July 3, 2003
Dawn and Dusk
The coils of the toaster glow with a strange menace, bright, red. Dangerous red, though it is only a toaster, and what harm has ever, could ever, come from a toaster?
There is the grit of salt in my mouth as I chew an onion bagel, tough, butter smeared. A cheap thrill, breakfast, when it is too early to have his company, and I am sitting, alone, in the one chair in his eat-in kitchen as he sleeps, dreaming.
As a kid I dreamt about my parents' closet. Our visible storage, withered oak paneling, a throwback, outdated and ill kept, like the rest of the house.
In my dream I'd go crawling over the extra blankets and sleeping bags (still ripe with smoke and earth, the memories of campfires blazing to staunch the threat of the night; glowering with the coming of the day and the relinquish of power), wedging myself between the stacks of boxes, the jingle of Christmas ornaments when this one was disturbed, the thud of magazines and photo albums with that.
Beyond. There was more to the closet than could be possible, but no mythical Narnia lay within, no hapless Lucy was I, lost in the wardrobe. There was simply more, more boxes, more blankets, piles of clothes, of toys, exercise equipment, as though all the closets of the world were somehow accessed within that of my parents, all the bounty of the worlds' junk, all of that which people keep when they should just throw it away; gathering dust in this, my parents' closet.
Younger still, I'd dream of Hollywood-esque monsters making a home within: Dracula, widow's peak more prominent than absolutely necessary; the Wolfman, the tatters of a man's clothes, a man's spirit, hanging on his frame; the Mummy, the most frightening of all, for who knew what horrors lingered underneath of those bandages?
Mysterious and sinister. It can be both, now, though some would say I am too old for dreaming. At night I am menaced by shadows, and I am suddenly six again, trembling. Though, my six-year-old self did not fear the dark, rather, she relished it for all the potential for thought, the conversation of soul, that it offered her.
I grew older, and wiser, and shed the reason and logic of a rather serious, sour faced young girl. Only now am I capable of realizing the full potential of the night, and this is why I fear it.
astera at 12:00 p.m.