This is Entry 8 of an ongoing serialized memoir.
Start at the beginning → Superpower
Writing gives my brain some where to go. Spinning out pages and pages of the incident, observations, thoughts…
Everything.
Anything.
I write until the edge of my hand turns black from smudging over written words.
More.
I’ve found a hard bound copy of Moby Dick on the library cart and start carrying it with me out in the pod.
I wedge my growing sheaf of papers between the covers.
In the event of a fight, I could cup its broad spine in my hand and it would extend my reach seven inches while protecting my fingers from damage.
Strictly theoretical.
I once saw Matt Damon do it in a movie.
The guard, annoyed with my constantly asking to sharpen my little pencil, shoves across a styrofoam cup filled with eight mini-golf pencils with stubby tips. I pre-sharpen all eight of them into long tapered points - resisting the tug as the motor chugs.
It badly needs to be emptied.
When I slide out the small plastic drawer, the spirals of shaving rinds puff out and expand releasing a billowing plume of childhood.
Art classes and grade school.
Chalk board erasers and dust.
Exposed mechanical grinders and that dial in front to click in the right diameter.
Public libraries.
The musty tang of books entombed in plastic covers.
When I was six, my second oldest brother - 15 months my senior, Brian, and I came down with a mysterious illness. My mother had enrolled us in a summer day camp called Camp Sertoma. We spent our days knee-deep in shale creek beds, collecting tadpoles in Styrofoam cups, staging crayfish battles and skipping stones. We’d come home sun-kissed and tired; dragging our Camp Sertoma bags — a bust of Sitting Bull in full war headdress screen printed in red across the muslin.
One afternoon we came home with fevers that wouldn’t come down.
Within days we were in intensive care.
I can still hear the hollow clacking of the buttons of that old remote control. Brian, propped up on pillows with his bed reclined into regality, happily watching shows my father forbade us from watching at home.
Morning cartoons, the A-Team, Ponch and John on CHips. Slurping lime jello brought by a nurse summoned by the click of different button. Brian, content and in control.
Meanwhile, I was starting to lose control of everything.
My mother, in her broken English:
Chris, no one could tell what was wrong because you never say where it hurt. When the doctor asked how you felt, you say, “I’m okay,” or “I don’t know.” So they believe you. But I don’t believe you. I know you. I know something’s not right.
I stayed in the hospital every day. You were such a difficult boy but also so good. You kept apologizing for being sick, but you couldn’t say how. When you started wetting the bed, the nurse said that was normal. I said no. That’s not normal. He is sick.
I called your uncle and asked what tests we should run. She told me which ones. I made them test you. You were not wetting the bed. You were losing control of your body. By the time they did the right test, you were already in a coma.
Oh, you worried Mommy to death.
You were in intensive care for three months. I stayed there every day. One day I went to the hospital church, got down on my knees and prayed. I said, “God, if you let him live, I will be a good Christian. I will believe in you.”
A bird flew into the church and landed on the bench next to me. That’s when I knew you were going to be okay. I have believed in the good Lord ever since.
When the right tests come back, we know.
You had viral meningitis.
It’s amazing you came back without permanent brain damage.
What do I remember of from the space between living and dying?
The plush Chewbacca doll that my father’s colleague gave me.
The way they rolled me out of the hospital in a wheelchair because I had forgotten how to walk.
The gummy substance they pressed in my hair to attach the wires for the brainwave tests.
What I remember most was the redness. Like viewing the fiery-hot sun through closed eyelids. Orange everywhere.
Years later, I came across a passage in the Dalai Lama’s How to Practice that snapped me to focus.
“Except in extraordinary meditative states, the subtlest, or deepest consciousness manifests itself only when we are dying. Less withdrawn and therefore brief versions of the subtle levels of consciousness also occur when going to sleep, ending a dream, sneezing, yawning and during orgasm…
In the 6th phase - your mind turns into a red or orange vastness more vivid that before; nothing appears. It is like a clear sky filled with sunlight - not the sun shining in the sky but space itself, filled with red or orange light.”
I close the book and take in a breath.
Feel my side ribs expand and then my chest.
Maybe there is more to the memory than just the story. Maybe I liked what I had felt during my big sleep. Maybe it explains my attraction to meditation or the fugue states induced by extreme physical activity or the deep void of being blacked out.
Maybe, after having falling out of the in-between, I’ve been trying to get back there ever since.
I release the breath and let my eyes open.
We are all recidivists at heart.
Deferent puppies out in the pod, Tweedledee and Tweedledum have been getting more comfortable with each other behind their cell door. Boisterous - even jovial, their strange, howling laughter echoes through the forced ventilation and into our cell - driving Tail to derision.
During lockdown, he paces the cage. Smacking his balled up fist into his palm and hissing into the ventilation grate.
Shut up!
Shut up!
Shut up!
I can hear you fuckers.
As soon as the doors click back open, Tail beelines for them and puffs his chest into the face of the kid with greasy hair - tapping him hard on the solar plexus.
I’m sick of listening to you dorks giggling in your cell. What the fuck is so funny in there? You guys better keep it quiet from now on…
Tweedledee blinks and takes a half step back.
Eyes wide, Tweedledum moves off to the side. Verging on tears.
In the frame of the cell door, I disappear.
But then, Tweedledee arrests his retreat, puffs up and steps forward.
Or what?!?
Now it is Tail’s turn to pause.
Or you best watch yourself, boy.
But Tail’s saying this as he’s turning away.
Sputtering. He flings an orange chair aside and then disappears into the reawakening pod.
The guard summons me to the control desk and pushes the top copy of my Inmate Request Form back at me. “DENIED” in red stamped across the top of the page. No explanation. Just a flat “no”.
Who knows where this form needed to go in its weeklong sojourn to find rejection?
Meanwhile, my daily calls to Lawrence Kline’s office have gotten repetitive. After the now familiar clicks and beeps that move me through the jail phone system, Tammy answers.
Hi Tammy, it’s Chris Wang again, I just wanted to check if you’ve heard from my people, yet.
Hey Chris. I’m so sorry., hun. No, I haven’t heard anything. Mr. Kline’s still on vacation but I’m sure if he said he would reach out to your people he would. I don’t know…
Yeah, I’m sorry for calling you so much, I just need to know when things start rolling because I need to know that the process started to get me out of here.
Yes, I know, hun. Don’t worry about the calls. I completely understand.
This one brush with empathy catches me in the throat and it takes me a second to return the phone to its cradle and gather my papers as I pass my hand over my eyes.
Then I turn and walk back out in to the pod.
Back straight.
Head up.
Eyes forward.
Heart a hyphen.
Help is not on its way.
Time has begun to stack.
I’ve been drowning now for days.
Sinking.
Spiraling.
The fact that I can’t reach anyone.
The pink underwear.
The lack of eye contact.
The exhausting vigilance of keeping your sixth sense on at all times.
The unacknowledged requests floated out on hope and then swallowed by the mawing black void of the bureaucratic machine.
A faceless countenance.
A finger without a print.
A node.
Nothing.
The daily schedule amplifies the murk.
0700 - doors click open. Breakfast.
11-12 - Lockdown.
12 - Lunch
1440-1510 - Lockdown
1730 Dinner
1800-1900 Lockdown
2130 Lockdown/Lights Out
They lock us down for at least thirteen hours a day. Shuffle us back into our cells.
Too small for two to stand, so we both end up in our bunks.
Zebras.
Half asleep.
Inured into docility.
There’s a word for it.
Narcotization.
Sleep is tempting when I’ve exhausted trying to find the end of my Mobius loop of actions and outcomes. What could I have done differently? What is happening now? Are my people okay? But other traps yawn open when I start falling through the darkness.
Tail issues a warning.
Watch yourself, Waang. Don’t sleep away your time. That’s how you die here. Once you give in, you go to sleep forever. Become a sheep and the Muza Tidra closes forever. Stay awake.
I used to have this dream. Within it, I’d wake up in my bed but couldn’t move. Dead limbs. Body wooden. I’d try to pull myself out of bed and drag myself across the floor. The shag rug rubbing my bare knees raw. If I could only reach the light switch, I could wake up. But I could barely move. I’d try to call out to my mother sleeping at the other end of the house but my lips feel like they are super glued shut. No one can hear my muffled screams. My body locked in an isometric hold.
If I could move, I could wake up.
If I could wake up, I could get free.
When the dream would finally release its hold, my body would jerk awake with a start - the blankets puffing a breath of cool air as they drifted back down across my body.
It followed me for years. The threat crept up like an aura and made me avoid sleep.
Willing myself awake.
I’d watch tv until the programming dissolved.
The national anthem.
Static.
Or I’d drink myself into blackness.
Sliding back to the womb of my coma.
We are all recidivists at heart.
I once told a coworker at the ABC Cafe about the dreams of paralysis.
A morning prep shift.
The smell of freshly brewed coffee layered over bleachy mop water and stale beer.
630 a.m.
Emmy Lou Harris’ Wrecking Ball droning through the speakers.
The plate glass windows sandwiched between hoarfrost and the steam of brewing coffee - an envelope of privacy. Clara Brown, adult cherub, dicing onions with her favorite Japanese knife. Cheeks ruddy from the warming room.
The rectangular blade tap tapping.
She listens to me then puts down her knife, and rests a warm palm on my forearm, holding my gaze with her watery blue eyes.
My gosh, Chris, I used to have the same dream.
Often.
Where I was trapped.
In my body.
In my life.
Sleep paralysis.
It’s a thing. It went on for years. But then I found a way out.
How?
Well, the last time I ever felt that dream come on, I just stopped and told myself that I didn’t have to be there anymore.
It was a decision.
I made it.
Steps appeared.
I walked down them, came to a door, turned the knob, and ended up walking out of that dream forever.
It’s a choice.
It’s a choice.
But our door has no handle.
Click there to go to the next installment —> The Wind Prayer