, calling to the soul

that had wandered into this body.

She was getting hypnotized and lured off course.

This vessel could easily crash.

~

Her body was a vessel, for the soul, that takes on endless forms.

She was the paradox of Theseus.

If all the boards in a boat are replaced, is it the same boat?

~

She knew she was asleep, but she was aware.

This was not the first time.

She had trained herself to remember glimpses of REM's.

Tonight's full moon and the meds meant there would be many.

~

Her breathing calmed.

Dreams are the brain’s orgasm- the little death- la petite mort.

She embraced her dreams with the same rapture.

Nightmares and night terrors are born of hindsight and surprise.

Guilts, losses, failures and fears surface in waking and sleeping dreams.

Good and bad dreams let her spirit travel through time.

Time is not linear.

~

She could see what was happening,

and what was going to happen.

~

Flashes of sunshine. Lifting water in a bucket and pouring it over her head.

Directing the waves to go and come.

Parting the clouds that became percocet bunnies

under the yellow-washed cotton candy pink and blue skies.

~

Her soul spoke to her.

"You will die when you least want to die."

There are some times in life, that are so hard,

that death does not seem as tragic

as other times, when you are happy,

or anticipating the effect of a good dream come true...

.. of buying a barbeque and having friends over and laughing.

Nothing is finer than when life is better than what you dream..

~

A dream within a dream.

Two orcas swim in the ocean close to shore

of a city looks like Las Vegas.

Two children were playing outside in the Arctic.

A well-dressed child drives a wonderful, motorized sleigh.

She slides over the dock into the ocean.

Call 911, 119, 112... Bubbles. Jump in. Cold, dark, fear

~

Use Neuro Linguistic programming.

Stop playing the broken record.

It is scratched, gouged and forced to repeat.

Dig deep. Step on the dirt that falls.Rise out of the trench."

~

If it is a rock face or the deep dark ocean… the alternatives are limited. Slingshot and reframe.

~

Flying on a luge –lying down on her back,

going head first, looking up and behind-

She spun around, spread wings, crossed valleys to distant mountains.

Levitated down stairwells by balancing force and gravity.

~

Perhaps DNA and education let the soul be reformed

so it can get it right this time.

~

She remembered when her true love told her how he dreamed he would die, when the wisteria was in bloom.

His brain tumour had grown, his heart had stopped, he took his last breath … the wisteria bloomed early that year.

~

Fast deaths are tragic, unexpected.

Slow deaths, although anticipated, still evoke a shock when they arrive.

~

There is time to get your life in order.

… what does that mean?

Wake up ! wake up!

~

Awake. A 3:33 cortisol spike.

Write down passwords

.. phone calls to be made

.. wishes for burial.

~

Task accomplished. Now, turn on your side and sleep.

So much has changed. Burial would involve incineration.

Ashes take up less space. The plot can hold an urn.

Is scattering ashes legal? Who knows?

~

Cremation - creation plus an m

- the Phoenician letter mem

is a representation of waves of water,

and the Greek Mu- the legendary sunken island, from where man arose.

~

Funerals are no longer the big deal they once were.

Celebration of life is the new jargon,

It just doesn’t do to say ‘died'.

There is comfort to think the spirit passes on

- matter is neither created nor destroyed

… well except in the Atomic Fission Bomb...

and the Brout Englert Higgs mechanism

where energy fluctuations spontaneously

break the symmetry of chaos and create something new.

~~

She dreamed of her cat, that had passed,

laying on her, purring. A familiar spirit if ever there was.

~~

Her children's friends would comfort them in their time of grief.

What prayers ? Religions are good that way.

What last words ?

“I did my best to love you and myself. Do not cry. I lived a good life.”

~

She had seen a little boy laughing and eating cherries.

The vision became the flesh and blood of her grandson.

~

She had known children who had passed on as sweet innocent souls.

Cherubs who only knew the life of an angel in heaven-on-earth.

Tears streamed. Her stomach clenched.

She snorted. She had stopped breathing. Damn sleep apnea.

~

The night ached on.

She was prepared when the dark demons of the night appeared.

Show no fear. Fear leads to attack.

They deserve to be understood.

Greet them as royalty and be gracious to them.

~

She sat in a throne with her hand extended.

The bony faces of night apparitions with yellowed teeth kissed her hand.

She glimpsed at their hell. Their anger.

She recognized their pain and her own.

Where was evidence of heaven?

The communion of angels and demons within mingled.

What was one without the other? They were connected.

Things tend to turn into their opposites. Enantiodromia

~

Death often visited to tell her what might come to pass.

She remembered when a friend transmitted his spirit,

as promised, at the moment of death,

then conspired with fate to prove it.

~

She felt discomfort.

Kat kicked off her covers.

The night air was cool and refreshing.

She would miss feeling the elements as they caressed her skin.

The gentle waft of air held the spirits of those she had loved and lost.

They settled around her as a physical presence.

~

Another breath, another dream.

~

It was the 1920’s. The Spanish flu pandemic was recently just over

thanks to penicillin. Another war was looming.

Her mom and daughter were coming out of her grandfather’s model T.

They were at a fair. They went into a dark theatre.

Kat followed them. They sat together watching a performance.

They could not speak, but held hands.

Grandmother and daughter left.

~

Sars, COVID, wars. History might repeat in hundred-year cycles,

along with sunspots and Sirius.

The Earth turns round the golden disc and maps space.

There is nothing to stop it.

~

Mother time on Mother Earth, flows beside Father time with his sickle.

They are connected by waves of love in a river,

changing consciousness and ways of thinking for generations.

~

Hours, days and years flash by in infinity,

A minute can take eternity.

Life is a fleeting dream of minutes,

patched together in a mosaic,

shared with others.

~~

Kat turned over, then rest in peace.

~

The morning sun lightened the sky.

Kat texted her daughter, “I dreamt of you and Grandma at a fair.”

Her daughter texted back, “OMG. I had that same dream. We were in a Model T. Are you OK?”

~