Between Sleep and Waking

Between sleep and waking there is a place of half aware, half dream, where the mind weaves the input of the senses with threads of fantasy.

In this place conscious thought and imagination are jumbled jigsaw puzzle pieces haphazardly stuck together to make patchwork pictures that defy explanation outside the nebulous, wobbling incohesion between sleep and waking.

It is easy to get lost there, between sleep and waking.  Days dazed, not quite here, not quite there, scattered everywhere.  What was I doing in this room?  Why did I walk over there?  Why am I holding this dish, this broom, this piece of clothing, this book?  What was I trying to get done just now?  Did I see that, hear that, was it inside my head or out?

Walk through a door and forget, and forgetfulness becomes the wet woolen batting that wraps a body up from head to toe and makes everything heavier, sort of musty, slow, unfocused.  Walk back through the door, trying to remember, only to find that memory is elusive, a wisp within the mist swirling throughout the place between sleep and waking.

Minutes, hours, ebb and flow.  Liquid, undefined, gelatinous, oozing time slips through slack fingers, circles the drain, and is gone before it was ever there, life passing in stilted stop-motion muzziness like some old black and white movie playing on an endless loop between sleep and waking.

Somehow life goes on in tenuous moments pasted together with cobwebs, onion skin thin and brittle and always on the edge of becoming dust in the corners of the place between sleep and waking where it will remain unnoticed, unremembered, unremarked until the errant breezes of thought and consciousness send it swirling away to become motes on a sunbeam.

Pandora's Gift

Pandora.

Her name means "all gifts".

She was created as a punishment to men for Prometheus's gift of fire.  She was given to Prometheus's brother Epimetheus to marry, and along with her Zeus sent a locked box which was never to be opened.  Zeus gave the key to Epimetheus to keep, with stern admonishments to never, ever, under any circumstances, open that box.

So of course, Pandora wanted to know what was in there.

Of course she did.

Who wouldn't?

Humans are curious.

We want to know how things tick, and why, and if we can make them tick better, or fix them when they stop ticking.  We poke and tinker and futz and finagle, some by turning to gods and myths and some by turning to science, and we keep after trying to figure things out, down the rabbit hole and damn the consequences, until we have answers...or more questions.

Pandora kept asking Epimetheus to let her open the box.  Zeus kept reminding them not to open it.  Especially when Pandora had a handle on her curiosity, Zeus would whisper to her not to go bothering with that box, now, don't forget.

Eventually Pandora managed to get the box open.  I imagine the lock squealed dire warnings as she turned the key.  I imagine the lid creaked ominously as she lifted it.  I imagine there was darkness, silence, as the lid came to a rest and the contents were finally revealed.

The silence was shattered by the sound of every torment hitherto unknown to humanity cackling, gibbering, howling, shrieking, leaping into flight or clambering over the sides of the box, released from imprisonment and free to wreak their havoc upon the earth.  As they fled, each creature called out its name - war, hunger, hatred, death, fear, sorrow, pestilence, envy, need, and every other negative or unpleasant feeling and experience rushing forth, a box of angry hornets buzzing out to the corners of the world to sting and sting, relentlessly hounding us, our idyllic life suddenly changed in radical ways that we couldn't understand and likely never will.

Poor Pandora.

Reviled for her curiosity, her humanness.  I've noticed that no one ever gets mad at Zeus for being so petty.  He made the box, after all, and filled it up with all of those delightful presents.  He was the one who wouldn't let it rest, wouldn't let Pandora have any peace.

Pandora wept when she realized what she'd done.  She'd unleashed a kind of horror that would never end, could never again be boxed up, contained, again.

As she wept, she heard a whisper.  A soft rustle.  The barest hint of a sound.

It came from the box.

Pandora looked inside, thinking that maybe she could keep at least one terrible thing from escaping.

There, in the back corner, shining brightly in the shadows, was a tiny thing.  Pale, minute, and beautiful, it reached for her.  She lifted it from the box.

Hope, it said.  I am Hope.

I stand and face every dark thing, every shade, every nightmare, every misery, all of the things that drive you to the brink of madness and despair.  I am Hope.

Hope.

Was it worth it?

Before Pandora opened up that box of curiosities, we didn't know anything about how unhappy we could be.  We didn't hurt each other, take what belonged to others, seek to own or dominate or eradicate.

But...

We also didn't have hope.  Before Pandora, humans led a hopeless existence.

She didn't just curse us with all of those evils.  She gifted us with Hope.

We are the better for it.

Grist

I like grist mills.  I like watching the water turn the wheel, the wheel turn the big metal rod thingies, the cogs and sprockets and whatsits all interlocking and translating the motion of the water into the motion of the great stone wheels that grind, grind, grind, until what was once the dried, tough kernel of some grass-related plant turns into powder useful for all kinds of kitchen alchemy.

I like seeing old millstones used in architecture and gardening, repurposed after the grooves are almost worn smooth.  I sometimes imagine making a patio out of some of those magnificent old stones, filling in between them with smaller stones and sand or planting creeping thyme or some other low-growing herb.

I don't like feeling as if I'm one of those hard shelled grains being ground down on some cosmic millstones, the wheel of time turning, turning, turning as I am worn away to nothing.  I don't like feeling as if I have somehow been bound to one of those old, worn out wheels and dropped into the millpond, left to struggle in vain to reach the surface as I am dragged ever downward into the murky depths.

I feel heavy and worn and useless, and I feel as if I would cry if only I could, but I cannot.

Hello, depression.