The Sheila Variations

It's just the altitude

For the first couple of days I couldn't catch my breath. We were driving through the mountains, and I had never been at such high altitude before. As a matter of fact, the Rocky Mountains were the first real mountains I had ever seen. When they came into view - glimmering on the horizon like a huge jagged set of teeth, my mind went blank. There they were. I had imagined them, I had seen pictures, I know that they exist, but I had never seen them. And there they were. Pretty much just as they had existed all along in my mind. But nothing compares to the real thing. I'm a Rhode Island girl. We got no mountains in Rhode Island. All we got is 812-foot Jerimoth Hill. I'm a sea-level kind of girl. I don' know nothin' 'bout mountains - so when I first saw them, I almost FELT the grandiose symphonic music start in my head. Beethoven. Something almost scary-sounding. I had no words for them. I had nothing to say about them. They impressed themselves on me in indelible ink. They left me wordless and stunned.

In Colorado, we traveled to see his friends in the mountains, and that's when I first started noticing the weird feeling the altitude gave me. It took me a while to even process it. Because it was an unfamiliar sensation, I didn't know how to locate it, or name it - and I thought it had something to do with emotions. I couldn't catch my breath, it stayed caught in my chest. Things looked differently up there. There was a clarity to the vistas, a stark vividness that I found almost upsetting. Why was that stone wall that looked like it was 2 miles away so clear to my eyes that I could see the roughess of the texture, and the golden field gleaming through the cracks where the stones did not meet? Why could I see that that dark brown horse on the field in the distance was flicking his tail around constantly? I wanted to shut off that type of vision, but I couldn't. I felt like I was looking through a telescopic lens at all times. My eyes watered for no reason. I thought I might be sad. Or having some sort of prolonged anxiety attack. I was not doing well, so anything was possible. Eventually, I got used to the altitude but those first couple of days were supremely disorienting. I would lie in my sleeping bag in the van, breath heaving in my chest, watered-up eyes staring into the darkness, wondering if I was finally going crazy. No, it was just the altitude.

We rattled across high-altitude highways, the horizon blasting off on either side of the road, the Rockies shining in front of us ... To me they looked like death. They were beautiful but they so clearly were mountains you should not mess around with. They would kill you if you did not respect them. I remember we were really into the B 52s at this time, and we kept playing that song "Roam" ... To me, when I think of my first view of the Rocky Mountains, I always hear, as an anthem in the background:

I hear a wind
Whistling air
Whispering in my ear

Boy Mercury shootin' through every degree
OOO girl dancin' down those dirty and dusty trails
Take it hip to hip rocket through the wilderness
Around the world the trip begins with a kiss

Roam if you want to
Roam around the world
Roam if you want to
Without wings, without wheels
Roam if you want to
Without anything but the love we feel

Skip the air-strip for the sunset
Ride the arrow for the target---One
Take it hip to hip rock it through the wilderness
Around the world the trip begins with a kiss

Fly the great big sky
See the great big sea
Kick through continents
Bustin' boundaries
Take it hip to hip rocket through the wilderness
Around the world the trip begins with a kiss

Take it hip to hip
Rocket through the wilderness

There's a blasted-open echoey energy in that song. It's supposed to be joyful and transcendent. And it was that for us, but there was a dark underbelly to it. As though we were at the bottom of a well, and we could hear it playing way way up out in the world, at some happy party that we could not get to. Maybe by listening to it so often we were trying to imagine ourselves into joy. It wasn't about the words (although looking at them now, in retrospect, they were perfect for what we were experiencing - at least externally). It was about the sound. We lost ourselves in that sound. We lost ourselves in the wide vistas. That way, we didn't have to talk to each other. I still have a hard time hearing that song now, or at least I have a hard time just hearing it for what it is. To me, it is a time-transport-machine. I hear the opening chords, and am immediately in the front seat of our van, my eyes watering up, squinting at the fields and mountains, trying to catch my breath, trying to ignore the fact that my boyfriend and I were obviously breaking up.

We went to visit some relatives of his who lived on a ranch in the mountains. At that point, I did not feel up for company. This was the beginning of the bad time for me ... the dissolution of personality, before I could re-build ... and I shied away from meeting new people. I became morbid about it. I would look away when I shook people's hands, ashamed that this new person would see me, ashamed of what they would see. I was not well. I also had lost my voice. Anyone who has ever lost the ability to speak, or lost the ability to be your own advocate, will know the paralysis I allude to here. This was not a situation where "Fake it til you make it" applies. This was a situation where I should have been convalescing somewhere, with no demands made on me. But instead? We were driving up the mountains to spend a couple of days with his family. People I had never met. My soul shrank to a tiny hard core.

We rattled up the driveway in our bug-spattered van, to see the family come out onto the front steps, waving at us, and whooping and hollering. There was a mother - let's call her Ruth - and two grown kids - in their 20s, like me. A woman and a man - Jessica and Chris. Jessica had a small son.

Their energy was so open and crazy that I relaxed. I didn't have to put on an act, or be sociable in a polite way - which was beyond my power at that time. They were all NUTS and awesome. The kitchen overflowed with meat and vegetables and snacks and alcohol. The house was freezing. Ruth was such a character, I will never forget her. She gave us the grand tour, barking out comments about this or that room in cynical asides. She referred to her ex-husband fondly as "Asshole". You could hear the capital letter. "Asshole left me diddlysquat. This shit is all MINE." She ushered us into her grandiose bedroom, saying, "It's a great room. Of course, you could hang meat in it, but that's beside the point." Her humor was so irreverent and brash I found myself crying with laughter within 10 minutes of meeting her. The tears in my eyes had been a constant for a couple of days, I could never stop them from coming. The altitude. Yeah. The altitude. But what a relief. To cry tears of laughter again.

The son, Chris, was one of the sweetest men I had ever met. A big tough guy, wearing a tight T-shirt, jeans, and boots ... Taciturn, quiet, not really forthcoming ...you would never guess from his appearance that he was obviously a sweet and sensitive soul. He was very kind to me. I don't know if he realized immediately that his cousin's girlfriend wasn't in a good way, but he was very nice, specifically, to me. Sweet. Making sure my drink was filled, getting up to get me a refill, making jokes, talking to me about actors he loved - since he knew I was an actress etc. Thank you, Chris, wherever you are. You never know what being kind will do. His kindness to me was random - or maybe he truly did like me, I don't know - but his kindness came out of being personable and welcoming to his guests. But oh, oh, oh, how I needed it.

Jessica was gorgeous in an overblown way, with thick black hair, gleaming in waves, glowing olive skin, and huge brown eyes. Mascara, eyeliner ... and yet in jeans, a big sweater, boots, really down to earth, leaping up onto her horse, and galloping off across a field, shouting and whooping.

I could never get warm, physically, the house was so drafty and chill, and the air outside was a frigid mountain temperature ... but the atmosphere of the house was warm, welcoming, and full of love. There was also room for anger. After all, Asshole was still discussed, with open contempt. That low-level of anger-acceptance made me feel comfortable. These weren't people who were "nice" or "polite". They swore. They shouted at each other. They bitched about Asshole. Anger was admitted as a valid emotion. This was huge for me, a repressed girl in the middle of a crack-up. Anything too happy and positive at that time grated on my raw nerves. Or any pressure to "put on a happy face" was beyond my power. Reminds me of Tennessee Williams' famous remark about what his definition of happiness was: "Insensitivity, I guess." Life itself hurt me. In that state, people who demanded happiness from me, or who even demanded a smile, seemed unnecesarily cruel. But the ranch, with its wooden railinged staircase, its thick plush rugs, its massive stone fireplace, its drafty spaces, its gargantuan kitchen - the doors thrown open to us ... did much to warm my soul. My boyfriend and I sat on the couch, being entertained by this lively loving family, he and I holding hands tepidly, still not able to really speak to each other, or acknowledge that ... this was it. This was it.

I whispered to him at one point, "I can't catch my breath. It's making me so nervous."

"It's just the altitude, babe. You'll get used to it - the first couple of days are hard - but it'll get better."

The family waited on us. We had been living out of our van for two months by this point. We cooked outside, did our laundry in a bucket, slept in sleeping bags, and splashed down in various camp sites across the country. But here we were, in civilization. We both took steaming hot half-hour-long showers. Of course when we emerged from the steam-bath of the bathroom, we were back in the teeth-chattering air of the house ... but at least we were clean. Clean to the bone. The family was ready for us - food put out, beers, a fire going ... I forgot my neurotic shyness. I felt like they accepted me, even in the state I was in. I could look these people in the eye. It would be okay.

Ruth took us on a tour around the ranch. We went to look at the horses. The barn was drafty, shadowy, the scent of horses pungent, overwhelming, and beautiful. Out of the small square barn windows you could see the jagged peaks of the nearby mountains. I had never been in such a place. I'm a sea-level kind of girl. Those are real mountains. Those are mountains. Just like I've dreamt of. They didn't really penetrate me. I couldn't really "get" that those were real. They looked like a backdrop. I couldn't realize that they were actually there. This, for some reason, devastated me. Later in our trip, when I got really nuts, I would make us leave Teton National Park abruptly because I "couldn't see the mountains". My boyfriend kept saying, "They're right there, babe. They're right there." "But I can't see them. I'm going to have to come back some other time. I can't see them."

I stood on the front stoop of the ranch, as the sun went down, later on, hearing the guffaws of laughter inside, the random sounds of conversation, the sound of Jessica shouting at her terror of a son, and I stared at the Rockies. Determined to see them. Pissed. My eyes tearing up. My hand over my chest, trying to calm down my breathing. I was trying to see the mountains. I could see them, but I couldn't see them. Perhaps a better word is "realize". I just couldn't realize them. I couldn't realize that they were actually them. My brain had split off from the physical world. Nothing got in. I saw things, but they washed right off me. I thought I should be able to feel the mountains. I thought I would have an opinion about them. I'm a writer ... I thought I should be able to describe the mountains. I thought I would be able to find the words. What they were like, what they looked like ... I opened my notebook, my pen poised over the page, and sat there blankly. It was really upsetting to me. I wanted to feel the mountains.

The only thing I could really feel was that I could not breathe, and my eyes were always full of tears.

Ruth took us to see the big barracks-like building where the ranch hands used to stay - or maybe they did still stay there, seasonally - not sure. It was a big wooden building off on the other side of the barn - she let us in. You could smell the must, the old mildewy mattresses. There were bunk beds lining the walls. My boyfriend and I stood there in the shadows, staring into the barracks, silently taking it in. There was a small wood stove at one end. Everything was cold and still.

Ruth said, lighting up a cigarette, "This place is haunted."

I thought maybe she meant haunted by the ranch-hands who had once lived here. I certainly could feel their ghostly presences. But no. Turns out Ruth meant actual specific ghosts.

"The people who built this ranch - back in the 30s - they had two little kids - a boy and a girl. And the kids apparently used to sneak out here in the middle of the night and have pillow fights. This place is haunted by those two kids. You can even hear the slapping of the pillows, and their screams as they beat the crap out of each other."

My breath was high in my throat. "Have you heard them?"

"Oh, sure I have. I camped out here one night just to see if they would visit me." (This is why I loved Ruth. She was in her 60s, she had crazy short grey hair, wore blood-red lipstick, smoked like a chimney, wore jeans and cowboy boots, called her ex-husband Asshole, and slept out in an old abandoned building hoping to be visited by ghosts.)

I was agog. "And did they visit?"

"You bet. I woke up, and I heard these tiptoing feet. I could hear them burst out into giggles. There was nobody there, sweetheart, but they were there. And then came - wap wap wap! The sound of the pillow fight. Wap wap wap!"

"You were right there?"

"Yup! Sittin' right over there. Hearing their giggles, and the Wap Wap Wap!"

"Wow!"

"They're friendly little suckers, nothin' to be scared about. Just two kids fuckin' around."

I tried to imagine them. I squinted through the altitude-tears into the shadows, trying to see them. Suddenly, out of nowhere, yearning, yearning so deep and sad that it pushed out of my chest. A fist, pounding on the inside of my rib cage. What the hell was THAT? I yearned. But for what? To see the ghosts? Sure, I wanted to see them. But why so sad? I squashed down that inappropriate yearning with a mallet. I was always doing such things in those days. I never felt fit for company because out of nowhere I would be ambushed by intergalactic yearning and have to leave the room. But Ruth was so casual about the miracle of the ghosts. As we walked out of the building, she started laughing to herself, and said, "Wap wap wap! Little fuckers."

Chris and Jessica took us to see a swing they had on the property, a swing put up by Asshole in happier days. Behind the house, the land fell away abruptly, a virtual cliff of dirt, down into a deep ravine. A tree stood on the edge of this abyss, and from one of the branches hung this swing. A plain wooden plank swing. So when you got on the swing, you could kick yourself off over the abyss. Jessica leapt on the swing and pushed herself off. She flew out over the cliff, laughing out loud, Chris and my boyfriend cheering and clapping. I felt uneasy. I didn't want to go on the swing. I didn't want them watching me. I watched Jessica lie back so that she was horizontal, a flying horizontal girl, floating in the air, over our heads, and then back out over the abyss. I didn't trust my own hands to hang on. All I could keep seeing, over and over and over and over, like this kneejerk newsreel, was me letting go, and falling, falling, and then cracking my head open on a boulder below. I kept seeing it. My boyfriend jumped onto the swing, and took a running leap off into mid-air. I watched him fly up and back, up and back, I watched him stand up on the wooden plank of the swing, and gyrate his body so that he kept momentum going ... I was in awe of him. While over and over and over and over ... I saw: my body falling ... my hands grasping at thin air ... my scream snatched out of my throat ... and then my head smashed open ... my brains on the rock ... the jolt of panic ... as I let go ... and then ... nothing to hold onto ... I thought of my parents. How sad they would be. But I couldn't stop the images. I even tried to physically brush the images away. Chopping my hand in the air, saying to the newsreel: "Begone." But it kept coming. I stood there, watching my boyfriend flying overhead, feeling like I was not good enough for him. For anyone. My boyfriend was laughing out loud. He deserved a girlfriend who would have fun on the swing. It was a stupid swing. It was fun. He deserved someone who would think it was fun. It was unfair. Unfair to make him deal with me.

At some point, while I was looking up at my boyfriend, and randomly brushing away the imaginary insistent images, Chris came over to me, and put his arm around me. He squeezed me, grinning down at me, with such intimacy, such kind knowingness. I had just met this man. He knew nothing about me. It's not like my boyfriend had been writing him long tortured letters about how bad his relationship was, and all of our problems. Chris was meeting me for the first time. I have no idea what Chris saw in me. If he saw anything. But I believe he saw something. He was one of those guys who's like a dog - able to pick up messages unheard by the normal human ear. Chris was a fireman. Guys like that can be intuitive about human beings and psychology in a way that a trained psychiatrist can only dream. He squeezed me, and just grinned down at me, never looking away. My boyfriend plummeted by over our heads. Chris' attention was not invasive or inappropriate. It was kind. I felt seen. He said, "You go next, okay? Don't be scared. You won't fall." How did he know? How did he know? Somehow it didn't embarrass me that he had guessed.

My boyfriend got off the swing, and handed it to me, saying, "Babe! It's so great - it's like you're flying!"

But it wasn't my boyfriend's words that made me brave. It was Chris' grin. I could do it. I could do it. Chris said it would be okay. I got on the swing, Chris grabbed hold of my waist and pulled me back ... I held on for dear life. Chris said, "You ready?" "I'm ready!" Chris let go, and off I went, careening off over the cliff. I didn't look down. I held onto the rope so hard that my hands were chafed later on. There's a picture of me on that swing. I have it. It's kind of hard to look at, because ... well ... the whole circumstance surrounding it come to the foreground. But I look okay. I don't look like I'm having a bad time. I look scared to death, but I'm also laughing, my mouth open. I remember careening out in an arc, over the cliff, and hearing Chris shouting from his spot under the tree: "YEAH! YEAH, SHEILA!" It says a lot about my state of mind how much that moved me, hearing him shout that.

And not once, during my catapult over the cliff, did my head-cracked-open newsreel start up again. It stopped the second I was airborne. It was over.

Chris and my boyfriend made a huge feast for us on the grill that night. Burgers, chicken, steak ... Jessica made frozen margaritas. Ruth and I played with Jessica's son - who was like Damian from The Omen. This child was demonic and barely lovable. Jessica kept moaning, as she put more ice into the blender: "I just ... don't know how to control him ... I just ... God. DAMIAN, STOP WHINING ... Mom ... what the fuck ... he's out of control ..." Ruth, cigarette dangling from her lips, would bark, "Damian. Time out. You're being a pain in the ass. Go over and sit in the corner. Read your book. Shaddup." Damian would open his mouth to start to SHRIEK, and one look on Ruth's face would shut him up. His father had abandoned Jessica and him ... He was out of control. Jessica was overwhelmed. Ruth seemed unflappable. "Damian, I love ya. But your voice is so ugly when you whine. I'm serious. I can't take it any more." Strangely enough, this kind of chaotic disciplining seemed to work. Damian would sit quietly in the corner, reading a book, or playing with his toy train ... and then be ready to join civilized society again. He'd walk back over to us, tentatively. Ruth would glance down at him. "Are ya done with that whining ugly voice?" Damian nodded solemnly. Ruth said, not one to hold a grudge (except against Asshole), "Okay, then. Let's play with that train then."

We sat around the huge table, eating and drinking. These were casual big-hearted people. My boyfriend and I had been shivering in a soul-chill for two months. Trying to imagine ourselves into joy. Here were people who had a lot of problems, too, but it didn't stop them from loving and laughing. Ruth told us bluntly, at the table, with Damian right there, "It sucks being 60 and single. I'm dying for sex. I'm dying to have sex." She then bellowed: "DYING! But I'm 60. Nobody picks up 60 year old women. I'm losing my mind from the horniness." Jessica was abandoned by her husband (he was fondly referred to as Asshole Two) and she had a difficult demon-spawn child. But she kept making the margaritas, and she rode her horse for hours every weekend. She had a special bond with that horse - she had had it since she was a kid. Chris was a lonely-heart type of guy, single (which was unbelievable to me). He was obviously MEANT to be somebody's mate. But he lived out in the middle of nowhere, he didn't like pick-up trashy bars, and he had a hard time meeting people. These people had problems. But they were loud, funny, they loved each other, and they welcomed us. It was great. We could sit there with them, and we could have our problems, we didn't have to pretend that our problems didn't exist ... but we could also laugh, and forget ourselves for a while.

Night fell outside. You got the sense of the enormous spaces stretching out around us. I'm from New England. You don't really get big vistas in New England. The horizon is always around a hill, or behind some trees. You can't see that far. You can't see for miles and miles in New England. Even in that ranch house, with all the lights on, a fire crackling in the fireplace, music playing, all of us dancing around barefoot on the plush rug, sipping beer as we danced ... even with all that lively light, you could feel everything drop off ... immediately outside the door. You could feel the darkness pressing in, you knew the mountains were there ... overshadowing everything ... I could feel it.

The night slowly began to wind down. Damian was put to bed. He of course put up a shieking fight, which left Jessica in a shambles, emotionally. "He's so wild ... I just ... dammit ... the kid is out of control ..." Ruth said, "Jessie, you gotta be firm. That kid is DYING for limits. He may not want 'em but he needs 'em, and you're weak with him. Tell him to shut the fuck up and go to bed, because he's 5 years old, and that's what 5 year olds do." We could then hear Jessica in Damian's bedroom, saying, weakly, but giving it a good shot, "I have had it, Damian. Really. You have to go to bed. Okay? Do you still love me? I love you ..." You know. Struggling. We all have our struggles. Jessica was struggling. It was okay. She had a good family to help her.

My boyfriend and I had been sleeping in our sleeping bags in the van for months. It was strange to be inside. I almost didn't like it. In a strange way, even though we were right on top of each other in the van, we also could get away from each other. We weren't domesticated. We didn't have four walls closing in. Nature was right outside the door. We fell asleep to the sound of coyotes howling ... just over there .... Being inside a house, and having to be a "couple" was ... It just was not right for us. Because we were over. Our relationship was over. We just hadn't really admitted it yet. It was easy to deny the reality when we were out in the wild, and hiking, and wearing long johns and hiking boots, and collecting fire wood, and sipping scotch while we watched the aurora borealis ... Our emotions were wild, unfettered, chaotic ... Things were going to get worse before they got better. And being inside a house only made the wrongness between the two of us that more palpable. I didn't really feel it, with any clarity, until it was time to go to bed. I wanted to be back out in my sleeping bag, in the van.

Chris went off to bed. Jessica went off to bed. Ruth went off to her room where you could hang meat. My boyfriend went off to the guest room. I kind of pretended to go off towards the guest room ... I lingered in the bathroom for a long time ... brushing my teeth ... washing my face ...

Something was going on. The yearning I had felt earlier. The sad sad yearning expanding in my chest. My own emotions started becoming unbearable. I wished I could fucking catch my breath. I wished that sort of light-headed clarity would fade. I wished that I would start to feel like myself again. I felt so far away from myself. I could never be her again. She was like the Tetons. I could see her, but I couldn't see her. She was a mirage. She was a backdrop. One-dimensional, and she had nothing to do with me.

I hadn't gotten into my pajamas. I was still in my sweater and jeans. The house was settling down, you could feel it. You could feel the noise ceasing, the energy subsiding. The demon-child slept, visions of devilish evil plans to thwart the orderliness of the universe dancing in his head. My boyfriend lay in the pristine guest room, under a huge down comforter, and read in bed, wondering where I was, but not wondering where I was. Chris lay on his back in his bed, staring up at the ceiling, wishing he had a girl in his arms. Jessica curled up on her side in her bed, trying to get through another night by herself, trying to just hang on until tomorrow, tomorrow would be another day. Ruth lay in her king-size freezing bed, and treated herself to a panoply of luscious sexual fantasies in which she was the X-rated star ... before going to sleep.

And what about me?

I, the sea-level kind of girl, tiptoed down the stairs into the dark house, feeling like a criminal. I tiptoed to the front door, and put my hand on the cold doorknob, certain that at any second I would hear my boyfriend's voice from the top of the stairs, "Babe? What you doin'?" But his voice didn't come. Biting my lip, I turned the doorknob, willing it to be silent ... my thoughts streaming out into the doorknob like a command: "Quiet. Quiet. Quiet." The doorknob and the door obeyed. The mountain night air hit me like a freezing blast when I stepped outside. I hadn't put on a coat. My teeth jangled in my head. Praying for silence, I closed the door behind me.

I was alone. High up in the Rocky Mountains. It was a cold clear moonless night. Freezing. I have never seen such bright stars in my life. The stars are bright where I live in Rhode Island. But they were nothing like these stars. The air was thin, my lungs had to struggle for oxygen, my eyes involuntarily watered-up ... but the stars FILLED the sky. I stepped out onto the lawn, the dry grass crunching under my foot. I stood there for I don't know how long, staring up. Wheels of constellations careened by overhead, a dizzying array, an ethereal ceiling. The mountains towered above on all sides, terrifying ... again, the feeling that I was looking at death. Those tall dark sentinels, with the softly glowing white peaks, would kill you if you did not respect them. Mountains like that are proof, just by their mere presence, that we must give Nature its due. We were up so high that the stars seemed to go behind the mountain peaks - the mountains jutted up so high into the heavens that they blocked out the Big Dipper. I didn't recognize the constellations. They were not MY constellations. I have memorized the Rhode Island night sky. I believe that if a star randomly died one night - I would realize its absence. I didn't know this night sky. The stars were different.

I moved forward onto the lawn. Staring up. Hugging my body. The thing about Vincent Van Gogh's painting about the stars that really gets me - beside its beauty - is that he did not see it as "impressionistic". He saw it as realistic. That was how a starry night actually looked to him. I had never really understood this concept until that night out under the stars in Colorado. Astronomers of old saw the heavens as a ceiling - which circled above. The earth did not move. The stars moved. This was how it felt to me that night up in the mountains. I watched the stars move. I watched them spiral by overhead, I watched them go behind the mountains and emerge again. I didn't know any of those stars.

I was up so high.

Then came a sensation so distinct that it can only be described one way. I have never had this sensation before or since. I suddenly felt like I was going to fall up off the earth. I felt as though the stars, wheeling by overhead, would sweep me up in their motion - and gravity would no longer hold me in place - and off I would go - up into the abyss. The unfamiliar abyss of unfamiliar Rocky Mountain constellations. This was another newsreel. Not as unpleasant, but just as insistent. The stars came to me as a moving entity of one-ness - they had their own pull - their own insistence ... and I stood there, in the dark, my head thrown back, and the sensation became so strong - I became so convinced that I would fly up off the earth into the ether - that I sat down onto the ground, grabbing onto chunks of dried wintry grass, to hold me to the earth. Gravity dissolved. I was about to fly up. It was about to happen.

Only if one was up that high - near the ceiling of the world - would it be possible to just fly up off the earth and join the stars in their heavenly circling.

This sensation did not last. I have no idea how long I sat huddled on the grass, trying to press myself into the earth, so that the heavens couldn't get me ... but it must have been a half hour, something like that. This was not a psychological moment. This had nothing to do with my brain. This had everything to do with an overwhelming bodily rush of vertigo, a sense of flying up, up, up, looking down, so far down, a sense that those mountains, those mountains all around, would never stop my ascent ... there would be nothing to grasp onto ... In New England, I could grab onto a tree as I flew up into the air ... but here? There was nothing between me and the stars. My hands grasping onto thin air. Thinner and thinner and thinner air.

Then. I finally knew why I had come outside. Of course. Of course.

The vertigo had subsided enough that I trusted myself to be able to stand up, and not fly off into the starry heavens. Up I got, slowly ... shakily ... Nothing bad happened. I was still on the earth. Still subject to gravity. I still took up space. Like the Tetons. Maybe I wasn't real yet. Not to myself. But matter is real. I was real in that sense. I could walk on the earth, and make it from here to there. I tiptoed across the lawn - I remember glancing back at the house occasionally ... wondering when my boyfriend would start to notice my absence ... It would be soon. He was very attentive. So I didn't have much time before he came looking for me.

Shivering, teeth chattering, I started to run. Oh, the chill in the air. The freezing frigid ice. Suddenly I could feel it. It cut me to the bone. I ran over behind the barn ... the horses were all asleep ... I could still smell them, but not a peep came from them ... slumbering away ...

And there was the barracks building, where the ranch hands slept once upon a time, where the ghosts had a pillow fight. This was it. This was it. This was what I wanted. My heart was POUNDING in my chest. I kept saying to myself, "Sheila, don't be silly. They're just two little kids. They will not hurt you. Just listen. You know you want to meet them. So don't be silly." But still. It was a pitch-black night, high up in the mountains, with shadowy darkened buildings all around me, and I was terrified. Terrified. But this is what I wanted. The yearning was back, like a hot sword in my side. There it was again.

Blood THROBBING in my veins, I opened the door to the barracks, my eyes straining forward, trying to see, trying to see ... Terrified. Terrified that the benign ghosts would turn not so benign. Due to the fact that it was me calling them up. They would know I needed something from them. Maybe they wouldn't like that. They were just two sneaky little kids. Why did they need to be bothered by a teary-eyed hyperventilating sea-level kind of girl? Just let them be. But I couldn't.

Convinced I was about to be murdered at any minute, I slipped inside the barracks. I didn't move past the inner door, I didn't have the guts - it was too dark. I stood right by the door, and waited. I could hear my heaving breath in the silence - I am sure my eyes were dilated so wide that I looked like a cat having a crazy fit. The blackness pressed against my eyeballs - if I held up my hand in front of my face, I wouldn't have been able to see it. It was that dark.

I closed my eyes. That seemed more natural.

Eventually, everything has the potential to become normal - so the fact that I was huddled in this dark empty musty-smelling barracks in the Rocky Mountains started to seem normal - and my horrible fantasies about being killed by a child-ghost wielding a pillow like a fire-bomb subsided. The silence took over. The night took over. My fight or flight adrenaline rush subsided. I could smell the musty pillows again. I could smell the wood of the walls again. I could hear my teeth jittering in my head. I got into the moment.

Everything washed away. My whole life washed away. I was just a body with physical responses - which is what I had been for about a month by that point - I had just been my muscles, my throat, my eyes, my 5 senses ... emotions dulled down, impulses cut off - a survival thing ... But in the barracks, a sense of unbelievably acute ALIVENESS was added to it. My heart pounding, my blood racing, my breath in my throat ... That was who I was. I was my heart pounding and my breath. And the yearning.

And I waited. I waited. I waited for those ghost kids to show up for an hour. I asked them to come. I wanted to hear them. I invited them. I waited to hear the Wap wap wap, I waited to hear their mischievous giggles, their tiptoeing feet, their silly whispers.

But they never came.

I waited until it was obvious that nothing would happen. And then I walked back to the house, deflated - I remember the flatness of everything suddenly - such a change, I was suddenly blind to the stars, the mountains, the free-falling lack of gravity. I crawled into the dark bed, and quietly cried myself to sleep, holding it all in as best I could, squeezing my eyes shut tightly, the tears hot and scalding on my cold cheeks. It hurt. My heart literally hurt. I had so wanted to meet those ghostly little kids. Everything was so weird then, I was so unrecognizable to myself - So I told myself that my tears were just the altitude. That's why I'm crying. It's just the altitude.

Posted by sheila