2009-02-17

I tried to make note of my mind activity as I was struggling to sleep last night. That I can't remember any of it now maybe suggests I was closer to sleep than I thought? But it was a few minutes after my watch beeped for 4:00 that I asked myself whether I would sleep at all; ten or so after that, I think, the answer came, finally.

����I should already have been up, but suddenly at 8:45 I absolutely refused to sleep another minute, what with the murder and imminent cannibalism. Cruise ships, man. I'd seen it on the menu but hadn't caught it; fancy menus in particular have all kinds of cruel things on them, and obviously the word "human" wasn't going to be printed. Maybe it was in another language? Maybe the word "man", in another language, that I recognize in hindsight. The young woman across from me had made the order and later when I looked through the porthole to my left I saw the gutting taking place, feet away, on the ship's wing. In the dream I was crying; in life I was leaping from bed and crashing into the wall.

����In a creative writing class in college somebody asked me why everything I wrote had to be so full of pain. I hadn't seen that pattern; I'd just thought that the class's imagination needed to be challenged, because nobody was really pushing anything new. I don't have dark preoccupations. Occasionally I'll wonder if there's a name for the pull we sometimes feel toward lethal potentials, for example where a slight rail stands between us and icy waters below, but that's as much a word question as anything. Well... okay, more honestly, that thought is an ice chunk that has formed in the cold flowing "what does all this mean and what is all this worth?" and has drifted over and bumped against my bank. But there's nothing characteristic in it. Anyway, I've found myself in a lot of horrific moments lately, in dreams. The detail that seems like it might represent the crux of all this came one night a few weeks ago: my name was published in a newspaper along with the word "creep". Part of this, apparently, is me persecuting myself.

����Maybe one of these nights something will tell me why.


0 Comments

 First

 List

 Email

 Comments

 Latest

statcounter.com