can we still be friends?

we can't play this game anymore
but can we still be friends?
things just can't go on like before
but can we still be friends?

That is the plan. Nights like last night, though, erode all my resolve to just aim for friendship. Last night's dreaming was...easy, and difficult, both, and...neither I say lightly. They weren't nightmares, which is a huge relief, but they were intense, overwhelming, compelling...erotic.



we had something to learn
now it's time for the wheel to turn
grains of sand, one by one
before you know, it's all gone

It started out with flashbacks, with reliving memories, with embedding into lived experience. This is not unusual--I tend to fall into memories, recollections, sense events, with sometimes appalling regularity. But this was...different. If I didn't know better, if I didn't understand the distinctions being made, if I did not, in fact, know that I was dreaming--I would have sworn I was not alone in the bed, that there was another beside me, playing all the chords to encourage me to sing.



let's admit we made a mistake
but can we still be friends?
heartbreak's never easy to take
but can we still be friends?

And more charnel bones tipped into the firebox, heat becoming intense, because, right now, I can't think about this with a calm and cool head. I can still hear his whispered urging, still feel the play of heated breath over my skin, and I have to keep telling myself this was just a dream.



it's a strange sad affair
sometimes seems that we just don't care
don't waste time feeling hurt
we've been through hell together

And if there wasn't something my subconscious thought I should realize, my brain wouldn't be tormenting me with drunken sensual remembrance; I know that. A lot of times it just breaks down to my brain being a consummate teenager, pouting because the parental units just don't understand, cannot understand, they've forgotten how it feels to be seventeen and in serious lust...And again, I know that. To put it in less flattering terms, this is my subconscious kicking the traces. I get it.

But.



it's a strange sad affair
sometimes seems that we just don't care
don't waste time feeling hurt
we've been through hell together

But, when my dreams turn like this, it is occasionally hard to remember that it's just defiant immaturity. Last night, especially...Let me be clear: while nightmares are a constant, I have never, not once, had a nightmare of someone I trusted not accepting no for an answer. This is key. (And the downside of that is, yes, if I stop trusting someone, they've occasionally turned up as torturers in the nightly plays, disobeying all previous rules.)



can we still be friends
can we still get together sometimes?

That is, thankfully one line, at least, my brain refuses to cross. But I know I was begging--abject, audibly, shuddering, pleading, the 'no', the 'stop', so very nearly on my lips, but...never...never...explicitly uttered.

Thought, though. Begging, though. Begging for--surcease? Release? Mercy? Whatever it was, it wasn't given, and I woke in much the same state--shuddering, gasping, still whispering please, unable to draw in a full breath for sweeping pleasure. And I had to struggle to get my breathing back under control.

Exactly as if I had not been alone...



hey babe, can we still go on?

I won't say I'd rather have nightmares. My brain is far too facile with evisceration scenarios, so thank you, no, they can stay down with the alligators. But that dream has stayed with me all day, every time I close my eyes, a series of entwined jolts, gasps, and want, the still-intense desire searing through me, the flames still high.

So...yes. There are things still to work on. Obviously.



we awoke from our dream,
things are not always what they seem
memories linger on
it's like a sweet, sad, old song

It may just take time. Remove the immediacy of recollection, erase the sharp edges, fuzz the sensory recall. Let the days pass into weeks, and into months, and into years, until I can think back on sensuality shared and just have the occasional twinge and smile.

At least...that's the hope. Dear gods, if it stays this intense...that will...not be good for me.

And of course, the question now circling the steam tower...

can we still be friends?

I still want that. I do. I still think it's possible. I think we have taken strides forward to reworking things from fevered need to friendly discourse, and I...think...we have a good chance to remain on that path.

But nights like last night...they do make the end goal less assured, and more desperate. And they practically ensure that the next time I spend time, in person, with him...that I will be very locked down, all the unease back, all that flinching fear back, and it had just started to ebb, damn it.

And every time I close my eyes... Maybe it's time to stay awake for a while.

(Photos taken on the Vaak Rift sim [Adult], Kralovstvi Temple Court [Moderate], Masija [Adult], Black Nest [Moderate] and Angelstar Manor on Isla Ballenas [Adult]. Lyrics from Robert Palmer's Can We Still Be Friends?)

'cause you are the ocean, and I'm good at drowning

Awake and fretting again. Awake when I should be sleeping. Awake and afraid of dreaming. Awake and pondering.

If the spider dreams come when I backslide, if they come when I respond to a touch, or a phrase, or the sound of breath between words, I would be more able to accept it. Tonight, I have no idea why I dreamed, only that I did. If it's not specifically tied to the love that left, then what do the spider dreams mean? And why did they go away--for at least a while--when I left? And why did they only return when I got close again? Why did I have one tonight when I haven't done a thing to encourage one?

I want this to be over. I want to be better. I want to stop feeling scared, and unsure, and yearning for things I lost along the way. I want my subconscious to pick another image to flay my nerves with. I want to feel less like I'm bleeding out and more like I'm healing. I want to look forward to sleep again.

More than a year later, I still can't go to a dance if I hear Duchess Gabrielle is going to be spinning the tunes. She's still an amazing DJ--I still listen to Radio Riel now and again--but I just can't bring myself to go. It's not resentment, it's not anger, it's not out of any desire for revenge. Mostly, it's just sadness. I walked away from so much of my life when I was fired, lost touch with people I genuinely cared for, and I know that's contributed largely to my isolation...but I can't get past it.

More than six months later, I'm still trying to sell that last bit of Caledonian land. Being in Caledon isn't the joy it once was, for multiple reasons, and I'm suffering a major period of disconnection from the grid anyway, for a variety of reasons as well. I'm finding it hard to create, hard to innovate, and I'm back to contemplating closing the business for good. In fact, coming this January is the yearly anniversary party for two businesses that are profoundly stalled, featuring virtually no creation of new product since last year. And I still have no idea what's going to happen then, or if we're even holding a sale, let alone a celebration.

More than eighteen months later, I'm still closing the ISC chat window more often than I'm leaving it open. People waver between being far too perky and far too prone to take offense, and I just don't have it in me to appreciate a good fight the way I used to. And most of the time, most social events just make me sigh, or shudder, and turn away in resigned frustration. I am getting profoundly lonely on the grid, but I can't bring myself to even show up at a dance to potentially ease that perception of loneliness.

And more than four years later, I think I'm finally accepting that I will never have another rez day celebration. Because I can't shake what happened after the first one.

I am stitched too deeply with regret, and layered too thickly with pain. This is going to take time, and more than I want each day, to resolve, and it won't be easy. It's not easy now. I feel as if I'm no longer moving forward, I'm just sinking in place.

So now I shore up, refocus, tabulate my successes and my failures. If I can't find my way forward, I build from here and see where we end up. I've already accepted it won't be anywhere near where I started.

I already boxed up every doll-related thing in my inventory. Maybe I need to go through and box up all the spider outfits and accessories. At least for a while. If I can't control the outer world, I control the inner. The mind writes deeply in the body; maybe forcing that disconnection from the arachnids within will push that image from my subconscious.

Yeah, I don't buy that either. But it's something new to try.

I just want something clear in all this murk and mist. Something solid, not ephemeral. Something to count on. A guidepost. A beacon. Hells, I'll take a rock kicked out of place at this point. (Though not a sign. Note to all gods who might be tuning in: I am NOT asking for a sign. Just...a nudge, maybe, towards the shore. Whatever works.)

And then I'll figure out where I am, and where I go from there. It's not like this is the first time the existential pangs have set in of an evening. It likely won't be the last either...

Sometime later, I tell him part of this. Not that I don't want to tell him all of it, just that articulation, currently, is not my strong suit. He listens, as he always does.

"Sometimes a dream is just a dream," he says. I think about that. I wrap that thought around me as I return to bed, and hopefully to sleep, believing that my dreams have more import, but needing the comfort.

"The lake is frozen over
The trees are white with snow
And all around
Reminders of you
Are everywhere I go..."

Accepting any loss is like a death in the family--there is an absence that we try to fold ourselves around, tell ourselves we are still whole and capable, and not empty in that one place. My personality, such as it is, has many empty spaces, but some of them are filled now with cobwebs, and others with weeping, and others with bars of iron and gold. I have to find a way to communicate with my subconscious, or listen more closely, while at the same time trying not to curl around the new emptiness.

It's okay to be empty, too. It's okay to suffer. I am not weak or foolish if I cannot immediately get up and launch back into the world.

And sometimes, it's just another dream, my mind playing with spider imagery because that's what my subconscious has been occupied with since Aprille. It's bound to happen. It doesn't have to mean anything more than it does already.

I think I can sleep now, for another night-turned-morning. Let's see what the morrow brings.

back from a far horizon

Sometimes, when things shift, it's hard effort--straining against another language, and suddenly losing to it, and rising from where one was thrown, touching everything, and hearing another name for it. Wrestling with ideas, trying to force them into pattern, and suddenly having the pattern become clear.

Sometimes the shift is paradigm.

I count the hours
you count the days together
we count the minutes in this passion play
walk dusty miles
and I ride that train
on a first class ticket
just to be with you again

Thrown up on the far shore, and the train moved against all expectation for the broken thing it had become. It moved slowly, to be sure, chugging nearly painfully into the mountains, laboring into the heights.

It's not going to be easy, I think, and I'm not wrong. I could get out and walk faster. But we keep going, it's important, essential, vital in some sense, this current psychopomp.

picking up tired feet
back from a far horizon
cleaned up and brushed down
dressed to look the part
fresh from God's garden
I bring a gift of roses
to stand in sweet spring water
and press them to your heart

I cling to the struts, fighting for reason, fighting against sleep, fighting until we find a good resting spot, and begin trying to slow the train down from "ridiculously slow" to "barely moving" once I see the sketch against the mountains that might be, just might be, a refueling station.

We crest the curve of the hill like cresting along the wave, and I'm hoping for a slow descent to shore, rather than crash. Never know with trains, but we're slowing, we're slowing, we're coming to a stop...in time.

like the Kipling cat
I walk alone
never inviting trouble
never casting the stone
but this badge of honour
is of tarnished tin
light your guiding beacon
to bring this fisher in

Endless pained hours later, it turns out I was right. Small little town, looking abandoned, but there's the refueling station, and I see water and coal, and anything else, I can work around. Empty, but it doesn't bother me, I've been alone before.

There's always a work-around.

picking up tired feet
back from a far horizon
cleaned up and brushed down
and dressed to look the part
fresh from God's garden
I bring a gift of roses
to stand in sweet spring water
and press them to your heart

More hours to live through, endure, accept, crawling the town for repair metals, hissing at the touch of bare iron on my skin. Wood and copper, ivory plates under the counter of the tea house, wire and leather straps from the stables, corset lacing from the mercantile.

It'll be patchwork, but ironically, that's appropriate. I set to work.

I count the hours
you count the days together
we count the minutes in this passion play
walk dusty miles
and I ride that train
on a first class ticket
just to be with you again...

The day's set, the moon's out, new day explodes into bright light again, before I'm close to done. Wiping sweat off my forehead with the sleeve over one arm, it's hard work. Grueling in spots, and some spots are going to be open for a while yet, simply because I couldn't find enough pieces. And the structure's weaker for it, but maybe that's all right, too.

I don't have to be strong for everything. Train still rolls. We're good. We can rest the day and pick up travel tomorrow.

I put the hammer down on the sheet of copper I was curving around a strut. I'll get it later. Now, it's time to find a bed, and I think the old hotel will do me fine.

SONNET 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Caution and revelation both. Absolution granted, responsibility given. We'll get through this.

I track down an old quilt in a hope chest, dragging it over me on the least bedsprung bed in the place, wrapping around myself the smell of old cotton and cedar. I lay my head on the goosedown pillow, breathing becoming slow and deep in the late afternoon sun.

I may dream. I may not. But the nightmares are gone. For now, I'm very thankful, and not thinking beyond that for now. Time enough to work out the details later.

Always time. With faith and trust. Always time...

(Lyrics are "A Gift of Roses" from Jethro Tull. And of course, the sonnet...is Shakespeare.)

somebody rip my heart out, and leave me here to bleed

I go to bed with uneasy heart, unsure of what to say or how to say it, torn between love and love as I have been before, as I have ever been before. I barely tell the one goodnight, and do not tell the other, and think I crawl up the bed to another night of staring at the wall fixedly...when I fall asleep.

But...there's a difference. Oh, there's a difference.

tried to take it all away
learn her freedom
just inside a day,
and find her soul to find there fears are laid...

For I wake the next morning, throat too clogged to scream, but the scream wanting to emerge with each shaking breath. The bones and bloody flesh full-borne, the twisting in the wind, despair in my wide eyes as I cling to the bedding.

My first nightmare...in months.

gold and silver rings and stones,
dances slowly off the moon,
no one else could know, she stands alone...
sleeping dreams will reach for her,
she can not say the words they need--

It doesn't matter what I dreamt. It doesn't, in the fullness of all things what I dreamt is meaningless. It is that I dreamt. More, it is that I dreamt of horror and pain, loss and fear, eviscerated visions and torture behind my eyes.

When I have been protected--from myself, from whatever in me fosters such things to stagger into conscious light--by him.

The only thing in my life that changed...has changed again.

ocean gypsy of the moon,
the sun has made a thousand nights for you to hold...
ocean gypsy, where are you?
the shadows followed by the stars have turned to gold...
turned to gold...

I pick over the shreds of the entry I'd planned to make, another diatribe against the train wreck, and it's meaningless now, just words, empty posturing. This is real. This is the danger. Not some allegorical vision of a possible collapse.

One tells me, it's a test. One tells me it lifts when he's home. But he's not sure, yet, whether he wants it to end.

And the other says, then tell him there's no issue. We're just friends, now. Resolve things with him. I'll still be here...if there's room for me.

And there may not be, he thinks.

And I go to bed, doubts circling inside, unsure which way to turn...

--and the weapons come out and the weapons go in and the weapons do not come out again--

...and I wake, shaking. I touch hands to my face and realize I'm crying.

then she met a hollow soul,
filled him with her light and was consoled,
she was the moon and he the sun was gold...
eyes were blinded with his light...
the sun she gave reflected back the night
the moon was waning almost out of sight...

I had so hoped the nightmares were gone...

This is more than allegory. This is more than pretty broken words and the careful described anatomies of past pain. This is more than nostalgia, more than reflection.

These are the patterns I'd been accustomed to, the patterns I'd happily left behind--shadow creature, formed of nightmares and choked-back screams, all the horrors I can't remember, all the ones I can, trapped with me behind my eyes.

This is my life. Full circle stop and we're here again.

something gone within her eyes,
her fingers, lifeless, stroked the sand,
her battered soul was lost,
she was abandoned...

Was it me? Did I bring them back? I have sought my sleep before, more than once, more than a handful of times, doubting I was making the right decision, doubting my path.

But I never doubted him before...and maybe that, that, is the difference.

And I sit, shaking, feeling tender and raw and half-formed, thrust up into the light half-made, sick to my soul with what my mind does when it's set free. And it's all back again.

This won't be the last one.

I have to find a way to resolve this, now.

Because this? Could be the real train wreck.

(Lyrics taken from Blackmore's Night, their song, "Ocean Gypsy".)