water tower man

sometimes i find myself in this place with this water tower.  these “dreams” started a few years ago when i started having a new kind of symptom, the “brain ping.”  i’ll explain that in another post someday, but the brain ping frequently brings about a kind of halluciation i can’t find a definition for.  it’s as if the whole of the world is overlaid with another yet i am the same.

so there i find myself most times, standing in the street, the car that dropped me off driving away.  i’m always dressed improbably, in things i would never actually wear.  high-heeled shoes and cocktail dresses.  my hair in complicated twists and curls.  i’m the same.  i look the same, i sound the same.  maybe i’m thinner, i don’t know.  i only recall having seen myself in the mirror in the way that people recall having looked in a mirror before leaving the house.  there’s nothing else to do but walk across the street.  it’s always ominous.  the sky is perpetually the color of impending rain and the water tower, which isn’t a water tower at all, stretches into the clouds.  they’re not like earth clouds.  they look like them at a glance but if you really look at them you can see that somehow the wind is all the way up there, moving them faster than it moves our clouds.  it’s more chaotic.  there’s always a storm a’brewin over the water tower.

you can’t see the top of it.

the scary thing is how well my mind lies to me.  while i’m walking i’m feeling myself forgetting my life here.  it’s as if the water tower causes amnesia.  the closer i get to it, the more the thoughts of my niece, my sister, seem distant and i have to clutch them as tightly as possible to keep them with me.  by the time i wake up in his bed the next morning, i’ll know those people are figments of my imagination.  i live there, in that place, and i come to the water tower to see the water tower man.  he’s called me over again.

he’s asian, tall, handsome.  his hair is very short and he’s the most reticent person i know in any world, that one or any other.  he wants to know something, but i don’t even know what it is.  i dread going to his apartment in the water tower because he’s got everything i like there.  he’s taken every effort to be a kind and gracious host.  when i’m there i can’t remember what it is about him that makes me so uncomfortable.  he’s so quiet, but when he looks at me i can tell he’s waiting for me to tell him something.  he never really asks, just waits and waits.  since i can’t say for sure what he’s up to, i can’t rightly be mean to him can i?  so i’m polite and i stand at the big windows and look out at the miles and miles of flatland.

so much green grass.

eddie chen took me into the water tower the first time with his arm around my waist.  in my mind, he was being unnecessarily familiar with me.  it was night and the tower was amazing.  i’ve never seen the top of it, it’s so tall.  and in the night against those turbulent skies the lights dotting the expanse stretching upward into the darkness is impressive.  it made me feel so tiny.  we stepped into the elevator.  it’s the only way in. 

it’s like being in a glass bullet.  the top of it is elliptical, like someone stretched one side of the cylinder taller than the other.  through the slanted circle on top i looked up and tried to see how far up my eyes could take me.  i saw nothing really, except the sides of the tunnel up there.  the elevator came to life.  i hesitate to say jolted because the motion was so smooth.  my stomach lurched because of the dissonance between the amount of motion i could feel and the amount i could see.  i hate to admit it but i held onto eddie.  i think he felt encouraged.  there’s an observation level.  it’s pretty high up, the view is amazing.  above that is a floor that is not visible from the elevator.  the tunnel is surrounded by a tube of something.  above that is eddie’s apartment.

his livng room is sunken in and it’s full of big fluffy pillows.  there may even be a couch there but i don’t think i have ever sat in there.  i only recall having been to his apartment kitchen once.  i say apartment kitchen because i prefer the office kitchen.  it’s small and has a little refrigerator and a couple of chairs and i can grab someting from there without feeling like i’m settling into his home.  i don’t even know where i live there.  i would hate to think i live with him.  in tragic light of that, i can say i have slept in his bed.  the bedroom has such wonderful windows, there’s never sun glare near the water tower.  the bed itself is so warm and comfortable.  every time i wake up there i am cursing myself for having fallen asleep in there.  it’s like i am accepting his suspect hospitality.  it’s not like he’s said or done something wrong…i just can’t believe he’s not up to something.  when i wake up there, i say to myself (or him, if he’s around) “i had that dream about that little girl again.”

eddie chen, the water tower guy.  he’s an interesting character himself.