Denver and the Recliner

Some things never make any sense. How could our house in Denver be so humid inside that the windows were covered in condensation?  Outside the winter winds howled and snow piled up against our concrete steps. The big plate glass windows that looked out onto the street would flex and rattle in the metal sashes. The winter wind would whistle through the gaps in the frame, leaving a thick trail of ice where the warmth of the room met the bitter cold wind.

When I first moved into this building, there were only three other people living here. Mona had been there the longest. It might have been her mom's place before we all started filling the empty rooms. Mona liked to make lentil soup. Don't ask me why. She was a terrible cook, but someone must have told her once that she made a good lentil soup. It was as flavorless as dishwater. Maybe she was afraid of salt. The rank smell of simmering lentils melted into the deep cobwebs above the kitchen cabinets. I would have married her if she had just found an onion and some garlic to add to the soup... instead the lentils came between us.

There was other stuff too.

Like the chair. The big recliner that took up so much space in the living room that it had to block part of the passage into the kitchen so that there was room for it to lay back. The davenport had probably been left behind by Mona's folks. The textured upholstery made up for being the ugliest charcoal grey. The patterned whorls gave fingers something to do when pondering the meaning of life in an overheated, over-humid house. Tracing the buzzcut fuzz between the thin piping was like reading a roadmap left by a blind surrealist. The patterns didn't go anywhere but there was meaning, somewhere in there. Or it was just old.

Laying in the recliner, I could feel the oppressive humidity soak into the fabrics of the room. Curtains that hung over our large picture window, draped with a languid sag that resembled an overgrown bath towel. That locker-room funk was there too. Mingled with the ever present smell of lentils having been cooked into mush. No amount of cumin was going to save these scorched lentils. Their mush was scorched into the pan, week after week. The Brillo pad had done nothing to remove the charred scarring, instead leaving newer, deeper scars for the burned beans to dig into.

I felt bad for Mona. She wasn't a bad roommate. I just wish her membership to the co-op had been revoked.

I was thinking about the damp wet-sock smell that permeated our apartment on a long autumn afternoon. The fading light was trying to punch its way through our dirty picture window. The drapes held a momentary magical glow, like a saint dressed in a giant burgundy bathrobe. As the sun set further, the glow shifted and the shadows looked for places to settle in for the night.

As the lights in our apartment began to struggle against the thick dark, I found myself surprised by a new smell. Coming at me sideways, the smell was rank. For a moment I was pretty sure something had died. I hoped that the overpowering stench was coming from someone finally taking out the garbage. There was no one in the apartment with me. Just me, laying on the recliner, television on.... And the lentils simmering on and on.

Outside, the chill night air turned bitter and the winds picked up. Before long the howling winds started to rattle the big window. Hearing the high pitched screech of the autumn storm making its way through the tiny cracks in the window frame made the room feel suddenly cold. It wasn't long before the ice started to form along the bottom edge of the picture window. Soon the frost was creeping up the glass and playing checkers with the dust streaks and the cobwebs. No amount of cleaning could get the rime of filth off the window.

Bit by bit, the night pulled me further into that thick space between relaxed and dead-sleep. The television had given up on the news and had moved onto meaningless sitcoms that rhymed with the Toyota commercials that ran endlessly. By the time I was ready to roll myself into a ball in hopes of sliding into a deep sleep, the lights in the room had surrendered to the wet dark. More than anything else, I wanted to get up and pee before I fell too deep into sleep.

I rolled over, using the arm of the recliner to pull myself face up again. The foul stench smacked me in the face again. I knew it wasn't garbage. It wasn't the lentils this time either. It smelled like someone had opened a septic tank inside our living room.

Sitting upright, as much as I was able to, I found the source of the smell. The surgery had failed. The smell was my ostomy. The ostomy that saved my life. The colostomy that was just like my Aunt Lou.  The shock and the fear rolled over me with wave after wave of nausea. Aunt Lou standing in the kitchen, mumbling something about making goulash for Eddie and the kids. The sound of her slapping cards over and over in succession as she played solitaire. But she wasn't there. The room was empty. The lentils were gone from the stove. Mona was busy trying to change my sheets after having soaked them for the third time tonight. She wanted to apologize for the cold air as she ran a sponge over my feverish forehead, but I could only hear broken bits about her son's time in the Navy. The fan in the room was pointed directly at the foot of my bed. The horrible heat was breaking as I slowly felt a calm chill settle into my body. Mona turned off the television and told me one more story about her son getting his first tattoo for crossing the equator. I held onto the soft blankets, as much as I could as the room folded itself into a rough envelope and sealed itself shut. The shrill incessant beeping couldn't overpower the rough winds, still bashing the window. Slowly, sleep hugged me and I let go.

Struggling with Introductions

One of the things I struggle with when it comes to these coma dreams is how much of a preface to give folks. Do I try to lay out the backstory? Do I just jump into the story midstream the same way I fell into it when I was in the coma? Do I try to make it make sense? Or do I just lay it all out there and let folks find their way through the tangle?

Let me pose another question: who are you if you had no day before today? I am not talking amnesia. I am talking about waking up, and it is DAY 1. No past, no memory of places other than there, right then. Without a past, without knowing where we come from, without having all of that backstory, what defines who we are? This may sound like an esoteric mind-exercise... but for me it was the reality of the coma.

Each time I woke up in a different place it was Day 1. No part of me knew "Alex, who was born in Miami, who is sick in the hospital..." and so on. In a few instances, I woke up without a strong understanding of language, as though speech wasn't enabled. Without hearing my own voice, sometimes for weeks... time stretched in strange ways. What was more difficult were the places I found myself in the coma where I was both unable to speak and where there was either no sound, or precious little. That isolation robbed me of the passing of time... and that clock is a big part of what helps us define ourselves. Is it daytime? Is it time for sleep? Some would argue that you sleep when you're tired and wake when you're not. It isn't that simple. Just ask someone who has spent more than a night or two in the hospital. Time becomes a very strange concept very quickly. Add the coma with all of the drugs and the time dilation... and I found myself wandering through a maze of time that looped back on itself or stalled against a wall, bunching up like a conveyor belt jammed with boxes falling to the floor.

Let this tiny blurb act as a preface... or as a signpost. Something to indicate a change in direction. Fifty two miles to the next exit. No rest stops.

Burning from the Inside

The cool night breeze that spilled through the vents in the camper trailer was just enough to take the edge off the last remnants of the day's heat. The aluminum trailer walls were still warm to the touch. All day through the hundreds of miles, the trailer got hotter and hotter. Now, the sweet wind that trickled in was so welcome. 

The hardest part was trying to decide if rolling over was worth the slippery unsticking, and repositioning, or would it be too much effort to try to cool off the side that had laid against the sodden mattress? So much pain, so much fatigue. The delerium came in waves like nausea. Even turning my head was too much work. The many bags of overripe potatoes that held me down to the bed made moving almost impossible... until I realized nothing was resting on me except a thin sheet. 

By the time the first recoil of revulsion rolled through me, I was able to make out sounds outside. We had stopped for the night. Judging from the sounds of loose fine gravel underfoot, I guessed probably a parking lot. It wasn't overlong before I could begin to make sense of the strains of music outside. I knew I had to be in Hell since only in Hell would they play modern country music over a cheap PA system just loud enough for it to sound like cats fighting in a two liter soda bottle. It wasn't long before I heard another person walk by. The gravel made sense now. We had to be parked somewhere. The trailer had stopped all the shaking and rolling. We were definitely parked.

When I heard the many throated roars pull into the parking lot, I couldn't quite count the number of motorcycles, but my guess was a good half-dozen. As each biker shut down their ride, and the silence returned, more feet outside my world made me aware of just how thin these walls were. Their exhaust hung too long in the air and was now coming in on the night breeze. Great. The nausea returned and with it, whatever remains of my lunch I had, came right up.

Each passing person sounded so close but no one came to open the door of the camper. Wishful thinking had me praying for someone to stop, perhaps hearing my breathless pleading. My whispers amounted to nothing. I pressed on the walls but even my hardest pounding was but a feather touch on the aluminum sides. I had only enough strength to gag again as I tried to breathe my way through the pain. Blinking hard to push dry-salted tears out in hopes that they might rinse clean the bits of vomit that I couldn't reach before falling back asleep exhausted.
The music outside changed while I slept. By the time I roused, the only sounds were of argument and bravado. My guess was that some of the bikers had done or said something to someone and now were itching for something to get angry with. The violence was palpable. I waited for the sound of breaking glass, of screaming, of fists and leather. 

Instead I was surprised to hear the soft metal hinge of the trailer open. The blast of cold desert night air rushed in with just enough dust to steal away my breath. I coughed twice and tried to open my eyes. Finding them crusted over again and weeping burning hot salt tears, I just wept. When I heard her voice ask how I was doing, I fell. I fell and fell. Over black empty space. As she pressed the cold wet cloth into my eyes, clearing away the debris, I could see the concern and worry across her face. She passed a new, fresh, colder cloth over my brow, running it over my neck, ears, and back over my brow again. Her gaze met mine and we both realized I was awake. 

The trailer was gone. Replaced by small and boisterous Italian restaurant. The heady rush of  rosemary and oregano permeated the air. Olive oil and simmering tomatoes... definitely an Italian restaurant. On the wall in front of me was a small space reserved for waiters to process their orders, write up checks and other miscelania. Just to the left of that was a small alcove that had two small wall plaques made of plaster and painted; one of fruit and one of vegetables. A small way past the waiter's station and slightly to the right was a short set of stairs and a door to the outside.

Standing in the doorway was the most amazing sight I have ever beheld. My wife leaned against the counter, hands on her hips as though surprised I noticed she was there. Refocusing my eyes, I could see our dear friend Mary Ellen standing beside her. They moved closer to me and for the first time in years, I could clearly  make out what was being said. 

Nancy pulled closer and was so happy to see me that she was crying. Fighting everything holding me back, I pulled and pulled but couldn't budge. I opened my mouth and nothing came out. Nancy looked into my eyes and tried to explain what had happened. It didn't make any sense. All I wanted was to hold her, to kiss her, to tell her I wasn't gone. 

In the end, all I could do was cry. The tube in my throat made it impossible for me to say what I so desperately wanted to say. So I cried. Nancy brought her head closer to me and tried to figure out what I was trying to communicate. Standing back up she asked if I was trying to tell her that I loved her. I didn't know tears could be so hot. She knew. It was her birthday. All I could do was cry.

Scenes to Forget

From the top of the stairs to the curb was only five large cement steps. The paint on the iron handrail was chipped and rusted through in places. I was just going to the corner for a snack. Out of the corner of my eye, just peeking over the sidewalk was a candy wrapper. Tootsie-Roll Blow Pop to be specific. Red and blue, crumpled plastic just on the edge of the sidewalk.

When I looked up again I saw the sky above me. The candy wrapper had flown away. People had gathered around me. I couldn't make sense out of what they were saying. Voices seemed over-loud like marbles in a blender. The dirt in my eyes burned. I couldn't find my hands. They were still attached to my arms but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't lift them. I couldn't roll over to figure out why I was laying on the sidewalk.

The person who rolled me over had no idea. I am sure he meant well. I am sure he thought I would be able to get up and move around after getting my bearings. I am sure he had no idea. If he knew, how could he have done this to me?

The first movement tore the sky away from the ground. Everything lurched, hard, to the right. The abrupt direction made no sense. I was on the sidewalk... on my back... now where had the concrete gone?

The next movement spun me like a washing machine on spin cycle, complete with "unbalanced load" alarms beeping. I am sure he had no idea. No idea that once the vomiting started I would have no way to stop. The nausea wasn't inside me anymore. The retching emptying of my stomach carried years of my life into the gutter. I am sure he had no idea that some of my favorite days were lost like that damned lollipop wrapper.

Someone thought that holding my head might stop the hurricane thrashing me around. That might have been me. I could see my hands but they were so dark. Everything felt dark, muddied and hot. When the tsunami in my mind slowed to a dull wave, I looked up to see the concrete stairs were still there. Sounds were still fugitive. I could make out the dull bell across the street as cars pulled into the gas station. Being comforted by a flat tinkling bell was strange reassurance.

Inches of red raw pain allowed me to pull myself half up the stairs. The railing failed me just like my college girlfriend. You had one fucking job. Couldnt even do that. Holding the broken railing in my burned-black hand made no sense. I couldn't lift the railing any further. The stairs had no use for failure. They too, were disappointed in the handrail.

Many bells later I was happy to hold my eyes closed with my less dirty hand. Why the railing had chosen to come to rest on my legs, I couldn't make sense of. It weighed so much more now that it was free from the concrete. With my eyes filled with grime and sourness, I didnt have much reason to trust the story they were playing.

Waiting for more bells...then they were silent. Doors closed and dinner smells opened. Humid air that reeked of lost socks rolled down the sidewalk. As the stench passed I looked up, expecting to see something different. Something less like a gas station, perhaps more like a bus station but stationary all the same. Instead the movie before my eyes was quick and sudden. Playing forwards first, then slowly backwards to make sure I saw every detail.

It is never the first mouthful of vomit that burns. The last bits of puke that you find behind your ears makes you wonder. Then the burning. Then the story plays again. Forwards then backwards.

A young woman and her boyfriend, both of them no more than high school kids. Holding hands and walking quickly through the doorway across the silent street. The door closed with a stiff puff of air that smelled of rubber and oil. Across the street, I could hear their quick steps as they raced upstairs. Unseen stopping on the landing meant so much more the first time I heard it. Forward it made me smile. Of course.

Stolen time in the empty stockroom was filled with sighs and moans. Forward motion and I could almost hear their flaccid conversation. Simple things: tomorrow who would do what. Gentle smile you could hear in the soft spaces between words. The words had smaller feet and took longer steps.

No one told me to hold my breath. The pigeons lied about how awesome the stoop was. And nothing barks as loud as a gun at that range. Flashing twice, like daylight and then gone. The smacking echo against the concrete behind my head told me lies about where I would sleep that night. The young couple poked their heads above the window ledge, looking down onto the street below. Both carried on a silent conversation without their mouths moving. The glass had one job and it too was a failure. Even with the sashes painted shut and years of flies sealing the window shut, there was no way to hold back the screaming.

As the wail fell onto the street below, lights from televisions doubled as porchlights came on. My own movie played out first slowly, forward. Then reversed. Their terror was inhaled in the same breath that sucked their mouths closed. Their eyes however grew bigger. They had seen and couldn't shut out that light. The report and then again. They had seen the fear, the face of confusion, the asking begging visage trying to understand Beowulf... and then deciding that Wheel of Fortune was more than enough to grasp with one grimy hand.

The warmth was a graceful wet towel that wrapped around my neck. With no reason to look, the hot flood around my neck told me the plants wouldn't need to be watered. Thumbs dug into my eyes to stop the constant turning of the street... and still the glass failed to hold the screaming. They had seen. The dirty dust-caked window had one fucking job. More failure.

As I died they watched.

When the street blossomed with loud cars and sirens, the screaming poured into an old Gatorade bottle half filled with urine. Cigarettes shoved into my ears carried the soft reassurance that I would miss the best part of the story. Silence settled with a cold white blanket, almost reaching my feet.

The tape played back slowly, unreeling the taken up slack... first the quiet vanished. Replaced with bright sharp sounds and chased by cars undriving themselves down the street. The scream inhaled the smeared glass torrent. The loud report and repeat. The moans and cries returned with quiet reassuring thumping. Their backward jump through the doorway and onto the sidewalk would have seemed out of place if I hadn't watched it once already. This time the candy wrapper made its way onto the sidewalk before the handrail abandoned hope. Five steps down, up. Wound up again, the story replayed. Each time they watched from the window. Each time their screams etched grooves in the shellac to be played back over and over. And each time, I died as they watched.

Six Years Later, Ten Years Later

To say that life has drawn me away from writing more of these coma dreams would be an understatement.

I recently had dinner with a fantastic writer who encouraged me to get back on the horse and to get these stories written down. That made me dig up my old notes that I had written down on paper, in a notebook I used to carry everywhere in the years immediately following the coma. I had very little ability to remember things... lot of short term memory problems. This notebook went with me to physical therapy 3x a week, enabling me to jot down exercises I should be doing at home to rebuild my body. It also gave me a place to throw out ideas that came floating into my head. This became the place where I tried to list all of the various coma dreams that I lived through.

Last week, nearly ten years after the coma began, I scanned those original notes. These notes are barely legible... but my hope is to tease out the intense stories that I tried to remember through these one-sentence blurbs.

Since trying to read my handwriting is nearly impossible, I aim to write down the bare bones of each idea here, in hopes that it will allow me to circle back and flesh out each story... To give each experience its due. So much of this memory is so intensely personal that I hesitate to write any of it down. There are so many aspects that I still struggle with, even ten years on. But, I told my friend I would try to write it all down.

Having said all of that, I have one more request of anyone reading this: imagine you had a spectacular dream this morning. Can you remember it? Can you still taste it, smell it, hear all the tiny things that were happening? Most dreams tend to vanish quickly on waking. It has been nearly ten years since I woke up from the coma... and these dreams, for lack of a better word, are just as real and tangible as the day I woke up.

My notes follow:

• Jesus in the graveyard, being left behind
• Fishing : restaurant: broken down rig: scuba diving and fear of water: circular driveway
• Kayaking across big lake
• Moving kiln w/woodfire
• Recycling via sidewalk streams, Ithaca
• Dragon making via Nancy; hammering coins
• Display behind my head covered in Led Zep based foods
• Swimming across polluted channel w/ dirty city (recycling focus)
• Sitting in pools eating lunch with David Bowie in France (gallery with pedestal platforms at eye level with David Byrne)
• Falling out of taxi in Queens, carried to stairwell, left in room with glass table, Bridgid brought bread. Diabetes.
• Wyoming dream. Hunting antelope, laying silver $ on train track 
• Living in a barn with animals
• Working in diner, cleaning, setting included trees, road, snow
• JFK house w/Nancy - new AC - new clothes/bed
• Old houses @Xmas, singers, smells, horse carriage bells
• Old woman, knitter/weaver w/feathers, looking out her window at sunset
• Room with German platter/disk - played backwards by wife
• Trains rolling by - through army camp ca., WWII
• Housesitting for couple in 1950-1960, very mod - include carpet, chrome, leather
• Canadian woodlot as punishment for speaking out against bad sheetrock and the tearing out of sheetrock @hospital on other side of the mountain
• Hospital setting looking for Mecenas, 3D displays
• Cruise ship with BTS, wife having affair on tape; Jose on call; Grandmother called at port of call
• Restaurant w/Nancy fish restaurant, next to fishing tour boats
• Restaurant w/Nancy van broke down, breakfast only - started story as Another Story
• Mexican scenario w/ morning villa, weird lunch restaurant w/margaritas, salsa verde tacos, fragrant flowers on rock wall, motorcycle dudes in restaurant
• Going through box of records (Mary Ellen, Nancy and I) and dressing up like albums
• Ducts & power company - hiding in abandoned  house
• Finding rogue car racing group / underground in ducts 
• Cooking / baking during depression @ holidays - trying to perfect not-chocolate for donuts
• Photographing in x-ray film, converting a camera to use x-ray (not IR)
• Martin's Japanese GF racing motorbikes and jetskis - cant remember this one now, 10 yrs later
• Working w/ Nancy's grandfather
• Eating sushi w/couple & mother making food, finally walking across wet field
• Dancing after wedding to Nancy in Spain, paella, rosemary
• Invention device using croc foam to print anything
• Room in house where ^^^ happens, multiple servers
• Ride home from work @ diner in snow
• Hike ~ Spain to see Japanese potter, firing wood
• Waking up in bus depot, stuck there till custodian takes outside
• "" w/ latino and Jesus & tree
• Inside cruise ship BTS - elevator and cameras in CCTV room
• Outside dirty city, BK everywhere, tables, recycling lines, getting trapped in Brazil-esque setting - started writing in Hell is a Lonesome Place  needs more.  Also started as Thoughts on Dying - still incomplete
• Visiting w/brother, racing off road motorcycles & jet skis -cant remember this one, 10 yrs later
• Mother sitting in corner, knitting / fan blowing
• Indian angry that I could talk to birds, animals - maybe related to weaving woman dream
• Kids poaching deer & woman being so upset, sawmill (ref. Melanie?)
• Seeing Mag's artwork, photography & then seeing subjects in person, together
• Meeting couple with and without kids on kayaking expedition
• Photography out in desert
• Working w/ contemporary photographer w/ pkging 
• My medical bed in hospital breaking and fixing it by pushing it to the ceiling - me telling them that I was ready to go home
• Being held post-surgery in an old movie theater's projectionist space w/file cabinets and soda
• Playing w/Xray film, buying special cameras to play with. 
• Being arrested for video & being held by FL troopers - ref cruise ship
• Stuck on a long mountain road, needing chains for the truck and the only person I could call was Grandma Barbara
• Landing planes in Okinawa post WWII - written as Landing the Planes
• My mother telling me she was a punk rock groupie
• Stuck in the old room w/diabetes and running out of meds. Needles on the floor. 
• Leah and Tim watching kid get killed - Syracuse or Binghamton perhaps - lollipop wrapper near the curb - Now written as: Scenes to Forget
• Passing judgement on souls - in garage with dust and oil
• Recycling life in Ithaca, very hot, needing AC, curbs carrying water, retarded kids and adults working at recycling center
• Watching kids w/candy wrappers and lollipops in Binghamton, (while judging souls)
• Woodfired electric kiln, made by L&L/dusty / taken to  CA roadtrip.
• Helicopter ride with Obama's kids, landing on the WH lawn
• Asian food restaurant/kitchen/sliding doors, fish etc.
• Hockey w/girls TGHA in CO, WY, sleeping in crappy hotels w/wet carpet (related to being in teardrop trailer?)  - part of this dream written into Burning from the Inside
• Packaging ideas while working for photographer 
• Looking for Mecenas in Hospital in Miami - Gangs & 3D screens and virtual presence
• Recycling center in huge scale in city, unable to get out - giant machines like bucket loaders
• ^^ related somehow to Burger King and London
• Hockey arena while on gurney to watch 12U play, but audience unhappy because no beer (<18 yr olds) played Camilus and won
• Hockey travel team going from motel to dive, wet carpet, high fever
• Being stuck in Denver, 2nd story apartment, with ostomy, smell and wet damp everywhere, renting with lots of people, and being stuck in recliner
• Russian hospital w/ labels in Cyrillic - started in Coma Dreams #1  incomplete
• Russian family taking care of me on their table in return for American insurance $$$
• World as Lowes @Thanksgiving/Xmas, including inflated stuff, giant fans and wiring everywhere, fixing house we were renting - tied into JFK house  - written as Dust that Burns
• Nancy was there, no AC, installed AC and painted via Lowes- written as Dust that Burns plus part two We Now Return to Our Story
• Laying half out of taxi in NYC/Bronx/Queens, near river, can see bar w/Irving's room above
• Transition to all family inside waiting for Bridgid who brought bread, wall of open shelves, knickknacks.