Friday, December 5, 2008

Broken Eggs and Sinking Raft

This all ends up WASTING so much time because nothing WORKS RIGHT! I am getting very frustrated and upset.




The Broken Eggs


I am at Florence Morrison's house for a class she is teaching and she is frying eggs for us--we have to get them from the fridge and bring them to her and she tosses them into the pan--to speed things up. When I go to get mine, the fridge is full of broken brown eggs, and stacks of shells. Everyone else finds eggs, but I find only shells and broken eggs. Florence tells me broken eggs are still good and I say, "remember how I used to have chickens bag then, I know about broken eggs," but I still can't find any that are edible. She tells me I need to hurry and I crawl inside the refrigerator in order to see better. Now, even the cracked ones are gone.

I wake up with images of cracked and broken eggs haunting me. (Broken dreams?)
I feel somehow sad and left out.
I honored the dream by writing that poem, and I ask for dreams of clarification.

I am grateful for

  • enough sleep to dream.
  • a husband who seems to really love me, in spite of the wretched poem I just wrote about him
  • a husband who is handsome and sexy
  • the fact that I lost some weight! YAY!

    OK, here's the poem I wrote based in part upon the dream:



    The Sinking Raft

    Slowly, my husband unloves me. He stops
    putting the clean laundry in the drawers, then stops
    fluffing and folding it. Brings it up and dumps it
    in a tangle. Stops greasing my feet, rubbing my back,
    making love to me. "I will do everything,"
    he said, when he was courting. I dream of Florence,
    wife of John, my botany professor. More than forty
    years ago, John tried to get me into bed. I refused,
    despite his gifts and constant attention, but Katra caved
    and fell that long dark fall where you know you'll die
    when you hit bottom, and she wasn't dreaming.
    Katra didn't die, she became a lesbian, after John.
    Who could blame her? And Florence had an unfaithful

    husband. I hated John for that. "I'll do everything,"
    my husband said. "You can't," I countered.
    He tried, but couldn't. Of course
    he couldn't. No one could. I can't
    do anything. I rarely sleep, stare, zombie-like
    at the increasing chaos I can't control
    with my exhausted brain and body.
    But each time he stops, I see him turning away,
    turning his face to the wall, inching toward the farthest
    edge of the bed, away from me. He does that, too.
    Leaves me in sleep. I leave him, too,
    get up and pace the dark for hours, too tired
    to be useful. I finally sleep and go

    somewhere he's never been, without him.
    When I dream of Florence, her refrigerator is full
    of broken eggs. She fries eggs for all the women
    her husband courts, and everyone gets eggs
    but me. But why go back now, forty years later?
    Menopause? Dashed hopes, broken dreams?
    Is, like John, my husband unfaithful? "Remember
    when you used to love me?" I ask my husband.
    He tries the same on me. "See how it hurts?"
    He clings to me in bed, before he turns away,
    clings as to a life-raft in a stormy sea.
    I cling to him. We're not unfaithful, only old
    and getting daily older.


    Mary Taitt
    081205-1026-1c; 081205-0945 1st


    I'm always making BB sound like a jerk. Actually, I'm the one that's a jerk, probably.

    I had a terrible night last night. Did not get to sleep until well after 3:30 AM. When I don't sleep well, everything looks bad to me.

11 comments:

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

oops, I don't know why part of it came out tiny; I'll try to fix that. If more of these appear, ignore them and I will delete them when I get a chance.

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

I tried 5, 5, 7 times to post this and for some reason it wasn't working--things are SO MUCH MORE UPSETTING when I am tired I should even attempt to blog when blogger isn't working right. I have so much to do that to waste all that time is horrifying to me. But once I'd started, I wanted to finish, and meanwhile, I have several other posts that didn't post. WAHN!

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

BB prolly hasn't stopped making love to me--it's just been a while.

bluerose said...

What is an egg? The beginning. The promise of birth, hopes, and dreams. We all want to ingest them to keep our hopes and dreams eternally, even though it doesn't make sense. It's just an egg. What is romance but an egg. The promise of the birth of love. We all want to consume it. We get high from it, because it makes us feel better about ourselves. We feel like anything is possible if we have love. This egg is going to save us from ourselves, but it's dependent on someone else providing it for us. Logically, we know no one can save us from ourselves, but there's always a side of us that strongly desires it's salvation, the happily ever after. I call her Sandy. In my dreams, she's very promiscuous, and tries to steal my boyfriends. I resent her, reject her, and refuse to acknowledge her existence, because she is so irrational, and the more I do, the more trouble she causes me.

Florence tries to feed you bad eggs. By not eating them your miss out on all the fun. But, you know they will make you sick, so it's a good thing you don't eat them. Even if we find a good egg, though, like I did, the fun doesn't last forever. Love doesn't cure our insecurities, and I found myself getting irritated with my husband all the time, because he didn't make me feel better about myself all the time anymore [of course I didn't realize that was why at the time]. The romance had worn off as it does in time with all marriages. I had become very dependent on that high. In order for our love to continue to grow, I had to learn to love myself, all parts including Sandy. I was learning that and our love was evolving to the next level when he died. After he died, I went right back to looking for an egg to get me high again, because I was so lonely and used to be special. I ate some pretty nasty eggs, and they made me sick. I still needed to learn to not only accept that irrational side of me, but to forgive and embrace her. [uh... still working on that ;]]

This is what I thought of when I read your deep poem. There's so much meaning. It's interesting that Florence tells you to hurry and find an egg. She might be a part of you that had a role in your past marriage.

Again, just a thought ;]

On a different note. I was up until 2:30 this morning fighting with my computer, so I'm feeling your pain. I always wake at 7am no matter what time I go to bed. After my husband died, and I was trying to learn my computer, I threatened several times to take my computer out to the back yard, douse it with gasoline, and offer it up to the sadistic computer gods in hopes of appeasing them.

bluerose said...

cool pic!

bluerose said...

I just thought of something. Is this dream the answer to your request for a clarifying dream on how to clean up the mess? Maybe Florence is the part of you that's preventing you from cleaning?

Just another thought ;]

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

Lots of good, interesting, helpful and thought-provoking thoughts!

Thank you!

That dream MAY have been an answer to the cleaning up question or the how am I getting in my own way question. I have to think about it and ASK Again for further clarification. It is interesting to dialogue this way! :-D

Hubby has gone off to get pizza for PB who is doing volunteer work for his choir. I need to take a quick walk int he snow and make dinner.

Lets all burn our computers; the world might be better off, LOL!

Of course, then I would not have met you! :-(

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

It's SO WEIRD that I dreampt about Florence, who was a perfectly nice person in real life. I liked her and got along well with her. But I suppose if she thought I was balling her husband, there might have been some underlying tension/anger etc. I wasn't, though.

That was SUCH a long time ago--funny how there things surface like bloated fish!

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

Did you see that some of my earlier attempts to post DID show up!

GRRR! Where's that gasoline and a match?

LOL!


:-(

bluerose said...

bluerose has computer woes
up til 2 am
photoshop froze
anything goes
clicking buttons again & again

bluerose has computer woes
and she's not too proud
to admit that her PMS
made an even worse mess
oh sorry, did I type that out loud?

bluerose has computer woes
gonna douse the thing with gasoline
try my sacrificial odds
at appeasing sadistic computer gods
with a 3yr old, out dated e-machine!

;]

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

LOL! What a RIOT! That brought a smile to my face for sure. :-D