the caryatid

Sometimes when she’s thinking she can’t seem to turn it off. Which often times gets her to thinking.

Lately it’s been about all of the things in her body that she can’t control. The involuntary things like her heartbeat or digestion. And her breathing.

Well, sometimes. Sometimes she can take control of that. Like she somehow calls the tower and says “I’ll take it for awhile.” When she’s done trying to meditate or calm down, she simply stops paying attention to her breathing and it switches back to auto-pilot.

She thinks about the involuntary things like when she’s dreaming. Like how it feels like someone else is speaking. And perhaps, just maybe, there is someone else inside her head. Someone trapped. Someone with something important to say to her. Or something stupid.

Are they in charge of her heart and stomach? Do they get upset when she decides to hold her breath? Are they the one that wrestles back control when she brings herself to the point of blacking out?

What’s involuntary and voluntary to her might be the exact opposite to the person lurking between her ears.

Like involuntary pain. She distinctly remembers burning the tip of her finger on a hot stove. At first she appreciated the fact that her hand pulled away instantly, without any direction from her. But then, after ten minutes of feeling continued pain she thought to herself “Your job is done nerves endings. I get it. Message received. You performed admirably, but now this feeling is just wasted suffering on my part.” Later she wondered if this person hidden inside her felt the same way about the voluntary pain she has caused herself throughout her life. She could almost hear them saying “You knew it when you met him.”

She has had many dreams that argue this quite point articulately. Other times the dreams sacrifice clarity for passion and leave her more confused than she started.

In some dreams she can’t seem to wake up.

Some nights she can’t seem to fall asleep because she can only define herself by what she is not. Is she the plan or the hiccup?

She can choose to see no evil. To hear no evil. To speak no evil. They are choices she makes voluntarily.

And other times there are things in her body that she can’t control.

Even assuming the existence of a second monkey living in her head, who or what is the third?

Sometimes when she’s thinking she can’t seem to turn it off.