...The Sleepy Child

~The sleepy child ambled up clumsily to a kneeling position in order to better survey his surroundings. The room where he awoke was semi-dark and the midafternoon light played across the white bed linens laddering them as it exited through the venetians on the eastern windowed wall. Small motes of dust and other particulate matter floated eerily and caught in the sun’s rays forming disorganized patterns and glowing dramatically in the vertical eddies created by the heat in the stillness of the room. The queen sized bed from where he drew his bearings rose scarcely three feet as it surfaced from the floor but could just as well have been The Eiger or perhaps even the southwestern face of El Capitan such were his juvenile negotiating skills.  

The room itself was small by adult standards but, for the toddlers’ perspective, loomed large and profound with shapes contemplative and angular, and silence everywhere both distracting and oddly frightful.

 Translucent and bone colored window dressings embroidered with some sort of vertically running bamboo-like striations adorned one side of the bedroom. A steady summer breeze billowed the shadows of nearby maples and oaks and their representative dark duplications paneled the floor and western wall above the bed.  Discordant shapes and patterns displayed themselves in the filtered light as they struck objects within his field of vision.

The carpeted floors stretched out from below the bed and to the walls themselves.  Brown in color but perceived by the boy child as a form articulated somehow more by ill intent, malicious in nature, seemingly animated and perhaps better described by dread than spectral shading. The alarm clock on the bedside table ticked out the seconds, pulsating and clicking, adding some vague aural drama and establishing a tone of general unease. 

Somewhere in another room sounds emanated and passed beneath the trellis of the doorway. Muffled and incompletely understood but sensed by his childlike mind, disturbing and ill boding.

The young form that he currently occupied drew in all that he surveyed and all that was surveyed by him,  became him, ….occupied him, ….colored him.

 Given his relative newness to the world and, indeed, as some part of it unto himself, the synaptic foundation upon which he would begin to lay the groundwork for all of his understanding of things both tactile and philosophic began to take shape, ….To Evolve, ….To Learn, ….To Grow.

Countless varied things were absorbed and diagnosed by his “new” mind that would, in time, come to define who and what he was along with some cryptic pseudo-understanding of who and what the actions of others were and meant in relation to him and his own selfish needs. Neurons in his tiny but growing brain fired and bridged marking chemical pathways and creating connections with which to analyze that which crossed his mental geography.

The curtains along the window on the wall, their faintly embossed patterns, their nap, the lay of the material as it fell upon the valley of the floor. The dark and water-stained walnut finish of the dresser table, it’s poorly veneered surface covered by a laced and coffee spotted throw. The simple round clock marking time, making patterned observations of its own accord, telling its simple story. Muted conversations, their words not yet fully understood –not completely defined for study. Already he could grasp inflection and color in speech, volume and pitch, cadence and importance or the lack thereof. Although limited as he was in his ability yet to coherently label that which he drew inward, the absorption of everything that took place within his youthful surroundings carried on and he took to the task at hand like some factory worker seeking overtime and carefree of time clock considerations.

The sights and sounds and feelings from where he took this communion of sorts all filed away for some future references’ sake to be withdrawn from some colossal library of thought perhaps later, perhaps never to be glimpsed again except possibly in dreams themselves, perhaps never to be remembered still.

So much to take in, everything new. Things even when finally known, finally understood, firm in their definition, only later to be reassessed, re-understood like some task never fully completed only started, ….A Beginning Forever.

Still sleepy-headed he began to drift off. The heat of the afternoon sun settling on his skin, draping over him like some unknowable radiant netting, the boy dozed escaping this plane of awareness for now. Dreams came and his limbs twitched as if in recognition of some important task at hand.

On this day, and many others soon to come and go, there would be no memory of these dreams nor of the things that may have undoubtedly inspired them, ….Thankfully.~