Author: Katherine J Krein

The running script of thoughts I’ve taken the time to digitally commit here are mere snapshots of some of the things that have whirled around me these past couple of years. The act of writing down and reading back my thoughts has been therapeutic for me. My emotional roller-coaster has slowed down as daily routines have taken over.

I’m not sure what madness inspired me to put my deeply personal story out here for the world to read. The reality is that everyone has a story, and in the rush of living, the rest of the world barely listens to individual stories outside of their own. However, through my emotional ups and downs I have been forced to take the blinders off of my eyes.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to embrace the harsh attitude so many people take. Though, I have had passing feelings of anger and hurt at other’s insensitivity. These feelings pass since I don’t choose to wallow in negativity. I still feel the Holy Spirit within and without me trying to hold me up, and it has shown me the path to greater self-love and confidence.

I’m not sure how much I’m going to commit to this digital diary in the future. I’m hoping to start a longer writing project moving in a different direction and into a new form.

Knowing me, I will probably update this periodically with spontaneous poetry and other inane musings.

A couple years ago a woman came to work at the school where I work. We were around the same age, and seemed to be from similar backgrounds. On second thought, I think she was several years younger than me. She had been a stay at home mother like I had been for ten years. This was her first year back to work, and she had all the enthusiasm of an idealist. She kind of reminded me of how I was many years ago when I reentered the work force. Time and age has a tendency to tame this, and by year’s end, I could see that some of her enthusiasm had been tamed. The work can be hard when your heart is so entrenched.

One day we happened to be having lunch in the same small break room.She made the comment that every time she hears our school called HMS, which are its initials, she thinks of the words: “Her Majesty’s Ship.”

I think she was referring to ships that sail the seas under the protection of a monarchy. However, I visualized being on a star-ship. This made me smile. I like the idea of being protected by a royal female entity.

My imagination had hooked onto her imagination, and then went in its own direction. For the rest of the day, I imagined sailing through the skies undercover on a royal mission to improve all of humankind. Looking back at this makes me laugh. An active imagination helped me to soar that day. Every day I can summon its power it fills my heart with hope.

This is an idea I hope to instill in all the students I encounter.

(I’m on holiday break right now. In my attempts to clean up the clutter in my sitting room, I can’t ignore the notebooks full of frantic writing. I started filling notebooks around the summer of 2013 when my life and mind were shattered. I haven’t yet decided what I’m going to do with them, though, I was inspired to write this poem today to give you a flavor of their contents.)

Barely There

Chasing other’s expectations, running out of breath, never questioning the route, never stopping to explore the hidden motives, I had lost my essence, my passion, my true value. 

I was barely there.

When everything began to break apart I was nothing but liquid smoke clinging to my hollow frame. My mind went haywire, bouncing off everyone else’s thoughts and dreams.

I desperately needed to recollect my scattered mind. Their tentacles had reached into my brain trying to unnerve me. They found my weakness, my taboo thoughts that had been locked away. Though it was I who had unwittingly opened the door. I dared to play this mind game that nearly claimed my soul.

The dark woods beckoned, and my weakness followed. My mind quivered with anticipation. My body was drawn into the quicksand of my dreams. Space and time were frozen where I had dared to go.

I was barely there.

I’ve finally found my way back home. I’m still learning to contain and control my errant thoughts. I’ll eventually decide what I’m going to do with all my scattered frantic notes. For now they can sit and fill the space of an old antique chair.

Simple words can express complex thoughts. Action to action along a chain of connected reactions, you can try to trace the beginning.

Marks and signs along the way help to organize these events. Multiple players follow multiple paths, and overlapping paths can confuse us all. To keep them straight you need layers.

The separating layers keep us apart, and yet, the picture is not complete if layers go missing.

The brave among us attempt to be record-keepers in this confusing game.

Language is a communication tool, though, faulty interpretations can mess everything up.

Those with money and power try to control our collective interpretation of our shared world. In the process, they tip the balance their way.

Winners usually record the history which many take to be the complete truth.

If you see the world in black and white with clear cut divisions, you will be missing a big part of the real picture.

Keeping it simple should not mean removing layers and colors.

Overlaps are where common ground exists. These places must be preserved and expanded whenever possible. These common areas are crucial in researching where the truth lies.

We need to find ‘a’ truth where we can all peacefully co-exist.

The past few days have been peaceful, almost too peaceful. It felt like I was drifting on a sea of endless platitudes.

I was living in a slow-motion film until my mind began to nudge me in another direction.

One small step was simple at first until I began to feel a sudden shift in momentum.

I fell backward onto a wavelength I thought I had left behind.

I woke up this morning feeling like I’d been tumbling through a Lina Wertmuller film: Swept Away.

I had moved into a virtual realm where Romeo resides. This mind shift my dream had taken filled me with ambivalence.

On one hand, I felt I had succumbed to sin. On the other hand, a dream is harmless. It hurts no one.

The electrical current running through my dream awakened me.

The truth is there is no satisfaction in lifeless platitudes.

I’m thankful for many things. Among them, I’m thankful my mind has settled on fixing a Thanksgiving feast.

The bright green Granny Smith apples are waiting to be sliced for a pie.

The dough will be rolled out on wax paper. The top hasn’t been decided. It will either be a French crumb or a fancy criss-cross.

Cornbread sausage stuffing is an old family favorite. This year I’m thinking of adding chopped pecans.

I have three little piles of potatoes: sweet, red, and golden.

The fresh turkey will be rubbed down with a sweet navel orange, and then seasoned before it goes in the oven.

The French green beans are clean and thin. The cranberry orange relish is already made.

I’m thinking of splurging on a store bought centerpiece: a cornucopia of flowers.

My father died June twenty-second (6/22). This was the first weekend of my summer break. My father’s wife was well prepared to handle the details of death.

I was not looking forward to summer. My mother was 83 years old and getting ready to undergo chemotherapy for a second series. She had been in remission for several months after her first series. It came back with a vengeance.

Even though my parents lived about forty minutes apart, they had been strangers for years. My mother had not been a witness to my father’s decline. She had not seen his slow march to death. She didn’t have to watch the vacant look and emaciation take over my father’s face.

That summer I was forced to watch that same look of death close in and begin to consume my mother. My mother’s husband was less prepared than my father’s wife to handle the details of death.

Time began to warp for me that summer. When I look back and try to order the events that began to happen to me, I can’t be certain of their sequential order. It all gets fuzzy in my mind and memory. I can remember fragments, some of them very vividly. However, the time stamps were missing. It was as if time had stopped for me, and I was living in a vacuum of jumbled events.

I had a dream that summer which in my mind was the initiating event that made me begin to question reality, and specifically my reality.

It was a summer day, and I had laid down for a nap. Maybe it was mid-morning. I was dressed for the day.

It’s difficult to describe what happened because it doesn’t compare to any dream that I’d ever had before this time. I’m not even sure if it was a dream. I’m calling it this because I don’t know what else to call it.

I had a vague awareness that I was lying on my stomach on my bed and my eyes were closed.Something ethereal was within me and within my mind. I remember trying to reach out and touch it. I remember trying to hold its hand to my heart. I remember it reaching back and touching me on my lower back. I had a vague sense it was placing something within me, possibly in my lower spine. Strangely I was not frightened. I kept trying to touch it and have the sensation of feeling flesh. Finally in the last seconds of this dream, I felt its fingertip and saw a flash of light. I heard or sensed it saying “thank-you”.

The last image I saw before my eyes opened to my bedroom floor was the image of a floor somewhere else. I remember seeing the bottom of file cabinets for a fraction of a second. I have no file cabinets in my bedroom.

I have no idea why this ethereal entity was thanking me. After awhile I began to speculate whether my unconscious brain had made some sort of deal. I began to remember fragments of conversation where I thought I was agreeing to something. However, I never could really understand or fully remember what all these conversations entailed. I had to face the possibility that it was all in my imagination.

After awhile I began to think that this entity had seen my future, and was somehow preparing me for it, and ensuring my survival. After this strange dream my reality began to feel as if it was shifting in front of my eyes. There were times I felt like I was in a trance or a waking dream.

During this same time frame my mother had encouraged me to open a financial fund. When I met with the financial adviser I felt like I was in a trance state. At the end of our meeting he handed me a yellow strip of paper where he had written my account number, and then we shook hands. At the moment of our handshake I had an odd flashback to touching the finger of light in my previous dream.

This yellow strip of numbers became attached to an unexplained mission that I felt I needed to explore. I could not shake this foolishness. I fell or was pushed down a rabbit hole of a number obsession. It has taken me years to climb out of it.

My mother died on November tenth (11/10) after a hard and grueling summer and early fall. After this my obsession shifted into high gear.

I have had to face all of this knowing that I’ll never really know what happened to me. I’ll never really know whether there were external forces acting upon me or whether this was all an elaborate creation of my mind alone.

You pull out a thin white strip of paper from the cracked cookie shell.

The words, type written with ink, relay a message.

It can be advice or a warning, sometimes it sounds like a prophecy.

The back-side of this strip holds a set of lucky numbers.

The randomness of fortune cookies appeals to my whimsical nature.

Though, I’ve come to feel that it might not be as random as we think.

There was a period of time when I took it all so seriously.

I felt the presence of a guiding overlord. He was my personal genie.

In the end, I never could determine whether his origin was external or internal.

He has gone away now for the most part. Occasionally I sense remnants of his lessons.

Part of his heart and mind remains with me in my memory.

From this point forward, I’ll need to be my own soothsayer and navigator.

*Note: We ordered Chinese food last night. At the end of our meal I was disappointed to find that our fortune cookies were missing from our bag.

I woke up this morning feeling out of sorts. I had a dream where I was in a class,

And the teacher handed me my grade on a piece of paper. I saw a red F.

I felt confused and upset for we had taken no tests nor handed in any work.

I’d been working on a big project, and the due date had never been announced.

I approached the teacher, she shrugged, and said the grade could change.

There was no resolution at the end of my dream.

These days every letter has a number. I pondered the number six (6).

To me the number 6 represents the beast of mankind/womankind.

Though, I often thought men and women should have different numbers.

It was then that I realized that the number five (5), also known as E, was missing

From our standard grading system. A ‘D’ means you need improvement, and an ‘F’

Means failure. The E ( or 5) had escaped somewhere between the D and F.

It was not a recognized grade. I decided I wanted to be an E, and

Escape from this dream class. I laughed at this thought and was cheered.

I shook the dream off and labeled it not real.

My number obsession had me creating elaborate stories. The numbers needed stories

In order to have meaning for me. However, over time my stories changed, and certain

Numbers fell in and out of favor with me. The only certainty was change, and

The constant cycling, and switched associations.

My current favorite is 5. Now it symbolically means I can escape the judgement of a grade.

Possibly I could be a 516 or 111 or AAA.

As a teenager, my first paying job was working for Triple A (AAA).

I made trip-tiks for travelers.

This morning as I looked out my window, without my glasses, I could see a figure struggling in the treetop.

Its leafy head and arms were flailing and thrashing. Its fighting comrade was the wind.

I could almost hear it shouting: “I want my freedom.” It was bound together by all the other branches, connected in such a way to make it one.

It still struggled, but its voice became muted with a silent resignation.

It knew that its freedom would tear the tree asunder.

As I put these words together in my head, I began to hear the birds sing.

It felt as if they heard my words.

When I stepped out into the garden the gentle breeze stirred around me.

The cloak of moisture had been blown away. Even the biting bugs were hiding.

They were holding on in shelters, not wanting to travel with the wind.

I stepped back inside to put these words onto paper.

Now, I can clear my head and proceed with my day.