I’m falling asleep while it is still light

I invite you to listen to this story read aloud to you in my voice over a selected music track. Just click the .mp3 link to hear it read while you read, or close your eyes and let me take you into my first diary entry.(Karima Diary Entry#1.mp3)

I’m falling asleep while it is still light out, exhausted from a stressful day. I came home and decided to get into my pajamas, not worrying if I even sleep through dinner. I’ll grab something, at some point. I almost feel more like I am passing out, instead of just taking a nap, but I have been eating pretty haphazardly, and maybe the only meal I do eat, which is balanced, is when we all sit down together at the table, and that is not every night anymore because of our schedules. Ismara won’t be home until 8 o’clock from her job, so this seems a good time to try to recharge my frazzled and drained batteries. As soon as my body stretches out, I feel as if I am spinning to sleep, not falling slowly, and then just a second later, for it feels like no time has really passed, I am waking up again.

I wake up in my bed but not in my room

I wake up in my bed, but not in my room, as this room is from another place and feels foreign and surreal. I must be dreaming, I conclude as I look at the walls surrounding me, and realize, that never even in any dreams, have I conjured up a place like this. I feel so awake while I sleep, and I even marvel at how clearly I am thinking about all this, how carefully my observations seem to be. I think it is at this point that I realize I am, what they call, lucid dreaming and decide that when I wake up, I will write down everything that I can remember. I sit up on my bed. It is my bed, exactly, except all the color has changed. The carpet the walls, the bedspread, somehow are the same hue, but everything seems as if filtered through a paler blue light that shines in thick beams through large carved openings in the wall. I expect any minute I will awaken in my own bedroom, and then I will try to remember this image, to perhaps sketch it in chalk or pencils while it is still fresh.

I have to consider everything as this dream is very different

 I have to consider everything as this dream is very different, from most of mine, which shift and change so rapidly, I can barely remember them. Ismara one time told me of a vision she had, where she actually thought I was there having it too, as I was part of her dream and it all seemed very real, in a dream-like sort of way. As soon as she awoke, she ran to my room to corroborate it, and of course I had no idea what she was talking about. I am thinking this dream is a vision, and Ismara said that when she had hers, it turned out almost prophetic, a sort of  premoniton, so I will look at everything, remember everything, and then write it all down, as soon as I get back to my awake state. I have a diary that has never been used. I think my Aunt gave one to each of us when we were fifteen, but it never really interested me. Why write about it, if you can live it fresh and not always be under the self ordered rule, that afterwords you must document every day? I think maybe diaries are for people who don’t have very interesting lives, or fear when they are older, will have almost no memories worth remembering. I guess in that case, a diary could be like a buried treasure chest, suddenly uncovered.

I am finding if I stare too long at the floor, for example…

I am finding if I stare too long at the floor, for example, which is heavily patterned, and transparent, yet filled with layers, I start to feel I will fall into a deeper level of this dream, perhaps one where I will not be as lucid, and therefore will not remember much when I wake up. I resist falling in this way. I look back towards the head of the bed, and notice for the first time, there are two pale blue spheres, made of glass or some sort of transparent material. They are sitting there, between the two pillows and I pick them up and get the feeling of them. My first reaction when I hold them, is to almost drop them, as they feel so odd in my hands. They vibrate slightly and go between a solid state, very much like glass, to a state more like pliable rubber or a round helping of over-chilled jello. Their temperature also goes between very warm, to icy cold, and seems to be connected to how fast the spheres are vibrating. I ask myself a question I would never ask myself in my waking life, “Could they be alive?”

I find with a little concentration they respond to my thoughts…

I find that with a little concentration, they respond to my thoughts, and actually begin to float and glide up and down if I imagine they are attached to my hand. I play around with them for several minutes, until I take off my concentration  inadvertently, and they float away, outside of my range of influence to cause them any effect. I watch them fade into the wall textures, almost like bubbles, but where they enter, it seems they stay, forming a new part of the wall, and the very walls themselves seem to spawn new orbs and they appear on the floor or hovering out of reach. If they are alive, they seem to be not independent creatures but something tied to the greater blueprint of the building plan. This world feels like nothing I have ever experienced in dreams. I am so curious about it, and yet a little apprehensive, wondering just how deep I want to go, and if I really could wake myself up at any moment if I feel threatened.

I decide to get up and inspect my surroundings

I decide to get up and inspect my surroundings, and the feel of the floor on my bare feet is like cool glass. I avoid as well as I can the angle of looking down, because vertigo tugs at my balance when I do peer below me, at the endless layers and floor, all semi transparent, yet with patterns and images superimposed. It is mind wrenching. Although the walls look solid, and have three-dimensional bars and tubes, that seem to block the way, when I press my hand against one wall, I find it sort of gives to my push, but at the same time pulls me into it, much like it did to the disappearing spheres. My first reaction is to pull back, as it seems to be a very strong force, and I would lose control if I allowed it to grab hold of me. I take turns, trying the other walls, pressing lightly my palms against them, and testing them. All of them but the first seem to be solid, so I am obligated to overcome my fear and allow the wall to take me through, unless I wish to stay trapped in this small room with only my bed in it, and nothing more

I walk  easily through the wall of the room my bed is in

I walk easily through the wall of the room my bed is in, and it gives way with no resistance, actually pulling me smoothly to the other side. Oddly enough, I do not feel afraid of this process anymore. I keep reminding myself that I am dreaming, and very aware I am too, so that any minute I calculate it is too frightening, I will awaken using the tricks Ismara and I perfected when we were little.  We would pretend we were at the bottom of a pool, underwater and by pushing up hard with our feet, we would reach the surface in a splash, and would be once again awake. I walk a few meters to the other side and peer through a lattice work, almost like French windows, but with tiny thin crosspieces with no glass. The wall is beautiful in pale shades of blue green, but at first it is hard to make out what is on the other side.

The glow of the scene makes it difficult to see clearly to the other side

The glow of the scene makes it difficult to see clearly to the other side, and I press my face into the structure that separates one side from the other. This wall is impassable, feels like steel,  although it looks like it is made out of glass. It does not even budge when I put all my strength against it, trying to push my way in, as I have just learned to do, on the last wall. I position myself in front of a section, which has a large opening, and as I become used to the glare, I see a woman sitting on a couch on the other side. It appears to be Ismara, seated in our conscious world, on the sofa that is on the landing of the house we live in.

I recognize it is not Ismara at all, but myself

 I recognize it is not Ismara at all, but myself, and I catch my breath. “What an odd dream I am having!” but I resist the urge to wake myself up, for a few more minutes. I call out to myself through the barrier, I say, “If you hear me, make me wake up” But I don’t seem to hear anything. I am waiting for something it seems, and I don’t appear to be part of the dream, but somehow outside of it. I see myself over there totally conscious and this makes me ponder until I almost shudder with the effort. If I am here, on this side,dreaming, and I am conscious of it, and I see myself across a divide and I look like I am awake, I perhaps could be over there dreaming, I could be dreaming this moment I am living now on this side. I shut my eyes quickly as I feel disoriented for a second, and when I open them, it is as if what I just thought becomes real, but on one of those deeper levels, I was trying very hard to avoid.

I am now the one on the couch, but this room, like my bed before, is not in my waking world

I am now the one on the couch, but this room, like my bed before, is not in my waking world. I am dressed in clothes I don’t own, just as I saw myself  dressed on the other side of the barrier. I am in the same clothes, and I am wearing fishnet stockings and laced-up boots. I don’t think I own either of those things nor have I ever had them in my closet. I am looking towards a window and I know I am waiting for some kind of sign, or something to happen. I have to make a supreme effort to move my head out of the position I have it turned towards. I feel stilled, and the very air itself fights me to change my position. I am like a cloned copy of a full-length sculpture of myself that someone has set on a couch as a prop simultaneously in two different worlds. I stop struggling to understand at this point, and let my eyes wander over the scene. The colors are magnificent, purples and greens on the bronze leather-tooled couch, against walls of antique pink and rose. The first thing I think about, is how I will paint this scene, and what paints I might use. I allow myself a quick glance below my feet and feel the rush of being thrown quickly off-balance, by the sheer height, clearness and depth of the floors, with many more floors below this one. Heights have always made me reel with vertigo.

No. this is not any room I know, but it has a hauntingly attractive quality for me

No, this is not any room I know, but it has a hauntingly attractive quality for me.
I feel an energy in this room, a presence, but although I can now move my head freely, I see no one, or anything more than this couch and the strange walls, that seem to change patterns, while I am not looking. I imagine music, and I begin to hear what sounds like a piano being cautiously played upon, one note at a time. My bare thighs feel warm against the tooling which I picture is leaving a slight pattern like a temporary tattoo across it. I am overcome with desire to meet someone and maybe have a dream-affair, a nighttime tryst that no one can accuse me of. I am lucid, and I am real, and I wish to control this dream now and feel passion, and to want and be wanted and taken and loved. All these desires that for various reasons, I no longer am feeling in my conscious life. Ahh to dream, I think and let loose all the wanting, all the  passion and pent up feelings that I hold inside like a tightly wound wire. Now I am questioning if these are really my own original thoughts and wants, or if this presence I perceive that blows across the room, sometimes almost underneath me, is feeding them into my mind. I stand up and walk to the middle of the floor and look down. My action is almost a challenge, a dare to whatever is here, to show itself to me, and bewitch me and sweep me over the edge of my guarded passion.

Just hen I feel something grab hold of my ankle

Just then I feel something grab hold of my ankle and jerk me down to my knees.
The power is so strong it almost takes my breath from me and from the entire room. My heart pounds, the beat increasing with each second , but it is not only fear that speeds the pace until I am gasping for breath, trembling with the adrenaline that shoots through me, but longing, dark deep longing, that aches in places, I have consciously tried to bury and abandon.

I am held by a hand, that has come through the glass floor and now moors me to it

I am held by a hand, that has come through the glass floor and now moors me to it. I don’t take a breath. My heart pounds, and my body trembles. The hand holds me firmly by my right ankle, and I am bound in an awkward position, where I can’t really sit back or move, so I just hold myself as steady as I can, and look down to my right below me. I can make out an image of a human hand, but it lays still just a few inches below the glass, yet what I am feeling are fingers, slowly tracing the shape of my ankle, and exploring me, like a blind person touches a face to get a sense and a feel of how they are, beautiful, ugly, balanced or unbalanced, etc. This is what the hand does to me, it captures me and then sends fingers, many fingers that touch my leg, feeling it, tracing it, squeezing it, until I grow faint with desire. In the way the hand begins to massage and squeeze my calf, climbing up to my thigh, I know it finds touching me a pleasant experience. It does it with almost an innocent quality, as if it is not used to touching human flesh from the waking world on the other side of the barrier, and I don’t want it to stop. I close my eyes, and fill up with feeling, hoping it will go on, move higher, and I imagine this hand attached to a beautiful body, one that rises out of the glass floor and overpowers any resistance I might offer, by making me want it to take me. I hear myself saying “Yes..go on!” in a hoarse whisper. I am not sure if I am controlling this dream, or if this is a normal lucid dream at all. Perhaps I am somewhere else, and have no control over anything.

 A warm sensation begins to climb up my body and overtake it

A warm sensation begins to climb up my body and overtake it, while I remain totally passive, but participating, giving up, with no struggle, allowing these hands to take me where they wish to, and just as I am entering into sensations that can not be easily reversed without deep pain of frustrating personal restraint, the fingers stop their sensual journey of discovery on me and just hold me in place, while I begin to feel it is observing me with eyes from under the floor. This drives me into wild undiscovered fantasies, just the thought and although I am clothed, with skirt, stockings and panties, I know this creature has eyes that can see through anything it wishes to, and now what it wishes to see, is me crouched over him, and he looks up at me , into me, and this look sets me up to surrender all that I can and I give him what he wants to see. I know it, I feel he moves me on, watching me and breathing. I hear the breaths in my head..He breathes, and his breath too quickens with my own. My eyes turn up into my thrown -back  head, and if this is a dream, my body feels it as real and I melt all over the glass surface and he watches me turn to liquid and hears me moan. I know this is what he wants from me, and I am powerless to not give it to him. After many minutes held there, even after, I am still motionless, in this difficult position,  then all of a sudden, he lets go of my ankle and I am free.

As quickly as this presence comes, it leaves through the wall and disappears

As quickly as this presence comes, it leaves through the wall and disappears. I feel it  shoot past me, like a cool ribbon of swirling air, and pass through the wall, to parts unknown, and unimagined. I  get up and rush to the windows, if they can be called that, to try to catch any glimpse of it. It feels masculine to some degree, perhaps due to my own sexual orientation, but it feels, “it” too, not limited to any human standards of gender description. It was a curious, and yet powerful entity, that had chosen to explore my own most private inner fantasies, the ones I never talk about or share with anyone, not even Ismara.

“How did this red globe appear on my hand,” I asked so surprised

“How did this red globe appear in my hand?” I ask so surprised, as it is just there when I turn from the window. The feel of it is not the same as the pale blue balls, I had actually been able to manipulate with my thoughts. This red ball is hollow and so light, I almost do not realize I am holding it, until I actually see it in my hand, balanced there. I stand very quietly and almost am afraid to take a breath, afraid I perhaps might drop it. I feel this has been given to me by the entity that held me captive and enraptured.

The air begins to change and electrify

The air begins to change and electrify and I see the floors projecting new images of structures, and shapes that rotate below, causing the effect of making everything seem like it is disintegrating before my eyes. The red orb, starts to emanate a blue light, that changes to smoke, that changes to a strange essence I  can almost perceive as solid. I feel it is saying goodbye, and then I hear a synced chorus of human-like voices, but rather synthesized, not actually human, that chant these words over and over again.
“Take the sphere with you. Try to take it with you. Do take it with you. Take the sphere with you. Try to take it with you. Do take it with you” repeated so many times, the words begin to make no sense, and turn into sounds with no meaning, and I know I am starting to wake up. I clutch the orb protectively, and make my best attempt to take it with me.

There is no sphere in my hand when I awake

There is no sphere in my hand when I awake. There is only the sensation, many sensations of having been part of a world that was somewhere between awake and asleep, but not of either. My first thought is to look for my diary and a pen, and I do this quickly, and begin to write it all down, incorporating every detail I can remember, as they flood into my mind in vivid imagery. I am exhausted, not rested, and still tingle and twitch, my nerves  trying to recuperate, and it is like slowly returning from a deep tunnel under the sea. I know this bedroom, this pen is what I call real but everything I saw and felt entered my perceptions as real too, so very real that I feel moved beyond myself, how I had so quickly surrendered my will to a stronger one I could not even see. I am not sure why it was important to bring the red ball back. The petition of course seems impossible, yet in some way I feel I failed to complete what was asked of me. I write it all, and when I get to the end, where they are chanting, I hear the warning, the admonishment that was surprisingly added to their sing-song at the very end.
“If you tell anyone. You will not be invited back. You will never come back”

I know this is the truth

I know this is the truth. The final words, are final, and I will respect this rule, as I am truly wishing I might return and know more about the different layers of the floors, each one perhaps offering, experiences beyond my experience.  Standing on the upstairs landing, I hear footsteps outside the front door approaching, and I realize it must be Ismara returning from work. I close my diary and return to my room to hide it carefully. I know with her, it is not necessary to lock it up, just if it comes up, tell her it is private, as we have worked out a code for that, so she will understand and respect it. I share everything with her usually, well almost everything but…this…this world..I can not and I will not jeopardize being locked out  forever, because I could not obey the one rule asked of me.

to be continued…

Karima Hoisan
April 9, 2011
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