Wooden Faces

I gave myself permission today to lie in bed from late afternoon until the  daylight faded into night.

For a while, I watched the clouds drift across the sky. After they merged into one mass, I stared at the wooden ceiling for hours, watching the overhead logs change from beige to brown to grey to black. I imagined faces in the logs, seeing the ruts from sawed off branches as eyes and the spaces between the logs as mouths. The lighting fixtures became pendulous noses. The expressions on the log people's faces alternated between hilarity and agony. My mind became restless and I tried to have a conversation with the Divine. I waited for answers. None came. I asked questions and shouted my desires to God. Don't know if anybody listened or understood. I allowed myself to feel as lonely and depressed as I wanted to feel. I prayed that an idea or inspiration would come into my head and point me in a direction. Nothing.

After blackness overtook me, I cried. I chastised myself for the tears and then tried to be at peace with them. So lost. I feel so lost and rudderless. How can I break through this time? Can I really make this place my home? The more I learn, the less likely it seems I'll be able to find a way to make a living in this town. They say folks who succeed, come here with either a shining talent or a skill to share.For a few weeks, I was able to be a shameless self-promoter and talk up my skills. However a couple of months later, I feel like I've lost my nerve and become tongue-tied when asked about myself.

I think about my maternal grandfather. I don't know a hell of a lot about him, but he always seemed to be drifting from place to place, and never finding a home. We got postcards from Seattle and San Antonio and other towns. I don't know what he did in those places or if he ever made friends. All he owned fit inside two brown suitcases and now and then, they would appear on our front door stoop, and he would ask mother for a place to stay for a while. When he lived with us, he took up residence in the kitchen. What did he think about, as he sat for hours with his coffee cup on top of the dishwasher and a lighted cigarette in his hand? He never said.  At most, he stayed for a few months before he saved up enough of his social security checks to be on the road again.  We saw him off at the bus station and wouldn't hear a word from him for a few years. He died from emphesyma in a Veterans hospital in Pennsylvania when he was in his early '70's, with my mother at his bedside.

I drift off to sleep.  I remember dreaming about a large amusement park and a transportation system that seemed to come from the future. Either I was a boy or I was watching a young man, who was my son, named Nicholas. Nicholas was descending from a moving sidewalk and standing in front of a clinic, where I (or he) had a doctor's appointment he was thinking of skipping. He (or I) did not want to be thought of as sick.

When I awake in the morning I watch the overhead tree branches with their nubby spots change back to brown. Their abstract faces greet me, still wearing the same expressions they held as yesterday's daylight faded. I look around my room and notice the clove of garlic and simple cross that a previous tenant placed above the doorway. No vampires allowed. Only inner demons.