"Clarisms"

i woke up sometime before the break of dawn, it was still dark. i opened my eyes, light-headed.  where am i? ... maybe if i forced myself to sleep again i would know...where am i? it felt like i was trapped in between realms...the subconcious and the conscious, the past and the present, i didn't know where my head was, and my logic was also still trying hard to swim beyond the sea of this mystery to ascertain anything for me. it's like overlapping worlds...perhaps it's the three decades of past behind me, moving from one place to another after a considerably long time. each one having a special place in my heart...where am i? i tried to look up, i saw the roof above me, bathed in faint light, then i gazed to the wall on my left, also illuminated by the same soothing glow, coming from a tiny grain that seemed so grand in the dark.  ahh, this is my old room when i was a child, the old house i grew up in. i can almost smell it.  i was just waiting for the whiff from the burning gas lamp that the maids would sometimes prepare for us when the weather's bad, or when the light is out around town. it should be sitting on the antique porcelain sink standing proudly in one corner of the room... there is no sink.  no drapes to a dressing room behind it either, but a door in it's place...a bathroom? there is no scent of a lamp burning either. i smelled Downy. am i in our vacation house in Lipa? but i remember that it's pitch black when you wake up in the middle of the night there, and the pregnant silence is always deafening.  so, it's not quite like it.  i shifted my gaze to the right, there is a hint of light streaming into the window. must be from the light post illuminating the alley between the house and the hospital (which, zoning-wise isn't really supposed to be there). i don't see the white curtains that ran the whole length of the wall, instead there are seemingly hypnotic repetitive vertical lines like teeth in a tiny rectangular box...aaah blinds! no big windows i can throw a huge couch from. i'm under the sheets, but this doesn't feel like my grandmother's heirloom sheets, cool, crisp, and properly starched, aged but comforting with her initials intricately embroidered on each. i closed my eyes again and tried hard to wake up properly.  some parts of my mind were still floating elsewhere in dreamland and it was a struggle collecting each...where was the light coming from? am i going to heaven soon? am i astral-travelling? why is it pulsating? i opened my eyes and slowly figured out that it was coming from this tiny blue dot on the dial of the ionic breeze in the room that says "boost", the green one coming from the digital display of the standby portable heater that says 65 for the moment. then like a strong shake from nowhere jolting me from this circadian rhythm malfunction (i still prefer to call it "short-circuit"), someone wailed a deafening rap song on the morning radio program...someone beside me stirred.  it's aldred.  and he hit snooze on the clock radio. silence... so, this is where i am. it's not lola's old sheets wrapping me for warmth, but some new and really soft 600-thread count egyptian cotton sheets that don't have as much colorful stories to tell yet and yes, the arms of a man i am beginning to weave a story with in this lifetime...wait, why was i so disoriented? is it the flu? the tylenol pm? does that happen to most people who move to a different place? or maybe i'm just beginning to miss home.  the old one, the "other" home.  maybe.