Reading: The Narrator
So, I’ve been reading The Narrator by Michael Cisco, one of the most brilliant writers putting down words today. I’ve been reading The Narrator for… awhile. For me, Michael Cisco doesn’t write the sort of books one flies through. At least, I definitely don’t fly through them. His prose are thick, the words are almost heavy in your head, but this is because the images he creates with the words are so vivid, and real, and often yet so very dream-like, or nightmarish. He takes scenes of dream and nightmare, with all the inherent incoherence and impossibility that the human mind can create intimately, in the dark, and puts those scenes on paper in words. I don’t rush through words like that, I want to take them all in, to see the images they’re creating.
When I do finish The Narrator, I’ll review it, but really, just go buy it. I don’t think Cisco will fall on his face during the second half.
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Thirty
So, I’m thirty today, and I don’t feel in good spirits.
I had this dream last night that I went for a fresh trach. They put me under for the procedure, I felt the drugs and I felt myself fall asleep, everything seemed so real. Then I started thinking something was wrong, I was someplace dark, and I kept thinking that I should be in the recovery area and I should have my computer and I should be talking to people, but I was just all alone in this unformed, incomprehensible, dark place. I kept telling myself it had to be a dream and I just had to wake up, but I couldn’t wake up. I kept trying, but I couldn’t make myself wake up. I was really frightened, if I couldn’t wake up, it had to be real. I started calling someone’s name, and calling, screaming. In all my dreams, even if I have my trach, I can still talk. That should have tipped me off that none it was real, but no. I kept calling for her in a voice she’s never heard before, but I was just alone in that dark place. I was terrified because I figured I really was dead, I’d never get to be with her again. That’s the part that scared me about being dead, I wouldn’t just wake up and go back to her. She always makes me promise to come back to her before trach changes, and I always promise.
I was so scared when I did wake up, my heart was pounding, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. She was next to me and I felt that warm, safe feeling, but not for long. I remembered she’d be gone soon, and I remembered some other things I don’t care to write, and anything that felt warm and safe went away. I just want today to be tomorrow.
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