Blank

Cindy suddenly became aware of the sound of a man's voice hollering. She smelled the wet,rotting leaves and knew the time of year. Her arms and legs were shivering from the dampness, her white tee shirt and jeans were wet from the rain. It was a steady, soft rain. The ground was covered in mist as if somebody was using dry ice for a stage production. If she weren't shaking so she might be able to appreciate the soft rhythm of raindrops. As it was they were dripping down her face and her clothes were stuck to her. Glued to her skin making her feel more than a little self conscious.

When she began to lift her arms to hug herself she noticed the sound of metal. Her wrists were bound with a silver chain. In her confusion she held her bound hands up to the sky as in question, but no answers came. The metal made clinking sounds as she lowered her arms and glanced at her bare feet, also bound in chain. She scanned the immediate distance and saw nothing through the rain but she could hear people and hear sounds. There was one voice in particular that rang out clearly.

"At what price, at what price will you pay for this strong, older woman? What price for what looks frail but could be full of spirit and spite? What price will you pay for unknown possibility? She'll give you a run for your money, this one, sometimes that's just what the doctor ordered for some of you fellas or maybe gals out there. What do I hear? Let the bidding begin."

Cindy tried to feel the inside of her mind. Where was her life? What was her life? Lifting the chains to hold her head in her hands she tried to focus. She knew she was standing there, being auctioned off, but that was now. What happened to then? There was nothing in there. It was if her mind was swept clean and now was like the inside of an all white room. Silent, peaceful, blank. It was truly gone. She longed for a mirror. Perhaps seeing her face would trigger thoughts about who she was. Cindy knew she must have worn glasses because all the space, filled with leaves floating down midst the rain drops, sounds of voices echoing, and sky and ground united in mist looked slightly out of focus, somehow askew. Other than that and her soaking white clothes Cindy had not a clue.

Without memory, without emotion CindySleigh stood on the slaves block...waiting...waiting for when and if anyone out there, in the now, would take charge of her empty being.

After much shouting a blindfold of red flannel was placed over her eyes and a person guided her off of the auction block. Cindy's hands were in front of her. She reached out making clinking sounds with her chains making random metallic tunes to ward off whatever evil could be before her. Cindy wound up in the back of a pick up truck. The feel of metal under her was one that was familiar. Curled up in the back of the open truck she murmured harmonies to the sound of the engine as the truck bounced along a dirt road. Cindy could smell space. Time moves differently when one's eyes are not available. She could feel the sun slowly drying out her wet jeans. It was a welcome warmth on her face. It calmed her to sing, hum in this unknown world.

Eventually the truck stopped and dust billowed all around her. Somebody lifted her out of the truck as if she was a child and carried her a short distance. Helping her stand took some doing with all her heavy metal parts. When finally she stood, her blindfold was removed. At first the brightness of light all around her made it hard to distinguish any one part from another. It was a seamless landscape. As her eyes adjusted Cindy found herself in a white room. Two window shaped holes were on either wall in front of her as well as a hole the shape of a door. There was a turquoise mat lying on the floor like part of the sky was placed there for her to rest upon.

She crumpled down on the floor like a useless piece of discarded paper. Words came from her captor's mouth, sounding something like French but not. He knelt down and began to remove the irons from her ankles. Swollen red and bloody Cindy suddenly became aware of pain. He threw the metal outside the door. Gently, like a lover unsure of himself, he reached down and held both of her hands. Cindy looked at them also. He lifted her up and stood before her softly singing songs incomprehensible to her. He slowly undid the metal holding her wrists together. The sounds of the chains mixed with his melody. Cindy stared down at her hands- looked up and he was gone.

Evidently,in this place there was no need for shackles as there is no place to go. Even if there was, why would she go as there is no need to seek. CindySleigh had no desire to move. The empty room mimicked the white inner room in her head. Where her thoughts and memory used to clutter, clamoring for space like an overfilled library of nonsense.

She looked out over a landscape filled with many heaving hills of beige sand. Cindy sat down cross legged on the dirt floor and watched the sun pass over the neutral landscape. The shadows full of lavender and blue would cut through the blankness of the eternal expanse of sand making shapes ever changing. The chariot ran its way across the sky leading the day into twilight.

CindySleigh rubbed her red, inflamed wrists and unconsciously began rubbing her hands together continually turning them over and over like Lady Macbeth...what to do...what to do? However the die had already been cast. There was, at this point in time nothing to do, nowhere to go, no thoughts left, no sentimentality (otherwise known as memory). She was sitting still with what is. Empty rooms within and without. Surrounded by a barren land alone wringing her hands as though they had been stained with blood.

Cindy Sleigh looked down at the dirt floor in front of her kneeling legs. Pieces of pain were scattered about in the form of a broken mirror. Cindy could see only parts of her reflection. The triangle, trapezoid and rectangular pieces showed many faces broken in half or quarters. Cindy leaned down close to one of the splintered slivers of silver coated glass. "My eye is gray." She pulled herself up and away. "My hundred eyes are gray." Moving her face from side to side she watched the movement of repetitions. Parts were gliding across an imaginary space.

CindySleigh picked up one of the chunks of the glass and eyed it carefully. She scanned it around her face and head. Her hair was very, very short and bright silver. "I am old," she exclaimed. Before she could absorb this new information Cindy noticed dark red rivulets running down her arm like veins only placed on the outside. "How is it I do not feel pain?" Part of her multifaceted reflection had sliced her left hand as she was searching for a remembrance in all the parts of the looking glass.

Cindy ripped part of her white shirt off at the waist using her teeth. She slowly wound it around her left palm. Here was the spot Lady Macbeth washed which never disappeared. Cindy held her hands as if in prayer to apply the pressure needed to stop the brown red blood. "Well, at least here is proof I know I am actuality. There was a reflection. There is blood. I am real." Though, in fact,it was hard to know for sure. The blankness in the empty room of her mind and the endless beige dunes outside pouring in through the opening of the door seemed more a place that belonged to a specter than a human being.

CindySleigh pressed her hands together hard. She stared up at the heavens. The sky reflected her prayer with heavy leaden clouds, violet, blue, gray, black billowing up and moving in with great speed full of portent. As these many bruises moved across the sky they could be seen circling round her heart. Then it began to rain.

She lay on her piece of sky and fell asleep. She dreamt of being under the earth. Moving her hands up like a seed looking for the light of day. Her digits spread and moved up out of the sand mimicking winter trees. Upon awaking she took special note of the dead trees outside of her doorway. They were birch trees, white with gray striated stripes surrounding the trunk and limbs. She could hear them as she sat inside. They were trembling as the wind whistled a low tune in the desert. Occasionally pieces would break off and fall onto the ground. Cindy decided to go outside the door and collect all the sticks that lay on the ground. "They are as broken limbs," she thought as she leaned forward to pick one up. Like bones bent and curved at the elbow or hands with a few digits cut off or lost.

Cindy created a pile out of the sticks four feet in front of her doorway. The sky was the orange before the red before the violet before the blue that became night. Her wood was like tangled hair yet it seemed to have a rhythmic sense to it. " A pile of lines," she thought. Her room needed no key, however, the key to her fire would be where other keys hide. Cindy searched the underneath of rocks tumbled about near her room and under a rock shining with mica she found the sulfur sticks that create the short erratic life of fire.

When she sat down and ignited the dry limbs began to grow from feeding on branches of life long dead. The flames quickly spread and became a living version of the orange in the sky as if the fire believed that if it leapt high enough it could touch that eternal space. Cindy heard a shivering in the trees. She looked up and dead leaves were on all the limbs shaking as if they were cold in the brisk wind. Translucent and curled, their tips reflected the orange of the fire. The wind whispered and the scratching of the ghost like leaves formed a vibration under the sound of the crack and snap of fire. The sky was moving from red to violet. Cindy tried to count the many leaves to quiet her mind about their sudden appearance. "How do dead leaves appear by the hundreds on dead trees?"

Then they flew. All at once the orange tipped butterflies took off circling in patterns that seemed like chaos but somehow made sense. They whirled and swirled around Cindy and her fire like an inner lit tornado. Just as quickly they disappeared into the dark purple of dusk. Cindy focused on the flames once bright and high, now burning red and gray. The limbs crumbling slowly down became ash. She sat and waited for the lapis blue of twilight. She sat until the moonless sky let the stars meet her like glitter sprinkled above her head. CindySleigh absorbed this into her very being and her spirit was both exhilarated and calm. Never had she experienced such magnificence. "Empty is full," she thought.

October Fifteenth Two Thousand and Nine

This morning when CindySleigh woke up there was salt crusts around her eyes. She touched them gently with her fingers and touched her tongue to her fingers. It was such a faint taste it was like a memory of the sea. Cindy knew she must have cried but had no memory of nightmares or dreams. The only memory she had of her sleep was the dried sea salt of her tears.
Her brain woke up with rapid transit speed...why?...why?...why? Cindy's mind ran scenarios, yesterdays plays like an express train trying to always be on time when bridges collapsed in front of it or snow blinded it or the demands of crowds of people would stop it in its path.
Cindy had trouble sorting out the daily interactions and what her place was. CindySleigh knew she was but one small piece of the game (of course she would be the queen if the game was chess) but the fluidity of the days were like trying to run on slick ice. Cindy needs ice skates for her psyche to keep up with the movements of the days. Slower moving days are not in her immediate future, her brain noted. Yet She yearned for days filled more like a Bach fugue, complex but somehow orderly. Instead it felt like eternal car crashes in Dantes Inferno. "I am being just a tad dramatic," Cindy said to herself.
"I feel dramatic god damn it."
Her exhausted physical being was hovering around an engine of energy that would not stop. That would not even sit in neutral. This engine wanted to move, to go, to act, to do. "How does one rest with these human contradictions," she wondered. Such were the thoughts of CindySleigh on October Fifteenth Two Thousand and Nine.

Distance

"This distancing thing is harder than my left brain said it would be," Cindy thought. You have to walk around with a searing heart inside while you practice, while you sit silent. The anger pulses through your veins and your mind is as one that would explode. She pushes her chair back and excuses herself from the table. Cindy retreats to the bedroom. She puts on her transparent gloves that sparkle with iridescent glitter. She slowly points both hands forward and glides into the mirror. The silver slate becomes fluid and makes circles that repeat themselves moving outward as if the mirror was a still pool. Each of her fingers has led her into the land of in between. Cindy sat cross legged and began to breathe with intent. Her room seemed very far away. She stared at her bed from the other side. The beating of her heart slowed. Cindy passed into the land of in between to rest and reflect, to find the empty place that does not expect to be filled, ever.

The magnificence of white, gray and pale blue. Cindy can not get enough of it. Twenty eight thousand feet up, the sky is a visual symphony for her. She does not have any sensation of movement. The sound is a hair dryer running continuously, so voices sound distant and the other humans cease to speak for the effort is too much. The marching cadence of clouds are as varied as anything she has ever seen and it brings her joy even as her eyes tire of watching out the small window.

In the beginning the clouds were overhead and underneath with lapis blue pools in between. The overhead clouds cast rays of sun to the lower group and the light made strong patterns, random patterns of light and dark. Under the lower clouds these rays never would touch the earth. Such is the magic of sky. The clouds encased CindySleigh in the fog of gray she loves and knows so well. It is the womb she was born in and will always return to.

Her shoulders relaxed as she took in the mist and let it massage her mind. At one point the clouds were acres and acres of round shapes completely filling the rectangular window. Huge, white, cotton balls were just sitting there waiting to be picked and spun into a giant web to cushion her pain. As is usual, the power of the moment distracted her to the past. To her body freezing in place when it is easy to move. Cindy left the plane for a while to re experience the passion that drives her and the void that stops her both at the same time. This took about a half an hour.

All of a sudden Cindy came back to the present and saw the sky play at being the land. The Arctic in all its glory was just outside her window. Miles of visual ice and snow with lovely gray blue shadows cutting in as the slabs of ice slowly moved apart. Infinite distance was with her as the clouds cut and sliced themselves to form another part of the world for CindySleigh. With her vision glued to the horizon countless miles away the rods of her eyes could not absorb any more blue and the sky was a red and blue speckled lavender as it climbed up to the heavens.

As this metal winged bird descended most of the clouds disappeared and a large muddy snake wound its way across the landscape called earth as far as Cindy's eyes could see. Fields cut out on either side to use the river for nourishment as a mother nurses a child. Tiny tufts, like those that poke out of a pillow moved across, duplicating themselves in shadow on the murky reptile we call the Mississippi. Dark shadow cloud patterns four times larger than the clouds themselves which are so delicate and white. This vast shadow slowly slid across the land making darkness that is hardly noticeable when one's feet are on the ground.

The plane bumped a few times and pushed Cindy way back, deep in her seat. She now was on the ground again. Cindy knows eventually ones feet must be on the ground but oh what flights of fancy the endless sky holds for her dreams.

The Future
Cindy moved with the sun and slept with the moon. Time was sliding sideways. Emptiness that was full. One pitcher of water left hand pouring into the pitcher in the right hand...repeat. The days had no number, no pattern. Cindy was staring into blank space. This is what filled her days and most of her nights. CindySleigh is not really present and definitely not accounted for.

On this day she stared at the river watching it move in two directions at once. River to sea, sea to river, concurrent flowing. The downing of a cold glass of fresh to the taste of sea salt on the tip of your tongue. The gray was among us as it had been for she did not know any longer how long.

Suddenly she saw a small black shadow peripherally. A quick sudden motion about three feet tall. Not sure how many legs but it was a color black she remembered well. Black so black...black and blue. CindySleigh sat very still and relaxed her shoulders. She kept her breath steady, quiet like a secret. Cindy saw the quick flash of black, like a hole in the fabric of time, once again.

Her pulse quickened, her eyes teared, she did not dare to move a muscle. Her eyes saw the distorted view in front of her through the current of salt water pouring from her eyes mixed with the electric spark revolting her nervous system to full alert.

CindySleigh knew in her heart this moment propelled her into a future yet unknown. A future she had kept at bay for some time by erasing time as it presented itself, by sitting very still, by breathing in all that was around her and exhaling her self to the gray. Where she was, was no more. This black tear was coming, quickly and with a ferocity no other human being really knows. A creature who could only come to be form from he we do not name. CindySleigh was very frightened.