in between the lines

mark is a nice man with a lab/aussie mix who he says is a good dog. mark has been working with biofeedback for 25 years and his pretty beard is thicker than his apparent years. he wears a silver ring on each hand, and he owns, fully owns, a soft lullabye voice. dim lights, flat computer screens, deep leather chairs, a small fountain, and numerous electrodes entice me further into the world of mark the biofeedback guy.

mark explains the images on the screen in front of me. he tells me that

the yellow line is my eyes

and the green one is my breath

and the white one is the rest of me.

i follow his voice and breathe and breathe and i see how every in- and ex- hale has just become a cartoon in front of me. as i breathe, my lines are drawn and the lines that are drawn are a picture of the breaths i just took.

i find that my eyes are the hardest to control, my breath the easiest, and the rest of me is a mystery.

the yellow and green lines climb up and down and it looks like we are riding bikes on watson avenue when we were 9. we are riding up and down in all the pretty hills that were barrington.

but the white line is a mystery.

the white line is harder to predict and mysterious to control, even with my deep belly breaths. sometimes the white line glides across the screen in a strong and steady path, but then i smile or think or question or laugh and it is nudged it up or down. i can't fool it. it seems to study the sum of all of my thoughts and pieces - all of me that is me in this instant, and it provides immediate feedback on how far above or below the line i fall.

what does the white line stand for?

of what am i above or below?

somewhere in between the lines, in think.

somewhere in between.