Tiny, Yellow Frog

The landscape of my dreams has changed. It seems sudden, but I can trace a subtler transformation back a couple years, when it was a maze of artificially and dimly lit corridors, flat and anglular, to a rugged, pathless wilderness wending through woods, across meadows, down steep, jagged slopes to cool, sighing streams, and back up another craggy climb to the next meadow and distant wood. Along the way corridors turned to paths and the paths disappeared; and getting somewhere became just going. There’s no anxiety to get somewhere or get something done, because no one is there to ask it of me. Instead, animals feature prominently–most lately, frogs, and in great numbers at once. Wednesday night, following the giving of the flowers, the frogs appeared to me as I slept, and, as many as there were, I yet became fixated on a frog that could not have been more than an eighth-inch long, but was colored a yellow so bright as to be nearly luminous. I tried to catch it, but I could not close my fist over it before it sprang from my palm, though I caught it again several times before it could finally touch the ground and get away for good. I don’t know what they mean, the landscape and the frogs, but after the anxiety of that workday the dream was an oasis from my troubles instead of a reminder.

I am off work this week, and I intend to put last week far behind as I get back to more positive work over which I have some control. In Greta’s basket, for her to read Tuesday afternoon when she arrives, is a copy of “The Price” (minus the title), submitted, as I wrote in the enclosed note, “in the interest of truth and fairness.” I also made it clear that I would not discuss it any further with her or anyone else not of my choosing. I have slept much better since, but I have not been able to recall my dreams in the morning.

The farther I move forward the smaller last week becomes–not that I’ll be looking at it in the rearview. Not getting out the two weeks leading up to the Magnet Mangle precipitated it: As I was unable to turn my attention from Julie with my outside endeavors, I allowed myself to apply my efforts to that problem. It was a vacuum I couldn’t leave to fill itself, and now it’s a black hole. My dream settings are always dark, a murky gray. I’m hoping this week to bring some light to them by doing all I can to sweep out the basement corners, throw open the curtains on the vampires of my soul and send them scurrying with impotent hisses into the black hole. The landscape of my life henceforth is as undulant and varied as the roads and neighborhoods I pedal through to experience it. In my recent dreams, upon scaling the craggy bank, I have looked back across the stream and the meadow to the woods from which I’d emerged, and I see no path, no line of flattened grass, no tumbled rocks, no footprint in the stream bed. I turn back to the way ahead and find I am between mirror images. But I know where I’ve been, and I know that the stream, meadow and woods behind me are not the same ones I will face when I turn forward again. I notice, too, that I’m walking eastward, the same direction I pedal toward the city. Perhaps I’m walking out of the night toward dawn, where the vampires can’t follow me.

I’m Sorry, Did I Apologize? I Meant to Rake You Through the Coals. Please Forgive Me

All day today I’ve been trying to calm down enough to write rationally instead of emotionally.  It’s not working any more than it was yesterday, when I was merely trying to keep from twisting someone’s head off.

The flowers came Wednesday morning.  I don’t know when.  Julie was on the circ desk, the flowers weren’t on hers.  I saw them two hours later when I came out there.  They were on display on the upper counter, the card with her name on it protruding prominently from the center of the yellow bouquet.  Julie didn’t say anything to me before she left, but she said plenty to others.  Mike broke into a hushed huddle to ask her who sent her flowers, and she answered, “Oh, a coworker.”  He didn’t press her.  Of course, I didn’t either, but her silence irked me, though I tried to tell myself I had done all I could.

Apparently, by Thursday afternoon, when we both came into work, Julie had decided I’d done more than enough–in the wrong direction.  Greta was waiting for me at the head of the workroom and invited me into her office.  I glared down the row of desks at Julie not-looking at me.  “Incredible,” I said.  “Un-be-lieve-able!”

In her office, Greta said, “I know this has been going on for some time, but it has to end.  No more giving her things, no more personal emails…. If this continues it will be considered harrassment, and then it will be out of my hands.”

Someone slid a sheet of paper under the door.  I looked at it when I said, “I considered it at an end yesterday.”

“Okay.”

I stepped over the paper when I left the office.

I shook with rage for most of the next eight hours, and remembering that thirty hours later threatens to start it again.  My jaw bulged under the pressure of my clenched teeth.  My breathing shallowed as I stared at nothing for many minutes at a time.  In my head, I asked a million times, “Did you even read the card, Julie?”  Only by slamming doors could I vent my rage and prevent saying it aloud and to her face (if I hadn’t refused to look at it).  At the first opportunity, I threw the flowers in the trash.  I screamed the question to the stars all the way home.  I don’t know if I slept even a couple of hours.  My body rolled as my mind reeled:  I said some mean things to her, and though an apology couldn’t take those words back, it was an act meant to facilitate healing.  I didn’t ask for forgiveness.  I didn’t ask for anything.  But I didn’t deserve this, did I?  The questions pile up from there, but I have to restrain myself from speculation or drive myself crazy, for no speculation will answer any of my questions.  I won’t scream for justice.  Only the status quo is served justice, and only by the status quo.  No one asked for my side of the story–not that that could prevent the gossipmongers from believing that that bouquet was anything but a play for Julie’s love; it would be asking their little brains to work too hard to reassess the judgment they laid on me nearly two years ago.

Now, was that calm enough?  Did I call anyone names or make any accusations?  Oh, I’m still plenty angry, but I can step pretty canny through the verbal minefield.  But having done little venting, I’m doubtful my gods of slumber have been appeased.  A sizeable whisky didn’t help that effort last night, but the sun has just gone down and the cicadas and I are all yawning.