This, too ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chak de, India, you useless bastards! Last night I tried for several hours to find some sleep, but I'd run out. Bound to happen after having already dipped into it a couple of times this week. Even though I was quite comfortable, I think that the tram rides between my toothbrush and I were somehow fundamental. Eventually I said to my cat, "Ah, I can miss one more night's sleep, the time difference will cover it." And then I said to my dad, "Hey, why's Mijbil alive? And why am I concerned about a time difference?" And then I thought to myself, "Dad? No, this isn't right at all!" And I decided that I'd pinch myself, since I couldn't remember flying home, and there's pretty much no other way to get there from here, as it were, since yesterday, so, no matter how much more real this one seemed, it must be another dream. The pinch hurt, my dad thought that I was acting rather oddly, and I trod on the cat. But I still had to take my luggage up to my room. "Okay." I thought, "You're in a dream, you're aware of the fact, but you can't get out. Just like being awake." And I started to unpack. Oddly, my room was as it hasn't been since I was little. In fact it was in a state that I wouldn't have remembered it ever being were I still awake. Anyway, unpacking was turning this into one of those really tedious dreams by the end of which I'm usually drowning in something. Water, sand, my own blood or that of the particular tedium's attendant task-master, whatever. Then it occurred to me that this isn't just like being awake. If I kill someone I get right the fuck away with it when I inevitably wake. I can't pick when that happens, but, heck, that just means that right now time's awastin'. If I'm this aware, I ought to be having a crack at getting my lucid-dream on. I tried first to make the unpacking disappear. No such luck. Instead a strange man burst in and attacked me with some broken glass. Awesome. But that's okay, I'll make him disappear. "Security!" Winner! He's being dragged off by a couple of uniformed louts who, apparently, stand vigil outside my room. Okay, so I couldn't make stuff dematerialise on the spot, and I probably couldn't make stuff materialise from thin air, either. That'd fuck with the dream-physics. There's a serious element of realism to this dream, with genuine physical sensations, deep confusion, and an inability to finally invent magic. Things can happen as they might in reality if I were fucking loaded and everyone -besides Colonel Stabby and the rest of my pantheon of dream nemeses- loved or at least obeyed me. "I can probably work with this." Anyway, the unpacking certainly didn't seem important anymore, so that was another great victory and I was on something of a roll. Back to making good things happen. My distant dad, my dead cat, my would-be assassin, and my two-strong security detachment had all entered stage right and exited in their turn, so, now, "Well, Fairuza Balk's clothes certainly aren't here, so it's half working..." Then I realised that I was awake, again, and wondering at what really seemed like the best use of my time and powers when given a limited spell with something approaching omnipotence. Not so much love or the revolution, just Fairuza naked Balk, before the dawn chorus wakes me. I think there was another dream that came back to me in part after the fact. I believe that I was, somehow, President of the United Republic of Tanzania, and we were at war with Nyasaland. Pretty odd, really, considering that Nyasaland ceased to exist in 1963 and the United Republic wasn't established until 1964... but then hell, I wasn't born until 1982 so I don't know what I'm complaining about. I didn't have any awareness of the fact that this was a dream, and certainly no ability to consciously alter the course of events. Probably my bush fighters wouldn't all have fucked off home come harvest time if I had. So I got up and read thirty or forty pages of Haruki Murakami and thought about going home to brush my teeth and holy shit did I take my washing out of the communal laundry before I went out again? Let's hope so, eh? Uhm, so, at the internet cafe today there's a girl singing along to the Clash, and a bloke clearly arranging a drug deal to make up for the runner getting mugged last time. I think that it might be getting-drunk time. 5:49 p.m. - 2007-12-28 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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