I have power again, which is nice, and but there were some nice aspects to have not having it. Mostly, not being distracted by the internet…I’m already finding it far too distracting. Not having power was just like having power, only I wrote less since my laptop was dying. Thus, I read about 800 pages spanning multiple books. I’m almost done with the Fionavar Tapestry series by Kay, and while it’s good, it’s not nearly as amazing as The Sarantine Mosaic—those books have impacted me very deeply.
I also liked how dark the world felt. Last night I laid beside my pool and watched the stars for awhile.
I hated not being able to write as much I wanted to, but I survived, and now I get to write again and sleep less again.
Speaking of sleep…maybe it was from sleeping in silence when I usually sleep to a lot of noise, but my dreams, and nightmares, were absurd. I’m discovering that this blog is sort of becoming a dream journal, but only because the dreams feel so real and touch my mind so deeply. Intimately, actually. Is it sad that my dreams are the most intimate thing in my life? That, and writing.
Many of my waking thoughts are focused on my sleeping thoughts. So where to begin?
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Lake.
For those who have been following diligently and recording notes of everything I say and do, you will remember lake from weeks and months ago. Lake is a sound option on my phone for receiving texts. I first heard lake at a train station with my friend Chris, what feels like so long ago. Really, though, this summer feels like the longest, most stretched time of my time. The longest road, if you will. Time is supposed to pass quicker as we age, but it’s doing the complete opposite for me. Lately it’s been standing still.
That night at the train station honestly feels like years ago, a completely different person. I can’t wrap my mind around it.
Anyway, lake. Lake first appeared, or sounded, when I began texting my friend late at night in the train station, as I was bored enough to test every single text option available on my phone. The initial text, however, was not out of boredom, but other factors neither here nor there.
Lake was ultimately chosen as a keeper due to its mystical ambience, its fantasy-like qualities. From that point on I kept lake as my text sound—other than when sounds were not appropriate, of course—and since I was mostly just texting one person around this time and for weeks to come—many, many texts—lake unknowingly formed a connection to the person I was texting, such as when a smell reminds of you something, or a song triggers a memory, and so on and so on. But I silenced lake awhile ago.
So, my dream. It’s a quick one. In my dream I jump awake in bed, as I hear lake. I reach for my phone on my painting table beside my bed, see that someone has texted me at 4:30am, but the message vanishes before I can read it, before I can even read who sent it. I was so angry in my dream, so frustrated, believing I knew who sent the text and yet I couldn’t be sure because it vanished as soon as I touched my phone.
And then, within the dream, I dreamt I was dreaming the same dream that I just
dreamt.
Mind-fuck. I finally wake up for real, and instinctively grab my phone. It’s ironically near the same time I dreamt, only there’s no message, no text, nothing, and so I throw the phone across the room, bothered more deeply by this dream than I should be.
It is, after all, only a sound that no longer sounds, a sound linked to a memory, or memories, even when so little time has passed, and yet, as I said, in ways I cannot explain when I feel I can explain most things about myself so well, time has slowed down to moments and hours and minutes rather than days and weeks and months. At least, at this rate, life will seem very long. This is a good thing.
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I’m skipping far ahead in this next dream, as it was incredibly long, and incredibly vivid and detailed. Typing everything I remember would likely reach 4-5 pages, single spaced, and much would be unimportant.
I’m at a water park—I tend to dream of these quite often—watching people compete in a waterslide contest. Doing tricks down a waterslide, that is. Only, really, I’m distracted by a person I didn’t expect to be here. I’m on an elevated platform above the pool, with a clear view of the entire slide, and she’s also up here, on the stairs, watching what I’m watching, but also watching me. There’s an awkwardness to everything in the dream, to me, and my friend, and how we’re trying but failing to ignore each other, all for reasons I’m not sure of in the dream. Painfully aware of each other. Eye contact, eyes darting away.
Hey, dream me, this reminds me, or you, or us, of something.
A girl begins her waterslide tricks, doing cartwheels down the slide. Everyone is clapping and cheering. She’s flying down the slide, but as some point loses direction and cartwheels off the slide. Everyone gasps. I hear an awful crack and thump, and look down to see that the is very much dead on the sidewalk below, her neck broken, her body rigid as a board, her eyes open impossibly wide.
Such a disturbing image.
Usually I die in my dreams, not other people.
Suddenly, everyone is on the ground around her, people I know from high school and the gym and parties. I’m up top all alone. My friend is down there crying for the dead. Everyone is crying other than me. There’s a female Chinese opera singer singing a song for the dead girl. I’m trying to cry, but I can’t. Tears are so hard to find, except when they’re not, I’m too focused on everything else: my friend’s unexplained presence here and our combined awkwardness, and also how the dead girl’s eyes refuse to stay shut. People try to close them, yet they open wide again and again.
I eventually watch everyone walk away. My friend looks over her shoulder, and of course I wake up at that moment. Fuck you, dreams.
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I’m realizing how long this blog is becoming, and while I have so many more dreams, I’ll stop here. The two above dreams are by far the most vivid and out-of-body, nearly lucid. I had other dreams. A fire dragon battling an ice giant deep in the dungeons of some forgotten ruins/something that reminds me of the trailer I lived in many years ago—yes, I’m a nerd even in my dreams, apparently. Yet another dream of roller coasters and a track not yet finished, only this time I didn’t die. This time the coaster flew, and didn’t stop flying. A seemingly mindless conversation with my sister, only she kept returning to one single thing—a mutual friend between us—only nothing made sense. The world wasn’t this world. Me hoarding food and water in a fallout shelter, as the end of the world was imminent.
Some dreams I wrote down on the sheet beside me as quick notes, and now, reading these notes, there’s so much I’ve already forgotten.
But the waterslide dream is all written down from directly after I woke up, haunted and horrified, not of the death, but of what I saw in the dream, and felt, and still felt when I woke.
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I’m beginning to understand how Poe felt, how he feared sleep and his dreams. Granted, he took far more drugs than I ever will, but the feeling is mutual. Paraphrased, perhaps, from Poe. Sleep, those little pieces of death, oh how I loathe them. But I don’t loathe my sleep, or dreams.
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