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Feb. 13th, 2002 05:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaI had the strangest experience this morning. I was not quite asleep, not quite awake. I knew as it was happening that it wasn't real, yet it was more vivid and detailed and multisensory than any dream.
I was lying on my stomach in bed, and it suddenly seemed to me that I was in Lane's bed - just as it was when I used to visit her in Portland. Instead of the slightly sagging double bed I sleep in now, I felt underneath me the featherbed covered in black and white-striped flannel, and the cool firm cotton-sheeted futon below that. I sensed the grey Portland light flitering through the window, in an intangibly different way than the Maryland light does. I felt the chill of the air against my exposed shoulder and felt the sense memory of how cold settled into that house. I sensed the position of the bed in the room, walls behind and to the right of me. All of these sensory impressions were perfectly detailed, perfectly mundane... just as it feels to wake up in a bed and become slowly aware of your surroundings.
"This isn't real," I told myself, and I knew it to be true. But at the same time I had the vivid sensory knowledge of how it would be to turn my head and brush my face against Lane's hair. How it would be softer and finer than the hair of anyone I've slept with since. I inhaled the scent of her shampoo. I had a sense of her size and weight in the bed next to me.
"This isn't real," I told myself again, and this time I imposed some discipline: I started singing to myself in my head, a slow and rhythmic song, a song with lots of lyrics to remember, a song with no connection to her. And the song occupied my mind in an orderly fashion, and gradually I fell asleep again, and when I awoke I knew where I was.
I knew yesterday that she was on my mind, although I still don't know why. But I never imagined that I still had memories like this, or that the past could impose itself on me with such perfectly realistic mimicry.
I was lying on my stomach in bed, and it suddenly seemed to me that I was in Lane's bed - just as it was when I used to visit her in Portland. Instead of the slightly sagging double bed I sleep in now, I felt underneath me the featherbed covered in black and white-striped flannel, and the cool firm cotton-sheeted futon below that. I sensed the grey Portland light flitering through the window, in an intangibly different way than the Maryland light does. I felt the chill of the air against my exposed shoulder and felt the sense memory of how cold settled into that house. I sensed the position of the bed in the room, walls behind and to the right of me. All of these sensory impressions were perfectly detailed, perfectly mundane... just as it feels to wake up in a bed and become slowly aware of your surroundings.
"This isn't real," I told myself, and I knew it to be true. But at the same time I had the vivid sensory knowledge of how it would be to turn my head and brush my face against Lane's hair. How it would be softer and finer than the hair of anyone I've slept with since. I inhaled the scent of her shampoo. I had a sense of her size and weight in the bed next to me.
"This isn't real," I told myself again, and this time I imposed some discipline: I started singing to myself in my head, a slow and rhythmic song, a song with lots of lyrics to remember, a song with no connection to her. And the song occupied my mind in an orderly fashion, and gradually I fell asleep again, and when I awoke I knew where I was.
I knew yesterday that she was on my mind, although I still don't know why. But I never imagined that I still had memories like this, or that the past could impose itself on me with such perfectly realistic mimicry.
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Date: 2002-02-13 03:32 pm (UTC)It was at the beginning of my relationship with Iain, and I was in that same state between sleeping and waking in the early morning. I had my eyes open, and I could see Iain lying next to me, with the sunlight poking through the curtain and hitting his face. I remember smiling, and reaching across to his cheek, and as my fingers touched it, I watched him transform into Chris. I was absolutely stunned, and sat bolt upright in bed, my heart pounding. I guess I had convinced myself that since I wasn't quite asleep, I couldn't really have been dreaming Iain next to me, but I had been, and I was seriously unsettled that I had thought I was touching Iain when I was actually touching Chris.
J, thinking Rivka might actually vaguely recognize this anecdote from somewhere ...
no subject
Date: 2002-02-13 10:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-02-14 07:14 am (UTC)-J