by D. L. Keur writing as herself and/or one of her numerous pen names
Stepping into the shower, she listens to the giggling in the walls, watches light refracting in the streaming spray, smells the fragrance of freshness. Tastes it, too. She closes eyes, lessening visual stimulation. While spatially disorienting, this decreases distraction.
Narrowing focus, she concentrates upon sensation. Sound and odors fade; touch, the lesser skill, can now dominate attention. She revels in sensation: tingling, stinging, punctuated hot; dripping, streaming flow sweeping all around, swirling at her feet. Immersed in movement of the stream, her mind explores vectors and trajectories.
“Raynie, did you take the garbage out?”
The sound explodes around her. The world spins, threatening to topple her.
She extends a hand, but can’t find ‘solid’.
Concentrating, she manages to still herself enough to hold stability, despite the violent buffeting of tidal swirls that threaten to upend her. She trues to that hold, but the effort is immense. Still, she knows it’s necessary. Doing less will bring unending queries and more violent disturbances.
With a will, she splits attending from single- to multi-dedicated focus. She seeks and finds ‘speech’, the least of her capabilities, but the one most critical to maintaining comfort levels within those with whom she shares experience.
The effort makes her breathless. She coheres the necessary communication from conceptual instance into distributed linear stream, making sure the energy within that stream congeals into: meaningful, simple, concise.
Once sure, she finds, then engages mouth and tongue, that finding and engagement also requiring of her immense concentration.
“Raynie?”
“No, Mom. I’ll do it when I’m finished showering.”
“Well, hurry up. The bus will be here.”
Dedicated concentration fractured, she struggles to stabilize herself as every sense goes overload. She struggles and, with a breath, just manages appropriate response—“Okay”—then she hopes that Mom will go away so she can regain control.
Silence answers, and, as the metasphere around her calms, the skirls and buffeting exponentially diminish until they become mere ripples dissolving into echoes as they fade off down the here-now’s timeline.
I have a friend, and she writes books–lots of books. Her name is Marva Dasef, and she calls herself The Cellophane Queen…because nobody seems to notice her or how good her books are.
Turning my head from primarily working my graphic arts biz (see zentao.com if curious, though that’s not the half of it, not even) to writing as my focus makes me even more aware of how much work I was doing helping others with their projects while ignoring mine. It’s a real eye-opener. To suddenly focus on me is all but a completely new experience. In fact, it is a completely new experience. There’s a sense of utter joy, deeply felt to almost overwhelming, but there’s also this odd sense of guilt–a sense that I’m neglecting something that’s crucial. So I’m going to compromise just a little. I won’t say no to everyone who asks for assistance, just the most presumptive.