__________________________________ _____________ Debbie Journal entry Date: May 1, 2005 Time: 6:00 Am I had a dream last night. In my dream, I was Danny as I walked up a trail, vanished into the shadows of the very mountain I followed. I noticed lavender grass flowers, copper pink whiffs of clouds encircling the ice cones rising high above the horizon… and blazing brick colored huts hanging defiantly on precarious ridges. I followed a pebble I happened to kick over a cliff and admired the gorge which rarely caught a ray of moonlight. I noticed the rhododendrons as they changed from crimson to white like benchmarks of a changing altitude… the highest rhododendrons camouflaged in the occasional snow a random icy wind brings. I sat at a tea shop with its open hearth and smell of dung fuel, drinking in the moment of mental emancipation. And, as I wandered aimlessly among the far snowcapped pavilions, somewhere in the Eastern hemisphere, I dreamt I was free. Today, I am twenty-seven. There are those who metamorphose from a cocoon into a butterfly. There are those few unfortunate ones who don’t-- as if they fell from eternal grace at the time of creation. Like those accursed seeds that take root only to grow in shadows--warped, yellowing and infested with parasites. And there are those fewer who make it out of the cocoon. Barely. Danny wasn’t one of them. Danny was one of those kids with deep black holes for eyes. Not hollow, not empty, not void--just a vortex of dark matter which sucked you into his pain. He was born with a dying mind which disintegrated with every drink my father consumed and every insult that reverberated in the inner recesses of his tender heart. That was Danny whose chubby, flailing limbs like tentacles of a sea anemone merged with the quiet stillness of the night—on those nights he was not haunted by sounds. The same one who believes I killed our father. I wish I had gotten to the bastard before alcohol did. Not that it mattered to any of us. Except for mother. The same Danny who lies listless, sedated, and doped in a state of perpetual depression, in the psychiatric ward. When I woke up this morning, the weight of Kafka’s book lay heavily on my subconscious. Had I, too, metamorphosed into a roach if not slipped back into Danny’s decaying cocoon? My realities and dreams merge like outer space expanding and contracting simultaneously. Unfathomable. Timeless. Those psychiatrists don’t differ much from scientists who discovered the Kuiper belt and in their haste claim Pluto is not be the ninth planet after all. Why can’t one exist without the other? Why can’t multiplicity co-exist without canceling out the weaker phenomenon? What are the norms, and who decides them--some Ivy League scholars who have nothing better to do than draw and re-draw the ever shifting boundaries of normalcy. Like sexuality of gays, bisexuals and heterosexuals—what is the standard used to measure the merging sexual identities. The last time experts checked gender does not lie between the legs, but between the ears. Normalcy is overrated. How far would they go to explain Danny’s inner space and my existence, or vice versa for that matter?! Danny is the seventeen year old cocoon, intact and hanging listlessly from its own silken thread—shriveled and rotting in its infancy. In silence, I watch and protect him. I am his keeper. I will always be his keeper. How long will it take for them to accept this?! I close my journal. My fingers lovingly trace the scuffed leather spine which resembles a well worn pair of moccasins. It’s one of many journals gifted to me by my therapist. Each journal represents a year of writing. Nine journals line the shelf in sequence. They are the only colorful items in my ward room of sterile white and uniform blue. This particular book holds my recent memories—dreams of demons and angels from the other worlds. Like gargoyles and jinns, they emerge to torment me in the last hour before the faint silver linings of dawn-break. And it’s on this sacred tablet I record the proof of my existence with words, phrases and fragments of memories. Here, I safely tuck away any thread of insanity, mental chaos thrust deep within the leaves of the journal. “Hey Happy Birthday, D!” Maggie’s voice accompanies her knock at my door. Mother and Maggie step into my ward room. “Hey you!” I smile as I pick her up. Maggie is tiny for all her thirteen years. No budding breasts, not even a training bra. She still dresses up like a nine-year-old and loves me like a three-year-old. Unconditionally. “Hello mother! I haven’t seen you in a while!” I take in her furrowed brows which have specks of white in them. Her forehead is a crisscrossed mass of track lines, like a postcard of San Francisco I’d seen a long time ago. But hers don’t boast of vermillion setting suns against the backdrop of bronzed skies, only of a dying star—of dust, debris and remnants of a toxic life. She nods at me skimming over my appearance, grazing me with her penetrating eyes. Her frown deepens while eyeing my pale pink T-shirt peeking from under my overalls. Her eyes trail down my denim pant legs to my toes peeping from under leather sandals. A matching set of pink toenails stare back at her —like newborn piglets raring for a new life. She refuses to meet my eyes and looks away at the birthday cake she holds on a tray. Her eyelids lower but not before I glimpse a single tear glisten at a random source of light coming through my room window. She thrusts the cake into my hands. It’s brown and white. Designs swirl into a concentric corona like a marble slab from an Egyptian temple. No pinks, no purples, no baby blues. I know she baked it herself. She always does. There are seventeen candles; ten are missing. She knows I am counting; I always do every year. But this year, I hoped she’d have the correct number. “Happy Birthday, Danny!” She whispers from behind Maggie’s scrawny shoulders cracking open the door to flee my outbursts. ___________ Journal entry Date: May 2, 2005 Time: 2:00 Am I am one of those butterflies which make it out of the cocoon. Barely. ---~~~~---