The Average Length of a Dream

I once asked her what takes her so long in the shower. I imagined her preening over each and every dread, slowly soaping and lathering to the root each ophidian extension, then the gradual ritualistic rinse.

“I was reading Heidi’s shampoo bottle. There was a trivia question on the back. What is the average length of a dream, it said.” Without even giving me a second to consider an answer, she continued: “The answer was on the Conditioner bottle: 3 seconds. Do you think that’s cause of people like me – the ones who never dream?”

She never gave anyone any time to reply to her questions. Nearly every question she ever asked was rhetorical. She didn’t call upon others to figure things out for her; she’d answer them herself or live with not knowing. She hated the movie “Everything is Illuminated” but loved the book.

It didn’t surprise me that she doesn’t dream. I asked her if she would sit in front of me on the couch, let me resurrect all my thoughts and impressions of her as she read through her letters from friends back in New Paltz. She said, “Whatever” with a whimsical intonation.

The frailer hair snaps in the sun. Breaks sewn together with beige thread and hidden by glass beads and beeswax goo. Everytime the top frizzes, she envelops it with oversized knitted purple hat.
Cleaning dishes, she smiles and her eyes widen like an owl on watch. She gets mad that we never notice her notes, attached to the hanging fruit bowl above the sink.
Her movements are slow and controlled – deliberate, every step.
Thin face, crisp apple shaped, sunk under the eyes and bruised colored (maybe lack of meat? She needs protein.) Pale with an oriental touch; maybe just her demeanor.

She eats kale, conji, rice pilaf and squash, sometimes Earth Balance butter, on a glutton-free waffle just to have a palette. Her actual palette (paint and texture glue) has mounds of one-toned hues as if she never mixed a tube in her life. The kind who keeps peas from her potatoes on her dinner plate. Once thought the cleaning juice from mopping the kitchen tiles caused her violent weekend sickness, dry-heaving and tired on the orange velour sofa, yet still lighting up her oney twice an hour.

Keeps her weed in an artichoke jar in the drawer below the fish tank. Says “Call me!” instead of “yes” for affirmation. She’ll hug you when she sees you if she loves you. But selective as she is, she lets an old enemy cuddle up sometimes on a lonely Saturday night. I bet her eyebrows look like art from close up; thin curves of eyelash hair, contradicting dreads. I image them to be as the punk cabaret chick from the Dresden Dolls: all scrawl and secrecy behind.

She is simple and does not live her life in comparison with others. She is not more or less of anything than any of us, just who she is and content. Content in a not stressed sort of way.

She’s reading up on Narcissism and narcolepsy lately. Wonder if she flips through the encyclopedias and points and masters, slowly over the years.

Getting into Kirtan and crock pots, getting out of afghan-over-the-legs in a rocking chair pulp novels and into lost in the back of the bookstore obscures.

A gardener, a hummer, an upright bike rider, a half way up the mountain stroller, a grandma jogger, a Blanding Utah ukulele playing folk singer, kiwi masseuse who hates getting massages. She believes in Bikhram. She’s pierced in places mother would rather not know about. She’s cold, always cold – her hands, feet, neck… any appendage open to air holds an epidermal chill so she keeps a stock of scarves, gloves, socks and sweaters in her handmade satchel with a variety of buttons and patterns. Hates to drive but doesn’t mind stick shift Datsuns spotted with rust.

Tiny, holy body, clad in organic purple, browns and tans. She calls her rims “mauve, not purple, mauve” and only wears them later at night under the dull ghost lamp that sporadically clicks and shuts off. Brings home fresh basil and raspberries. Bakes apple crisp with sugared pecans and pot chocolate brownies. Cooks anything tempe. She enjoys the over-kill on chocolate in New York Super Fudge, hates the white planks. Her cat, Isis, likes ice cream just as much as comfort food on a weekday. Isis is 7, overweight with a tumor in her tail and never been to the vet. She believes in Reiki and a mental capacity to heal and implements this on her cat. She hates being touched. Believes in a previous life she was speared diagonally through her chest and the pain stays at the exit point. Says she was the ice man. Now she’s so sensitive to it, hates touch all over.

Her small rock waterfall trickles through the tympanum hallways of the house, nag champa in a similar fashion, stuck in corners of the kitchen and living room.
Says she’s a yoga instructor and I’ve seen her matt and pilates ball but never seen her stretch once or pose. Recently quit being a vegetarian after 13 years. Ate a junk burger and puked it up the next morning. Reverted back to conji and coffee, water and squash bean burritos.

Hangs her laundry on a line in the basement instead of using the ‘heat machine’, as she called it once when speaking of her scare that Isis might get caught in it while it is on. Hates winter, snow and ice. Loves tamales and men in overalls. She’s in love with a married man who used to be a florist, now a drummer in a reggae band. He lives in New York City and she hates cities. Hates any place permanent. Wants to move back to New Zealand, chant all day, sleep in late and stretch, she says.