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It felt like I had been missing a lifetime. What day is it,month, year? What happened to yesterday? Those were the questions bouncing around in my head, but as of yet, there was no answer. Did I have a right to expect an answer? Someone please help me. I tried to recall exactly what my last lucid moment was. Nothing, absolutely nothing, entered my foggy head, and yet I realized there was something nudging at the fringe, and it was the clue to all the mystery. I wasn't alone in this, someone was sharing the void, the hollowness,and it was necessary for my sanity to discover who that someone might be. This is how my search began on that lonely gray day , with this question: who are you and where can I find you.
I had many questions for myself that day. Where am I and why can I not see? Why can I not move? Why am I so drowsy? I pondered these questions from that dark place. Pondered is not exactly accurate. At first, I frantically flipped through those questions, over and over. I studied them to various degrees of exploration. There were so many smells surrounding me. I could identify none of them. Some were sharp and some were round and enveloping. Not a single one of them connected with any memory inside me. Nothing inside me answered those smells with even the smallest bit of recognition. I mused about that but smells were least of my worries. I fretted over bigger things. Like why could I not move? I seemed only to be a mind. Yet my mind was not my mind because I was used to using that part of me as a tool to move the rest of me and it would not perform its familiar job. I spent so much time - how much time - willing into motion that distance from me that I remembered having recognized as my foot. My foot would not move. In fact, where my foot, my arm, my torso should have been there was nothing. I seemed to be floating, somehow, in some dark place. The place had darkness and noises and smells, and broken me. And there were so many, many questions in there with me. They would come at me so relentlessly I could not even begin to answer for they would be immediately replaced by another, then another.
I started to panic, I couldn't move and still it seemed that I was in a surreal state of movement.Someone, something was guiding me to turn into myself and to begin the exploration from the beginning of my existence, from that first moment of being. Back, back to a time unknown, unexplored previously, but so necessary now. How could that be accomplished? Had it ever been done before? Could I be the first to experience this fetal state and use my current situation as a building block to reenter a time before birth. I would try. What choice did I have other then wallowing in self pity for the state I had now entered. I must get to the source of this dilemma. I had answered my own question. There was no one to help me, I must do it myself. My mind was still functioning so use it I must before that too saw a need to leave me. Begin at the beginning now became my mantra. So my journey began and at that point I realized I had been here before many years ago. Some sounds were familiar as were some of the odors. I could hear melodies, simple songs. A sweet smell accompanied the song and began to comfort me and with that the panic began to subside.
Abruptly I recognized that sweet smell. Potica! I was smelling potica! I recognized the rich, what is it, I was at a loss again. The word is . . . ? the word for that certain ingredient you smell in so many things . . . yeast! I could smell the rich, back of the nose, plump smell of the yeast in the potica. There must be a piece of it nearby. And nuts. I can just smell the nuts that fill the pastry. Walnuts. Potica, yeast, walnuts. They are here with me. I am not alone. Potica always makes me feel not alone. It's all going to be ok. I have potica and there is a song. So much understanding and so much hope. I want to dwell on all of this, to smell more, to get the words back for things I know I know, to figure this dark place out and to understand why I am here. I know that it is very important for me to understand as much as I can. Each bit of comprehension will lead to another. Linking those bits together will fill the whole picture in until I understand everything.I am overwhelmed with this recognition and with the enormity of work that lay before me and with the need to sleep. I can feel my head getting foggy. I force myself to remember the word yeast. I focus on that and try to fill my head with yeast, yeast, yeast, don't forget the word yeast, until I find that all that yeast has pushed the other words out. What is the word for the think the yeast is in? What is the first word that came to me? Was there another word? Yeast. Yeast and . . . And. And I realize I am coming to again. I had fallen asleep. Here I am. Here I am. It is so dark in here. Am I awake? Somehow there is so much more nothing than I remember, even in her.
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