Do you feel like I do..

My item has been submitted for consideration in "DREAMER'S SANCTUARY" .

Word Count: 777


Do You Feel Like I Do….

    It just started one day. Don't know how or exactly when, but it just did. I had another hard day at work, you know one of those days when you go in tired, already feeling a funk and thinking "Man, I should've called in today, faked a cough or something" (long before the infamous "mental health" day). Looking forward to the quitting time and the Boss comes up with "we need to stay until this is done" routine and you crawl home after a 12 hour shift which should've been 8 in the first place. Kids are gone with friends and the wife thankfully is preoccupied with something that doesn’t involve you, or any thought process which your brain couldn't handle anyway at this moment.

    I laid down on the hardwood floor resting my head on a homemade wooden footstool with a thin black vinyl/foam cover made for my loving 5 foot nothing wife (I took pity one day while I watched her try to get something off the top of the fridge). I think the Orientals who sleep on rounded wood with a covering have something going on with this. I was tired but the wood with its slim covering of pad held my head just at the right angle to relax.
We had an old cabinet style stereo, you know the kind that was long and of good wood (cherry, I think) but sat on spindle legs far too fragile for the massive block that sat above them. In it was a slot for LP's, an old tube radio/amplifier next to the record player that played everything, including 78's. It had however, decent speakers (12 inch, big for that time) and included something special for the period, a Bass and Treble control. How high tech was that!

    Lying there on the floor - drained from the day's work - the radio was playing when this song comes on. I was drifting between sleep and the aches from my body but the song keeps my attention. The guitar rift starts slowly like lapping waves on a shore and the lyrics come in looking like white caps on the water. Picking up speed now, "Do you, you, feel like I dooo" Feel? Like I do? When the Hell is the last time did I feel anything?
Thinking, thinking, think......I'm transported by the song back to the last time I felt good. I can see it now, i'm on my bike riding the back roads. Life coming at ya doing 60 mph. You can actually see and smell things that you must've drove by at least 100 times, never noticed until you watch and feel the surface that transports you to your destiny. Even when you hit a small valley or plunge in the road you can feel the air temp change; cool and damp, then changing to warm and dry as you emerge from the valley. Everything is intensified; smells, sights, even gravity as you float around curves, then get rammed by the acceleration of the throttle dancing with the gravity.  It's trying it's best to pull you down into some horrifying crash. Not today, not at this moment does it win but you know it won't last forever.

    Wait! What's that noise? His voice has changed now, same melody but the words are distorted. It pulls me back, now seeing my body on the floor, motionless except for the slow rhythm of breath and realize you see yourself sleeping on the floor. You stare in wonderment but don't know - how are you seeing this? As the pace of the words sung slowly come about in their distorted state, a ball of light comes forth from my body hovering just above in brilliant hues of white/blue with pulsating fringes of red and yellow. Aura? Soul? You decide.

    I knew it was part of me as I could feel its movement in sync with the song. Alive and pulsating with every breath I took, it was showing recognition of my state of being. This, I thought, is who I am! Troubling though, I could also see black spots appearing now and then on the surface. Sometimes many, sometimes few. Moving about in a liquid motion they appeared as the darkest of darks and when looking straight at them they shook me down to my feet.

Weeeelllll screams the radio from distortion to words now, the waves of rhythm crash on the shore as the tempo picks up, my eyes suddenly refocused on the radio, the words clear now...

Do you, you....feel......like...........I............do.

Of course I do, I feel alive now. Thanks for reminding me Peter.