The Performance

 

Assignment: Have you ever had the sensation that you were "asleep with eyes wide open", either in its literal sense or its metaphorical one?  If yes, this week share with us a piece about that experience.

I’ve kept this story inside for so long. I’ve told only a few close family members and friends about it before, but for some reason I’ve never written it down, perhaps out of fear that I would trigger my subconscious and cause it to happen again. I’ve been afraid that I would bring my sleep paralysis experience back to reality, conjuring it from the recesses of my mind where it has been stored for years.

When I was 17 years old on a breezy May night in 2016, I finally drifted off to sleep after a long day of high school classes, homework, and typical teenage stress. My grades, friends, books, and prom occupied most of my mind at the time. I was anxious about graduation and the new chapter of my life that I was going to begin in college. But regardless of how busy my day was or how nervous I was about the unknown future, I always fell into a deep, uninterrupted sleep at night. Whereas most of my family struggles with insomnia, I deal with the opposite issue: sleeping too much and too late. After a busy day, I can shut my eyes to the world at 11pm and drift off into slumber within ten minutes by picturing fake scenarios in my head and making mental lists of everything I have to do the next day. And so with the warm breeze flowing in through my bedroom window and the long day behind me, I fell into a deep sleep.

That’s when I saw her standing in the doorway to my room.

She was in a mid-length red dress, the kind that housewives and secretaries in the fifties would have worn on a warm summer day to the Sunday afternoon block party. Her features were blurred, and I couldn’t focus on them enough to get a clear image of her face. Her hair was brown, and she had a red piece of cloth tied around her head like a headband to keep her long hair off her face. She looked as if she was in her thirties.

I was looking at an unknown woman in the doorway of my bedroom in the middle of the night. She was just standing there, and it was as if she was looking through me. She didn’t take any particular notice of me at first, and she didn’t say anything. She didn’t look threatening at all. But it wasn’t her appearance that riled up fear inside of me. It was the energy that surrounded her. Her features started to change, and she began to look worried. Soon her face warped into a look of anger. I was laying on my right side looking straight at her, and I knew I had to get out of bed and out of my room. My instinct told me to wake my parents, as they were right in the next bedroom.

I was frozen in place. My arms and legs wouldn’t move, even though my mind was begging them to work. Thoughts were running through my head telling me to get up, get out of the room. My instinct was telling me I was in danger somehow, but my body was not complying. My fight or flight failed at this moment, a first in my lifetime. I was used to my fight or flight being in overdrive.

On my left side, I felt a dark presence. It appeared as a shadow in the corner of my eye, and I could not make out any identifying features. Again, it was the energy this figure gave off that made me shake with fear. It growled in my left ear, and I could feel its breath on my face. Still, it never touched me.

Then, an electric current began to course through my body - or at least that’s what it felt like. Since I still wasn’t aware that this was sleep paralysis, I thought that I was having a seizure. My entire body felt like it was tingling, and I felt myself shaking all over uncontrollably.

Soaked in sweat, I attempted to scream out for help. Nothing came out of my mouth, but in my head I was trying so hard. Suddenly, the woman in red points at my bed where I lay, frozen. On my right, an infant in a diaper is sitting up on the bed right next to me. I have no idea who this child is, but I can tell that she must be the woman’s. The baby rolled over onto her stomach, and she was about to fall onto the floor. The woman pointed as if telling me to grab the baby, but I simply couldn’t. I had a strong urge to keep this baby safe, but I lay there with no choice but to watch this child fall and injure herself. Why wasn’t this woman in red moving and attempting to grab her child?

The dark figure to my left growled in my ear, and a pressure sat on my chest. It was as if this thing was mad at me for not grabbing the baby. At the time, I was trying to figure out what this shadow figure was. What was even happening? Was my house haunted, and there was a demon in my room? I’ve always believed in the paranormal, but I had never experienced anything myself. Or was this a nightmare? It could be, but it felt too real, as if I was lying in bed awake. Or maybe, could I have died in my sleep from an unknown illness, and my soul was stuck in my body and trying to get out?

And then I gasped. I sat up suddenly in bed, and there was no one in the room. The darkness surrounded me, and the television light emitted a white glow throughout the room. My father’s usual snore cut through the chatter of crickets outside, and I felt my heartbeat pulsing in my chest.

“Dad!” I screamed. Finally, my voice worked. I ran to my parents room, where I saw my dad already sitting up. He heard my scream, meaning that I wasn’t still paralyzed and imagining all of this.

This was a nightmare, but not a typical one. I was awake, watching a nightmare play out in my room as if I was watching a show at the theater. I was a member of the audience who was witnessing everything right in front of me, but I wasn’t allowed to get up out of my seat or yell at the actors - even if they were making me fear for my life. This was a sick, twisted play that truly kept me glued to my seat, prompting me to question my sanity and the nature of sleep for years to come.

Lexi

Friendship

 

I had a friend at one time who was so very dear to me. Her name was Mary. Since childhood we shared many happy memories together. However, as we grew older, life took us in different direction and lost touch. I tried to find Mary on social media and through mutual friend but I had no luck. It was a dead end at every turn.

One night I had a vivid dream and I saw Mary sitting in a park, there was Mary right in from of me. I was overjoyed to see my friend and we hugged and talked for hours. Mary told me that she had been living in England for many years and now she is back.

When I woke up from the dream I felt mixed emotions. It was a prophecy dream but I still missed Mary.

Over the next few days I tried again to search for Mary on social media and through mutual friends.

Then I decided to go to the park in my dream looking for clues. I walked around a thought I saw Mary but it was not her. I felt deflated and about to give up.

Just as I was about to leave the part  I heard someone calling my name. It was Mary. She was walking her dog and spotted me. We hugged and talked for hours just like the dream.

Mary told me she had been traveling for work and changed all her contact information.

I felt so grateful and happy and relieved to have found Mary, we promised to stay in touch and not let life get in the way of our friendship again.

Georgia

Bookshop Memories

 

The Strand Bookstore is an old blanket that one wraps oneself in when in need of some comforting private quiet time. A used bookstores is a literary oasis in a desert of rude uncivilized behavior, noise, pollution, and traffic in the entropy of modern civilization. An old bookstore is always welcoming and accepting without the high-pressure salesmen looking for commissions that one would find in its obnoxious cousin, the used car dealership. The underpaid NYU students employed at the store would rather be left alone to their own thoughts if given the choice but are always helpful and courteous if their assistance is requested.

            My favorite bookstore has always been the Strand at 828 Broadway and 12th St. I was first introduced to it by my friend Vincent who was a history major at Queens college in the nineteen seventies and was looking for an obscure out of print book on Bismarck’s personal letters to his mistress, for a paper he was writing on the Prussian- German nineteenth century leader. My friend had already visited the Main Library at 42^nd St., without any luck.

            Emerging from the subway at Union Square and walking south past old antique shops and we came upon the old bookstore surrounded by many mobile book carts with miscellaneous volumes of every shape and size on every subject imaginable. A sign on the side of each cart said either $0.50 or $1.

            We entered the store with tables full of books and books covering the walls like wallpaper from floor to ceiling as far as the eye could see. At the information desk we asked for the volume, and we’re told to walk down the stairs to the sub-sub basement where Mr. Miller would help us. The old staircase groaned and moaned creaking with each step as we descended deeper and deeper into the bowels of the old building passing other book departments on the way and inhaling the musky, dusty scents.

            Upon arrival we beheld the sight of endless piles of books of every size and shape stacked precariously, some defying gravity in a maze of dusty, musky aisles wandering away in curiously unpredictable alleyways, like walking through Collier’s Mansion. Fluorescent lights hung from high above at haphazard angles lighting the way.Old decrepit cardboard signs hung on wires directed the visitor to various historical subjects.

Vinny called out, “Mr. Miller are you here?”

“Back here, walk forward and to your left and follow my voice”.

Mr. Miller directed us, and we followed his voice until we reached the clearing where a large expansive old wooden oak desk sat covered with piles of history books. Peeking over the piles of books we found Mr. Miller a slight man maybe fifty years of age with coke bottle glasses and a mild bookish demeanor.

“Well, you found me, how can I help you?”said Mr.Miller.

Vincent asked for the book and Mr. Miller thought for a moment.

“I believe we do have it, follow me.”I waited by the desk unsure that my girth would pass through the narrow aisles without incident.Vincent and Mr. Miller disappeared into the literary abyss. After a few minutes they returned. Mr. Miller beamed triumphantly like a conquering hero returning home from a campaign, carrying three copies of the book, one of which was missing its cover. We found out from Mr. Miller that the book had been out of print for over sixty-five years, but the store still had three copies! Vincent picked out the best copy making sure that all the pages were still there, consisting of photos of original letters in Bismarck ‘s hand. We thanked Mr. Miller and began our ascent to the main floor to pay for the book. This store would bestow many treasures over the years and is still in operation today.                                                    

Jim
May 23’

When Surgery was in Session

 

We knew it was coming. The dreaded frog dissection! Mr. Friedman’s announcement that spring day during my junior year was met with a moment of uncomfortable silence. The lone exception was Marcia who immediately objected on moral grounds. Mr. Friedman explained that the frog dissection was a learning experience as well as a high school science tradition. However, his surprise and unease were obvious.

            Marcia was an extremely bright girl and had been Mr. Friedman’s star pupil the entire year. His respect and admiration for this promising young lady was always apparent. I admired her too, but from a distance. Although I had never interacted with her, I easily recognized her intellect and solid grasp of biology.

            Like Marcia I too had reservations about the use of animals for scientific study. Nevertheless, I made an immediate decision that I was going to brave it out and do my utmost best. Throughout high school I felt at home with History and English, but was far less proficient in Math and Science, especially Biology. All those terms such as amino acids, osmosis, and diffusion. Lots of confusion! They were just scattered words to me with no clear meaning or connections. And forget about those structural formulas. I couldn’t tell one from the other.

            In second grade my teacher, Miss Meyer, gave me an E (for Excellent) in science, mainly because I had brought in a toy boat for show-and-tell and spoke in “Secondgradeese” about floatation and propulsion. It was all downhill from there. In the years that followed I bungled my way through science activities and projects, and I was really lost in seventh grade electric shop. For a few years there I was “asleep at the wheel” when it came to science.

            Then, I rediscovered science as a high school Freshman. It was little more than a science appreciation class. Everyone passed with flying colors just by having good attendance and showing interest. My sophomore year started well with Chemistry thanks in part to my wonderful lab coat wearing sweetheart of a teacher, Mrs. Altman, who bore a striking resemblance to Jane Wyatt, the actress from the 1950s T.V. show “Father Knows Best.” Unfortunately for me, Mrs. Altman was not also my LAB teacher. Mine possessed a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality. He was a stand-up comedian one minute and a cold-blooded stiff the next. My dislike of him was cemented and my turn away from Chemistry began the day he humiliated me by tearing up my incomplete LAB homework right in front of my face with my classmates looking on. On the surface I showed no reaction, but deep down inside I was deeply hurt. I had given it my best shot and an incomplete paper was all that I could muster at the time. In fact, things seldom seemed to go as intended whenever I did LAB work. I’d follow directions as best I could and still manage to botch up the experiment. My grades slowly started to slip with Mrs. Altman, as did my command of Chemistry. That is why I decided that day in Biology that I was going to perform the frog dissection and I was going to get it right.

            A few days after his initial announcement, Mr. Friedman reminded us once again of the upcoming frog dissection. He probably hoped that by this time Marcia would have changed her mind. No such luck. He explained how the use of animals had contributed to many breakthroughs in medicine. Marcia still wouldn’t budge. Mr. Friedman was clearly disappointed, but he had to respect her decision and move on.

            On the day before the big event Marcia bombarded Mr. Friedman with a series of last- minute questions. Would the frogs be dead or alive? Were they alive when they were brought to school? Would the students have to kill them? Would they suffer? With each question Mr. Friedman paused and gave an honest answer. He then described the quick, yet gruesome procedure in which the frogs were euthanized. Any chance that Marcia would have a change of heart ended at that moment. Mr. Friedman’s strategy of total honesty had not succeeded.

 

            For the frog dissection each student was paired with a classmate. My partner was Rodney, like me a mediocre Biology student- average at best. Rodney and I had been classmates back in third grade at P.S. 122 when schools were integrated through busing. He rode the school bus from the Queensbridge Housing Project in Long Island City while I walked to school from Marine Terrace apartments right there in Astoria. Back then Rodney had been a bit of a class clown with a loud bellowing laugh. By high school he had mellowed and matured, and now spoke with a subdued baritone voice that reminded me of Barry White, the early disco era soul singer, songwriter, musician. Our pairing proved to be a perfect match.

            With Marcia observing, the class received dissecting and safety tools. We pinned our frogs’ limbs to the examination pans and performed a visual exam under Mr. Friedman’s direction. Using the scalpel, Rodney performed the initial incision in the frog’s lower abdomen between its hind legs. I completed the task with surgical scissors to form an “I” pattern. With complete concentration we carefully pulled back and secured the camouflage skin and peritoneum, a spider-web like membrane. Like highly trained medical school professors we identified the major internal organs. Rodney provided the real time narrative in his cool calm Barry White baritone voice, minus the Love Unlimited Orchestra.

            Rodney and I then performed the actual dissection. Maintaining our laser beam focus we took turns delicately cutting and extracting the noddle-like fat bodies, the easy to locate brown liver, and the small reddish three ventricle heart. Then, with the precise precision of top-notch surgeons we used our surgical scissors and tweezers to cut and remove the stomach, small intestine, and harder to pinpoint bean shaped kidneys. Having missed an earlier clue, the frog’s broad fingers, I concluded that our specimen was a male, based on the absence of eggs. Rodney concurred. I assume that we completed a LAB report which most likely entailed labeling a frog diagram, thus earning us a decent grade. The surgery was a success!

My success that day was a well needed confidence booster that lifted my spirits at a crucial moment. It was around this time that my mother, who had not been feeling well, became seriously ill with leukemia. The next twelve months were painful and disorienting. My mother did not live to see me graduate.

 

Fast Forward about forty-five years. I was in my final year as a teacher and was now substituting at P.S. 122, my elementary school alma mater. On one occasion I filled in for a science teacher in the middle of a biology unit with gifted eighth graders. Having no advance preparation, I miraculously explained with confidence the various organelles and life processes of plant and animal cells, some of the same terms and concepts I had once struggled with. I was amazed at my own command of the subject matter.  It was magical! And to top it all off the principal came in to observe me. There I was standing tall teaching biology with a sense of authority while giddily laughing to myself. The whole scene just struck me as funny.

I sometimes wonder what became of Mr. Friedman, Marcia, and especially Rodney.    Mr. Friedman may still be with us. He was a relatively young teacher at the time. I would love to share this story with them- my recollection of when surgery was in session.   

Steve T.

My First Peek

 

As I have mentioned in my other posts, there has been a great deal of spiritual exploration in my life but it has always been the type of exploration that required genuine immersion and not just intellectual curiosity. 

During 1973-1974 in NYC, there was a growing interest in Sufism in my circle of friends/seekers. Idries Shah, the Grand Shiek of the Sufis and the eldest son of the Nawab (the Mohammed equivalent to a maharaja) had been making appearances in the city and had just published a beautiful book explaining some of the teachings of this very esoteric school. This man, although born in the Himalayas, lived in London so they was no language barrier. I was lucky enough to attend some of his charismatic lectures and was impressed. I was intrigued by one comment in particular, “The problem of the would-be Sufi is in recognizing his teacher, because he is not yet sufficiently refined to know who he may be”. 

A friend had mentioned there was a private Sufi group in Greenwich Village that occasionally would allow outsiders to join in their activities one night per week. Luckily, I was able to connect with someone that got me in. 

Around 7pm, I entered the reception area. There were beautiful Persian rugs everywhere people drinking small volatile cups of coffee. Most of the men seemed to be of Turkish descent and were nonstop smoking these handmade filter-less cigarettes. The air was thick with this smoke. The women were covered in middle eastern garb and kept themselves separate from the men.  There were 4 other outsiders with me, all in their early twenties like me. There was no discernible leader of the group that I could tell. 

At 8pm, we entered into the adjoining room which was even more ornate. All of the men gathered in the room sitting in a wide circle with the women staying to one side of the circle. Their participation felt as if on felt a bit like a cheerleading section. I was asked to join the circle. Since I had no idea what I was in for,  it was a bit intimidating but the voice inside of me said, “just go with it!”.

There some men with drums that started the steady beat soon followed by chanting in Arabic. First softly then this gradual crescendo. Everyone and everything seemed to be immersed in this hypnotic rhythm. It continued to grow and grow in intensity. Then we came to our feet and the men wrapped our arms around one another and we started to sway as if we were one being. The group was the embodiment in that moment of no separation. It evolved into a beautiful dance that one just gets lost in. 

There was no longer any practitioner/outsider conflict. It reminded me of being in the rhythmic trance that Rumi’s whirling dervishes seemed to embody. 

I’ll never forget their willingness to share all of this with me and how it has stayed with me all these years. It would be a few years more before I could recognize who my teacher would be.

Robert 

THE MET GALA

 

Well, another Met Gala has come and gone and once again I have been overlooked!  I knew by early April when my Save The Date had not come in the mail that my attendance was precarious. This is not the first time I have been slighted leading to the obvious conclusion that Anna Wintour was not given my letter of application as she would certainly have rubber- stamped its approval. Oh yes, and there was the time I saw her on the elevator at the Metropolitan surrounded by her security team where I clearly stated my desire to attend the Gala and she with her dark round signature sunglasses stood there as if frozen, immobile, like Lot’s wife, irresponsive to my pleas, muttering something rather salty under her breath!

            I had my outfit all picked out. I would be wearing my best pair of Carhartt overalls with my signature 4-inch personalized cuffs suitable for the storage of valuables in bad neighborhoods, and a stunning Duluth Trading flannel shirt that would have made any of the Kardashians weak in the knees! I must say it is amazing what they can do with flannel these days, however I digress, my look would have been sealed with a pair of my best highly polished steel toe GI boots! I would have been ready for any questions by the current generation of interviews, being resplendent and dazzling in my Haute Couture!

            The forty-thousand -dollar plate fee would not have been an issue as I had a beautiful melamine plate as well as a Godfather hero from a local delicatessen discreetly stored in my backpack. Now honestly, can you tell me that Lady Gaga would not have preferred splitting my hero to frog legs and weak tea?

            Well, I will show them next spring when my signature look will be eagerly displayed on all the most famous runways of Paris! Maybe then they will come to their senses for next year’s Gala…                                                                     

Jim May 23’                                       

 

           

A Walk to the Bookstore

 

As I entered the cozy used book store, the familiar scent of old pages and ink filled my senses. The shelves were stacked high with books of all genres and eras, each with a story waiting to be discovered. I browsed the shelves, running my fingers over the spines of the books, searching for my next literary adventure.

And then I saw it - a book that seemed to be calling out to me. It was an old, leather-bound tome with a faded title on the cover. As I pulled it off the shelf, I noticed that the pages were yellowed with age, but the words were still legible.

As I started to read, I found myself entranced by the author's words. Every sentence seemed to be written just for me, as if the author had somehow known my deepest thoughts and feelings. The characters were relatable, the plot was captivating, and the themes resonated with me on a level that I couldn't explain.

I knew that I had to have this book, which it was meant to be mine. I approached the counter and the owner of the shop smiled at me knowingly.

"That's a great find," she said, as she wrapped the book in brown paper. "It's almost as if it was waiting here just for you."

As I walked out of the store, clutching the package to my chest, I felt a sense of excitement and anticipation. I couldn't wait to dive deeper into the pages of the book, to lose myself in the author's world and to discover what other treasures lay waiting for me in the used book store.

The name of the book is: All I Need To Know I Learned From My Cat by Suzy Becker.

Georgia