tavie.com

I thought I was sleepy, I was trying to sleep, I was upstairs in my Mint Manor bedroom trying to do that, but I was thinking about Rosie and my sheets. A week before Rosie (not died, I can't say died; "passed on" sounds false; so I'll adopt Rynn's convention and say) changed form, I'd been sleeping on the couch so my sister's friends could share my bed. And a week after Rosie was gone I continued to sleep on the couch because I couldn't face the furry patch where Rosie should be. The other night I finally got in there and changed the sheets. I put on the Pear Dream sheets.

Years ago, one of my usenet sig lines was adapted from a Kids in the Hall sketch. It went, "Tavie (rhymes with GRAVY) had the pear dream again." From the surrealistic "Pear Dream" sketch, KITH season one, in which Scott Thompson has a series of strange dreams about a pear. A few Christmases or birthdays ago, Ade, my friend and mentor, sent me a set of flannel pear sheets to sleep on-- complete with pillow cases so that I could, you know, have the pear dream. I put those sheets on my bed. They used to collect a lot of Rosie hair, being flannel, but they won't again. Ever.

I was thinking about this and it was keeping me awake. Also, I'd just been watching The Anna Nicole Show on E! and for some reason it was making me very depressed. Anna had just taken home the ashes of her late husband and parked the silver urn on her tv set so they could be together. The sight of the urn on the console was depressing to me. I guess when I turned it off and tried to sleep I was thinking about Rosie and how I hadn't been upset by the fact that we didn't request they send us her ashes. I've never been very sure about my feelings towards earthly remains. There doesn't seem to me to be anything to them once the life processes have stopped. But I was never sure how I'd feel not having anything left of Rosie. And it hit me, up there on my air mattress, it hit me that I have all the earthly remains of Rosie I'll ever need because everything about her is very fresh in my memory. I can feel her weight on my chest, the texture of her fur, her tongue on my neck, her paws on my shoulders, her drool on my pillow. I can smell her stinky hot breath. I can close my eyes and feel exactly how it was to pet her-- scratch her between her eyes and under her chin, but stay away from the belly, if you please. I thought, Will I always remember this? She's just two weeks gone. And then I thought that yes, I will because those things are imprinted the same way that "The Puppet's Complaint" (and "Scherzo" and "Minuet" and "Arabesque" and "Rondino") are in my fingers now even though I haven't taken piano lessons since I was a little kid. I can still play "Puppet's Complaint" in my sleep. I don't think I could forget it if I tried. So that's how that is. The second this thought occurred to me I was out of bed and down the stairs and booting up Gina's computer because it seemed very important to me to write this fact down.

I'm going back to bed now.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 3:00 AM | shower me with attention