comfort-bed, that sounds nice, let's hope... it's not the bed for a 'comfort-woman'...
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Sunrise... the coming of light wakes me... it's a very strange awakening.
Very slow, consciousness gradually seeping in from the edge of non-existence.
It's featureless white of which I only gradually become aware that it has little plaster cracks and smudges as my eyes learn anew to focus.
Then it's not abstract white anymore, but a kind of pale eggshell color and I wonder what it would be like, for an awareness to form inside such an eggshell, surrounded in all directions by translucent pearly white, faintly clouded perhaps, and to wonder if there is anything else... until it cracks.
Not knowing what direction is, what is up or down.
With the thought, the corresponding sense floods back - I am looking 'up' and I am residing inside a body that has weight and substance, is subject to gravity, and occupies the position of 'down'.
I would guess I'm lying on my back.
I had a dream where I was raised, and upright, and suffering, and looking up, but it was at black, not white, and I was giving up.
I was detaching, and rising, up, a thousand static stars and the great backbone of the night, I was leaving the grounds of ceremony, but the feeling of rising away was more like falling, air rushing past me, tearing at me, faster, ears popping and hearing going out among the mad discord of distant half-heard music, trumpets, violins and bagpipes, senses failing, the thinner the air, until I felt my self crashing through a crystal sphere that with shards of night-glass tore away the substance of my flesh, leaving only the infinitely thin twisting silver thread, and it seemed I had another lifetime to live there in the nothingness, although that darkness was not distant, it was close around me, enveloping, it seemed to touch me and even go inside of me, although I had no more body, no expanse, no dimension, and so for sure also no inside and no outside anymore, therefore also no secrets. The darkness also had no time as I had no measure for that left but my hearbeat which had gone to rest far below. There was the tiniest bit of imperfection though in the marvellous completeness of that darkness. The tiniest dot. Perhaps because someone had decided not to cut that silver thread, and so I did not quite belong in a place of absolute perfection. I was pulled back. I couldn't say whether the tiny dot grew into a spinning silver disc and then exploded to fill out everything, so that it was white, or that I fell at ever-increasing speed toward that dot, until it expanded and filled out everything, so that it was white, all I know is that I've been looking at that white, I've been somewhere far and now I'm back, lying on my back, looking up at what is a white ceiling in a quiet room, awakening.
Normally 'waking up' and 'getting up' aren't that far apart but I realize I won't be getting up for some time.
Because instinctively I tried, once I'd found myself residing in a body, but it answered with pain.
It's not painful just lying there but moving, stretching skin, bending joints, that very definitely is. On my back it's very taut.
It's the pain that brings my consciousness into focus.
I manage to half sit up; I wanted to put the palms of my hands flat against the mattress and push up but that's unbearably painful in my wrists.
When I take care to do it with my elbows, and turn my hands sideways and half-curl my hands into not-quite-fists and push down like that, I can do it.
The room is white-chalked with rough wooden floorboard, it's simple but clean and welcoming. Pleasant, soothing and quiet.
There's no one here but I think people are just outside.
I have the feeling there were people here recently, perhaps watching over me.
An empty chair, a bedside table with a glass and a pitcher of clear water, but I have no thirst.
In fact, I do, but the thought of reaching for the pitcher and lifting its weight quashes it. Because the pain of that, I know, will be worse than the thirst is right now.
It's time to look at my hands, my wrists now.
I thought it was a dream.
The window is an old-fashioned one, open to the breeze, and warm air flows that has the breath of the sea on it.
For some reason, I know if I could go outside there'd be a crumbling terrace and bougainvillea and fig trees and prickly pears.
I won't be getting up for a while though.
I'll try to sit up fully though, and pull up my knees, and have a look at my feet, my ankles.
I thought it was a dream...
