Wine Slows Ascension

Late July 2013

 

My progress has slowed tremendously. I no longer find myself staring at my bedroom wall while receiving downloads from the vortex above my head. It is still there, but its opening has tightened. I see Charlie* less often and weeping over the pictures I have left of Cy has gone from a few times a week in June to only once this month of July, and it was terribly forced.

            Last week I found myself riding south down Vancouver Boulevard on my bicycle late at night. His spirit has always wandered this road as well as Wilammette, which stretches parallel to Vancouver and leads north. His presence still was weak like it had been the last few weeks, but that’s also because I had not attempted too hard to tap into it. However here on this bike lane, I heard him riding behind me. An odd experience, seeing as he usually rode ahead of me. Now he just followed and protected me.

            I wanted to feel sad. I was angry at myself for not feeling the need to cry and scream, which was so hard to ignore before. As the warm summer wind dried my eyes and willed me to tear up, the guilt of lack of despair overwhelmed me. I pulled the memories of him to my chest and as each street passed" NE Thompson, Tillamook, San Rafael… he grew clearer until I reached Hancock, where his old studio was. I thought of the accident he had last summer, a hit and run. He picked himself up from the corner and with a collapsed lung and busted shoulder, he was able to walk back and fall just outside the door of the studio building. The next day he called me from the hospital.

 

I should have visited. I had just experienced a fire in my home and in a panicked state, had called Wes* to come retrieve me. Three weeks later I was still staying in his house when I received Cy's call.

 

The wind pushed me harder and the sound of his spinning spokes behind me grew louder. He disappeared quickly after I crossed Broadway and cruised down into Northwest toward home. Soon we both were gone and I went to bed without a trace of him left in my thoughts. 

Author's Note

**Names are changed either dramatically or hardly at all.