Carrying My Head Around

In which the author dreams of such, and awakens to another winter day's course of fatigue, sick feelings and circular doubts.

I’m a cyclical creature (more on that soon), and the winter tends to be a rather hard part of the cycle. As the days get shorter, I almost invariably get more fatigue, more illnesses and more pain.

Last winter, just like the one before, I got the flu despite vaccination (NOT because vaccines don’t work; the flu vax hasn’t been super protective in the last few years as far as eliminating risk of flu, but it generally means those who do get it will have an easier time of it.) And both times, it came amidst a string of antibiotic-worthy infections.

That’s the context for this piece, which I wrote the morning after dreaming it, on 2/13/19. I was so grateful to get to read it at Third Root Health Center in November, as part of an evenings of readings considering care through the lens of freedom, health and interdepence.

It was hosted by the lovely Ted Kerr and sponsored by the visionary What Would an HIV Doula Do? (WWHIVDD) collective, of which he is a member, as a part of BREAK OUT: A Movement to (re)integrate incarcerated writers into literary community from PEN America x The Poetry Project and the exhibition, METANOIA: Transformation through AIDS Archives and Activism:

(Image description: Grayscale, dark photo of a stair on a staircase on a slight angle tilting right. On the stair is a crumpled, white, empty plastic bag of the type given out at drugstores or grocery stores.)

Last night, I dreamed that I was carrying my own head around in a bag.

It was in a plastic shopping bag, like you get from the supermarket or drug store.

My head looked tired.

It was the skull and the face, plus a length of spinal cord, perhaps the length of the cervical spine.

I’m not sure when I’d started carrying my own head around, but at a certain point I asked myself if I had another head.

That is to say, I could see the head in the bag. What was I seeing the head in the band with?

So, yeah, I had a head attached to my body. And I also had this head I was carrying around in the bag.

Every now and then, I would take it out of the bag and look at it. And it certainly looked like me.

But it seemed like over time, it was becoming more weary, more shriveled, more old – which, of course, is the same thing that’s happening with me as well.

In this dream, I was in an old European city where I could take a tram car up a hill and look back at the city, which was a combination of old and new.

And then when I came back down into the city, I was in a building with different rooms. I was in one room where some harm reduction and drug user activists were having a slumber party as a fundraiser.

I found a bit of space where I could lay down, sort of curled around a couple other people. I made sure that I wasn’t in the way.

We were all very tired.

When I’d first realized I was carrying my own head, my old friend Jeff asked me to cut the skin off his face. 

There was an area of his face from about the eyes to the top of the mouth, where apparently he had grown new skin. 

So he wanted me to cut off the old, with a razor or something. I felt pretty queasy about it. 

But I did as he asked me to do, and I got all of it off, except for a section right underneath the eyes.

And I could see how the skin underneath was already sort of merging with the area where I stopped the cut. And it all seemed so obvious and simple at that point.

___

In another part of that building, there was an arcade of sorts.

I was playing a game that alternated between being on a big arcade game structure and being played via a handheld console like my kid keeps asking me to get her.

I was surprised I was playing the game. It was pretty bloody and violent.

I don’t usually go for that sort of thing.

I went down some stairs, then up some stairs, and into a coffee shop that was also a chocolate store. Apparently, drinking chocolate was an old tradition in this city, and I was excited about that.

I was also feeling a little better, because at that point, someone else was holding my head for me. And I was hoping that that meant we are going to have sex.

But there was confusion at the store as to which section was for chocolate candies, and where else one had to be to have the drinking chocolate, and it was feeling kind of elusive.

This morning, I woke up from that dream and had to get my daughter ready to go to school.

She got upset when she realized she needed to both take a bath and practice clarinet. 

I realized what she needed was for me to show her that it could all be done in the time she had.

So I went step-by-step through each process of the morning with her. 

By the time we got through the second step or so, she threw her arms around me, giving me a big hug.

She got upset again towards the end. There was a lot of tangles in her hair, and she was having a hard time getting them out. And then it hurt her when I was brushing her hair and getting them out.

Then I dropped her off at school and had a quick espresso at the coffee shop across the street from her school.

I was supposed to rush off to the Park Slope Food Coop for my workshift and shopping, but I got more and more achy on the walk home.

I realized maybe what I needed to do was get a better bag for my head. Not a leftover drugstore bag. Maybe something more ergonomic and cozy, for both me and my head.

I thought about all my somatic training, and meditation practice, and all of that…

And wondered if what I’m supposed to do is tell the head I love it, to welcome the head, to thank the head.

Which, sure, I can do that. But I’m also really tired.

I wonder if I could carry a head around that was less tired. Less worn out, less weary, less shriveled.

Can I take my head in for renovations? I want to honor this head. Thank you, head.

But what would happen if I just put the head down? Would it get lost?

What happens if I lose my head? Do I get a new one? Do I even need one?

I’m sitting on the sofa dictating to my phone. And I feel like my head is sitting next to me. Maybe that’s enough.