Ravings of a Paranoid Insomniac

Woke quite sudden in the still, dark hours of the morning, filled with terror, absolutely convinced the eery music in my head was real. After searching for its source for several minutes, however, I was forced to concede it was only the echoes of a dream.

If a dream is powerfully emotional, could it perhaps slip somewhat into being? Could it be that those after-images are not tricks of the mind, but things which almost exist? Things we feel so deeply we are half able to pull them through to this plane from another? After all, who's to say the dream world is not actually a reality we only catch glimpses of? An alternate reality. It is bizarre because it doesn't follow the rules of our world, but perhaps we are just as bizarre and impossible to them. Could there be a world of wild aspirations and what-ifs?

Perhaps in dreams we see our own heaven or hell. Sense does not come into it. But in reality do we ever experience such pure happiness or horror? An irrational emotion is the strongest kind.

Or perhaps the dream world is a sticky earth-ball, being made of bits of everybody's strangest, most gruesome, beautiful, delightful, mad imaginings - a glutinous, undulating world with rolling fat waves of bizarre. And by the nature of this dreamscape, we sometimes stumble into others' dreams. One's foot goes Sploosh! into the mud of someone else's strangest thoughts, and down one sinks, choking on someone else's most inhibited desires, until Pop! - one comes right out the other side, emerging from the clear pool of a child's pure fantasy.

Oh, but I'm merely torturing myself! I can only dream of dreaming - I am imprisoned in reality by vicious insomnia.

"And in my sleep
What dreams may come
Before I'm woken by alarms
Put on my riot gear"

Afterglow

A word of advice: do not live in the past. "What if"s only incur agony.

A years-old poem:

It's funny only afterwards you turned out the lamp

I nuzzled my cheek against your burning neck

And traced lost words on your palm with my frozen fingers


And let them dance along your spine

"I want to sleep next to you," I breathed into your safe embrace

You covered me with the blanket, because I get so cold

(Even though you love to see me naked)


And clutched my hand and sang softly in my ear


While stroking the curly strands at the base of my neck

Moonlight and shadows


You opened the window and lit up


The ones you'd saved for tonight

In the density of the clutter of your minimalist bedroom

The glowing end of your cigarette was the only light

The World Imploded

Frustration is slowly eating me from the inside out.

I don't. Want. To think about my life - what it's going to be for the next twelve, fifteen months.

I thought I wouldn't be able to write tonight, but it's surprising what your habitual writing spot can do for you. I sit down at this computer and put on some music and Bam! I start typing. It's like magic!

Do forgive me, but me head's a little vague.

I know what I've got to do, and I've just got to grit my teeth and do it. And the actual day to day will not be hard. It will be easy, so easy.

For the next year, I have to continue to live with my parents. Get a regular job (well, the best paying job I can find) - two if I can manage it. And spend as few pesetas as possible.

Ha. This will be so easy it may kill me.

I don't know if you understand how much I can feel my brain already melting. I mean, I watch way too much Hulu, so I'm doomed anyway, but over a YEAR of a regular job and no intellectual stimulation.... !

BUT! But, I am going to grit my teeth and do this so that I can finally go back to school. Oh, Brain, my Brain, just you wait. Learning again! What a heaven that will be! Yes, the thought of it makes me all warm and fuzzy inside!

Alright. Now, I am very tired and rather ill and a wrackspurt's got my brain. To round the evening off nicely, here is a very, very, very short story.

            The world imploded.

            Hardly anyone knew it was going to happen. One earthling fortune teller had predicted it, but she had long ago given up on the idea of being believed, and so she had tucked herself away in a filthy corner of the planet and was never heard of.

            It was a rather sorry sight, all that glitter and dust and life folding in on itself, curling in like flaming parchment, and eventually becoming nothing but a tiny speck.

            Two systems over, on a planet whose name is irrelevant, a distinctly non-humanoid life form, with a very long telescope, entered the data into an impossibly vast network, and that was the last anyone, anywhere, ever thought of Earth.

A Long Way to Go

The sky is heavy, so I am listening to Bach because it is appropriately moody.

Soon. Another end. Another beginning.

This is a cop out, since I didn't write this today, but here is the (very short) piece I shared with writer's group tonight:

            I’ve still got a long way to go, to get away from you.

(I love you).

            I ran to the opposite end of the space you occupied. (I’d measured only in cubic meters). But your face was still plastered all over my brain like someone had glued pictures of you there, so I never wanted to close my eyes. (I love you).

            I wanted to say that it wasn’t my fault – that you had led me on, but that would be to wrong us both. I know you too well. And you can’t change who you are. You’re so full of life, like a blazing fire, and I want to be burned by you. But I can’t get inside your circle of light and warmth. (I love you).

            We wrestled like children. (I love you). And when, under the curve of my arm, I thought I saw you smile (I love you), my breath caught in my chest, cause I thought for one silver-edged second that you might let me in.

            But you were miserable without her. (Still, I love you). And, How, I thought, How can she be so stupid? And all I wanted was for you to be happy, (I love you), no matter what happened to me.

            I thought my heart would burst – it’s so full of you.

            (I love you).

            When the words came they spilled out of my mouth too fast (IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou) and made me feel sick and I wanted to stuff them all back in and swallow them like I had a thousand times before. (uoy evol I)

             …

            But how pathetic – to be pitied by the one I love.

            The place on my cheek where you were gracious enough to lay your lips burned.

            (And still, I love you).

            And I ran. And I hid. And you didn’t try to find me.

            (And still, I love you).

            (And still, I love you).

 

            (And still.)

 

 

(I love you).

I’ve still got a long way to go, to get away from you.

Thoughts? Honesty is appreciated. Is this prose or poetry? It's like posetry. Well, that is the way this modern poetry seems to have turned.

On Zombie Invasions, part 1

Let us consider, friends, the teachings of zombie warfare: whacking, hacking, piercing, chopping, slicing, dicing, blowing away, etc. - all manner of slaughtering techniques one may employ by use of a knife, shotgun, longbow, axe, chainsaw - whatever sort of weapon you favour in defending yourself and loved ones from the living dead. The extermination of zombies is a simple matter if one is experienced in the deadly arts and the zombies are not too great in number. Sources are clear that one has merely to get them into bits small enough to no longer be a threat (the undead having no functioning organs, nor flowing blood - the destruction, or spilling, of which would otherwise be the most expedient means of discouraging their approach). But it is not the unmeditated destruction of a few undead by an individual which I propose to discuss. I wish to attack the issue of zombie invasion on a grander scale.

It is the possibility of a bona-fide zombie horde in a populous area that poses a real threat to society. I am speaking, fair citizens, of at least a few hundred undead, of a situation in which the danger is that they simply keep coming on, until our valiant living cannot hold up their weapons any longer. Then we will run and hide, disorganised in our exhaustion, scattering, wanting only to close our eyes for a few hours and regain our strength. And then, when we have put ourselves at the disadvantage, the horde will pick us off one by one!

But heavens, I am so unutterably tired that I fear this entry will quickly dissolve into meaningless meanderings, and you will get so little sense from me that upon next encountering a zombie you may attempt to bludgeon it with a codfish! So, I shall wish you a goodnight for now. I give you my word as a lady and a warrior that I shall quite thoroughly enlighten you on the morrow. Go in peace, friends, but be always on your guard! Constant vigilance!

Blog Binge

Finally getting down to brass tacks. Got to do this. Got to do this. Got to- I feel extremely clean. I am up in the booth, looking down on the toy people in their dollhouse. Trying not to look at the toy people - trying to ignore a whole little make-believe world. It's hard. Trying to write. Got to write. Got to write this before midnight, cause it starts today and I keep procrastinating. Oh, screw midnight. Whatever. My day's over when I go to bed. Mmmm. Bed. I could go for one of those right now...

No. Write. Blog Binge - a blog entry every day for a whole year. 365 entries (that's how many days are in a year, right?). I didn't do anything today, but it's opening night - Shaw's Arms and the Man - which gives my day the illusion of ...

The toy people are distracting. It's like a television right in front of my face. Except they're real, but they're not really any more real.

I shaved my legs today, which makes me very conscious of my skin as it shifts under my pant legs. I'm wearing pants because I'm in my blacks, I have to be covered in black for the show, but I'm really wearing a dress. I mean that my regular clothes-

I'm really no good at this. Ok, scratch that. Scratch out all that. Got some chocolate to get the creative juices flowing. What a weird, disgusting phrase. Ok, good. Chocolate. Good. Not good - chocolate making teeth hurt. I should see a dentist. I don't have money to see a dentist. I'll just let it melt in my mouth. Maybe I could hold it till it melted in the package and then squeeze it into my mouth. No, that's gross. Chocolate paste - only a fat kid would eat that.

This is bad. This is really bad. I've mastered the art of saying nothing very loudly.

Ok. Ok. Ok ok ok.

Found a little red journal in my desk I'd forgotten about (how could I forget about this journal? this is the one my friend that has issues stole for me as a birthday gift). Well, I opened the journal and it screamed at me. I mean that I read what I had written and it cried. I mean that everything I wrote in it was emo bullshit about how I'm so fat. And I'm not really fat. Really. I mean I'm the first one to condemn myself, but really, I'm just a little bit pudgy. Just a teensy bit.

But it's sick. It's just so sick how cause I'm not stick thin, I tear myself down, call myself fat. It's a big, sick carousel I keep hopping on and off of. But it's got worse, lately - my weight, that is, not the perception of my weight. Cause I've got into the habit of bingeing when I get home from work, because I work a lot, and stress a lot, and a lot of the stress isn't even about work. I come home and all I want to do is eat. I mean often I'm actually hungry, but it's not about that. I just want comfort. It's like there's a hole in me that I try to fill with food. But it just stretches the hole - and my pants. And I'm so fed up with it! (pun intended). I'm done with this pathetic slouch I've become! I slough off this comfort-seeking, flabby skin! I want things. I'm going after them. Even if they turn out not to be what I really want.

So instead of bingeing on foodstuffs, I will blog. I will blog to let go. And maybe I will have a nice cup of tea. I can have tea. There's no sin in tea. And exercising more than once a month wouldn't go amiss either.

It was actually Meg's idea (http://gardenmaiden.blogspot.com/) this Project 365, because she wants to be a better writer, which is a very good, respectable reason, and I am turning her lovely idea to my not-quite-so-respectable uses. I needed my own motivation. 365 days in my life. 365 opportunities ... for something, I don't know. For everything. 365 pieces of my soul.

And now I have gone too far. Goodnight.