Nightmare Trespass

PROLOGUE

She was standing in her bedroom, aware that she had to both clean and organize it better. Funny how it was easier to clean than organize. A lot of things refused to find their proper place, it always seemed, despite her best intentions. They created a miniature chaos in more than one area.

Her mind never shut down. She struggled to focus at times. 

The disorder was not as bad as she’d grown up with, by a long shot. Still, she needed more places to be able to rest her eyes in the room. She needed peace, as sixtyish as that sounded. Her thoughts were wobbling and she kept trying to calm them.

One thing to keep in mind is that there were two layers of chaos. The first was the most recent, and the easiest, the most likely to be resolved. A garment tossed on bed or chair. A bag whose contents needed putting away, hanging from the bedroom door. Those were not the big issue.

The second layer was more complicated because it meant rethinking where things were, meant shifting the contents of drawers and bookshelves. Things in her life had changed since she’d deposited the items in their places. Some had been carefully placed, others had gravitated to an empty spot where they fit.

Hidden away, things and their relationship with their owner inevitably change. This was definitely her case.

While standing in the room, she began to ask herself what she was looking at (clutter) and what she was looking for (peace). The following is an approximation of what occurred.

PART 1

You use the clutter, which you dislike immensely, to hide what you really need to address. 

Part of the problem you seem to have is being in a hurry a lot of the time. A big hurry.

In a hurry to get things done.

To do too many things.

To do them in too little time.

Trying to do them well, you are hit and miss. Trying, often failing, then very successful, but only at some. You are more willing to accept that now than you were years ago. That doesn’t mean you like it.

Part of the problem is also that you don’t want to do certain things. You are aware of this but don’t know how to confront your avoidance behavior. You should have done that years ago. When you feel adverse to something, your avoidance skills are exceptionally good.

You wish you were different, had been different. Were better. It was always worth the risk. Now you need to resolve this. Some people have suggested you try the Swedish death cleaning method. While you dislike the term and would like to rename it, you might give the technique a whirl. Nice and easy, though, because this habit has clung to you your whole life.

What things do you fear doing, though? And why are they so uncomfortable? Pretty simple questions. No answers. Yet.

What are you afraid will happen to you? Why do you think something will? Have you done something wrong for which you should be punished? Is your conscience bothering you? This is only about putting things away and on shelves, not a safari.

What amount of pain can be inflicted by guilt? What is wrong with you? Don’t you feel up to the task? Straightening up is not intellectually demanding, yet you keep backing off as if your can’t get your head around it. What are you lacking? Is there a way to do it that you should have been taught?

True, you were never taught how to do it. You feel incompetent. 

Is an inferiority complex the root of so much evil?

Or is the spectrum the reason for the Procrastination (capital P) or is it another diagnosis that starts with an A? 

Why do we have so many labels for how the mind works, how it moves along the paths of memory’s future?

PART 2 

I have too many things in my life and my head.

Why too many? Mom? Dad? Was I always like this? Did I always drift among my things and the other things in the house as if watching from another reality? Was something else more important? What was wrong with me that nobody noticed? I kind of feel now like I was a female version of Humpty Dumpty and all the queen’s horses and all the queen’s men and women never could put me back together again. I haven’t given up, though. I keep trying.

Trying to please, is that what I’m trying to do still? Because you both tried, and that was something I watched you both do.

Did you try to please the same person? For the same reasons?

Mom and Dad can only speak to me now through the books from back then which are the books here now but I’m trying to conceal with clutter.

I am torn - funny word - between books and the other texts and textiles in my life. There are too many of each and I know the joy of being in a space that is flat-surfaced, not webbing clinging to me.

That makes me so weary.

What was that lesson I learned from parents? From watching and hearing them?

Punish thyself as thou wouldst punish others?

I really just need to get this room more in order, not overthink things…

PART 3

Why do I keep dreaming about the shabby, cluttered home of my childhood? Rambling, slant-floored, shrouded in past lives, most of which lives I never knew. Still, I was aware that they too inhabited the rooms and hallways.

Why do I sneak in when I am in these dreams, since the house is no longer mine? When Mom died, I inherited it, but couldn’t keep it up nor did I want to. It was too full of stuff. It was too far away to ever live there again. Plus, there was far too much going on inside it even when there was no human presence. The house was like velcro in that sense.

I sold it for no profit as soon as I could. There was no profit possible. That door needed to be shut forever. Locked, so the contents wouldn’t come rushing after me. (As it was, some actually did… )

Why do I end up in the deepest parts when my pesadelos take me there? That is what I really need to know. Attic, cellar (we never called it a basement because it really was a cellar)… the worst parts of the house, for different reasons. I’d rather not go over those, never did care for them, but I keep returning. It’s driving me mad and I’m afraid.

Yet I always need to go back because I have left some valuable things behind. That is what I dream. My need to retrieve those things, their pull on me, is so strong that I transgress, I overlook and overstep the law. I need to get in and need to remove what still belongs to me. It belongs to me.

Why is everything I need located in those scary parts, though? Hidden, jumbled, impossible to sort out.

What am I trying to retrieve, like an archaeologist? In my own house, from among my own things? If they are so important, why have I waited so long to come get them and come so unequipped to haul them away, for there are so many?

Are the things good or bad, or both? I should know that and not bother if they are bad. Or maybe there are incriminating things that I want to take out and burn. Or it might even be for the thrill of cleaning those passages, freeing them up for use by somebody. A stranger. Who shouldn’t be there.

I like it when things are clean, but I don’t usually like to clean and am not good at it. I would really like to know how to clean well.

What are these things that I crave to retrieve and risk so much trying to do it (in my pesadelos, I mean)? 

Books, frequently, or paper with writing on it. History. Knowledge. Things that matter, that are interesting. I want them all, even if I’d forgotten I had them. I have no place to put them, but in my dream the urge to hold on to them is too strong to resist. This is not making a lot of sense, yet.

You were brought up to believe in knowledge, education, learning. It was your most important goal, the one they had taught you.

You were never taught about dirt or clutter when growing up surrounded by the house and its former lives. You can’t clean old. You can’t unclutter rummage sale furnishings. You might have liked the grunge, unconsciously. It was all you knew. It was also cheaper than new. You never had new to live in. You learned to feel embarrassed. Nobody else had floors that slanted so much, were so full of splinters.

You thought about other things: the kitchen cupboards that didn’t shut easily but had amazing old locks on them; the back porch, high but never painted in a hundred years; the wainscoting on the amazing cupboard that had doors on both sides and held cut glass and porcelain that resided in it like a museum. 

So many things stored away and never seen again. You knew they were there because Mom had told you, but you never asked questions. There was room to spare and they mouldered in peace, as if in their graves. If removed, they might shatter. Placeholders. Your mother had put them there for her mother.

Despite not being good at cleaning, I was always trying to please in other ways, like you had tried. All the while feeling like a failure.

————

Maybe trying to please is a bad thing. You see it with your own daughter right now. It makes her mad when you try to please her. She prickles and runs.

————-

While I am in the house during the pesadelos I keep having, trying to be secretive and contemplative, someone arrives and catches me there. I know I have to act fast although the way to do that is not clear and for this reason I hesitate, turning one way, then another. I run, often up and down creaky stairs. In these dreams, I have to. There are odd steps in odd places, too. I’m afraid; I know I have trespassed. Or have I?

Trespass? What does that mean? To pass over, go beyond, yes, but there’s more to the word than its Old French origin.

The last time I had a nightmare some it included a part where some college students came and were helping me remove beloved items to street. Then new owners arrived and it became life and death decision time. I have no idea why or how I knew they were college students.

My life thinking, if you can call it that, resembles a tunnel book to me right now. I am being shoved into passageways that get narrower and narrower. Not like crypts, but close.

I need to make another tunnel book. I want it to be better than the one I made a few years ago on scenes from Portugal. Export my fears. Guess that’s what I’m trying to do. Make my own tunnel, in the form of a book, and it won’t be scary then. Or make a book shaped like a tunnel but is only a piece of art or a child’s pastime. 

Rework the darkness, in other words.

I should tell you that I have claustrophobia and hate tunnels. I also hate being underwater, where I can’t breathe.

PART 4

If in my pesadelos  (I like the Galician-Portuguese word for nightmare better than the English) there are always tunnel-like spaces I end up in, that is significant. Think about it. Being drawn to confined spaces when you’re claustrophobic. What am I wishing for?

I definitely need to make peace with these hidden parts before it’s too late. They hold treasures, can’t be truly dangerous. I know this, but cannot accept it. 

Only claim things if they are truly yours, though. Leave everything else behind.

Do not be afraid to weave together elements from other sources and times. You do not have to choose one over the other. Just love - odd word - them both. Do not hide one away out of misguided thinking.

Make it a journey back in recent time, like urban archaeology. Read yourself in your own gaze as you review items and put them aside. Swedish style. It is not a nightmare!

Note: Stephen King’s newest novel, Fairy Tale, seems like my model for thus cleansing. And he said he wrote it because he wanted to write something that made him happy. It is making me happy too as I think about my odysseys to my childhood home. Maybe I can see it all as a rite of passage or whatever they call it. 

Childhood memories are still a minefield. I don’t know if I’m up to this.

Layers of intertexts, palimpsests, threads. Build, do bricolage, collage, revive. Make bowers with the vines of the past, drape them in the open air and don’t run away. So much down every hall, behind doors that closely badly. Use every material, every technique, as you see fit.

Build with things, build with words. 

Use the dark for better things, put it to good use. Maybe it can help your thinking. Thinking in a different way, coming to understand. Use the sun and openness after the darker journey in order to fully appreciate what you’ve learned. Yes, I see how this is beginning to sound like one of your classroom lectures.

Class was one cause of the pleasing disease (for Dad). Religion was the other (for Mom). Neither was successful at healing, and then there’s me. 

This bedroom is still waiting.

EPILOGUE

Is there a moral to this story? A lesson to be learned? Is punishment deserved? Not necessarily. Keep it simple.

Put everything away immediately.

At least that’s a start. After all, you need to follow your dream, don’t you? 

No matter what the cost.