I ask questions as my main conversational tactic (often forgetting to listen/care about the response).
One of my favorite questions is some variation of "would you rather be deaf or blind?" "Would you rather lose your mind or your body?"
I had no answer, I was just doing the asking. Now my answer is ha ha! You will lose them all.
I am obsessed with death, currently. (Because my new favorite band is lo-fi alternative goth? -> His Name is Alive; I've listened to Home is in Your Head at least ten times in the last three days.) I have had many phases of strong morbidity, beginning when I was a little kid. I feel then what I feel now: basically terror (sometimes), confusion, and resistance, even though I'm not "actively" dying.
I wonder what it would be like to work with the dying. I listened to a podcast from a hospice home, where people waste away slowly. The residents are "sick of being sick", tired of the imposition of being weak. Some die without acceptance of the fact that they're dying. The nurses were deeply compassionate but direct - when someone was dying they didn't break it to their family in a way that there could be any doubt or hope. Probably directness is more compassionate in many situations. I shouldn't have listened to the podcast twice but I felt like I had to. Not to be obsessed with unnecessary pain, but because the experience is something I feel like I have to handle, something I can survive, ironically enough.
I hate being on drugs. Another experience to survive. I hate being high because I hate feeling my brain be hijacked and persuaded. (PMS is equally as infuriating, since it controls my moods (read: perception of the world) no matter how I deny its existence and I can't fight it.) But every once in a while I find myself under some influence (due to some amnesia of my serious discomfort) and find myself therefore in an experience to endure. And while I'm up there having my world blown open to new understanding and new perspective, I realize that my put-together little sober life is, of course, a crazy trip in itself. It's exhausting and sometimes I see terrifying things - the most terrifying (or in my better moods, humbling) thing I realize is how limited my entire world is (and how soon I'll forget. Maybe not intellectually, but viscerally I have already forgotten). As a metaphor: the spectrum of visual colors for the human being is a rather tiny slice of all waves of light, and there are even colors in the gradient between colors too fine for us to distinguish. In short, our visual spectrum is what is useful on earth for our living habits. (Thanks radiolab!) How could my brain, which has undoubtedly evolved in the same capacity, comprehend something as colorless as God or meaning? What I am trying to say I guess is drugs made me believe in God and I hate drugs and always we're resistant to being stretched, but can survive it.
Well I had a day of terror, not helped by the season two premiere of twin peaks. My own Duppy Conqueror tucked me into bed and kissed my little head and I didn't have a single nightmare. I didn't think about how terrified I am to ride my bike (traffic! pain!), which I did this morning, or how dreadfully afraid I am to ride in cars (accidents D-: D-: ) even though I'm getting in one for a long haul this afternoon. Sometimes I can't wait to die so I can have my brain blown open, but I definitely couldn't now without screaming resistance.
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Monday, May 12, 2014
a dream after insommnia, watching 2 episodes of twin peaks, and going back to bed
I went to a place with tight hallways and thick plush carpets and tight stairs painted white - the structure was very old, but the paint and carpet must have been an attempt to freshen and renovate at some point. Since it reminds me of my childhood home, I'm guessing the seventies.
I went to an apartment of this house where girls were sitting on the carpet - thin, beautiful, spunky college aged girls like out of an urban outfitters catalog, like nicki's friends that made me a little jealous a few days before in real life. and those damn twenty year old girls in all my classes. what do you want from me.
Anyway I walked in the apartment like I lived there, because I once had. It was an apartment I lived in in Arcata - though in real life there's not resemblance to any of the seventeen or so houses I've lived in. The girls got really hostile and I explained the situation to them and asked if they minded if I studied there - I was tired of studying at my new home, because every home feels too small. They were definitely not receptive. I had some flashes of places I've only been to in other dreams (or I felt a strong sense of recognition - I think this may be a separate feeling from the phenomenon. what if recognition is just a chemical effect?) including some weird metal stairs on the outside of a building.
Later on, I am traveling again. I don't remember with who. I seem to often be going place in groups, in my dreams, but in life I am solo about 75% of waking hours. We were sitting at a table with a woman who was our host. She was about 27 and had a resting face that was bitchy. Everyone else was discussing what to do about a certain person in the group, because a person who was absent from this place, his home, would be really angry when he returned, to find this young man. I gathered that the absent person was very religious, and being my normally bratty self I decided to distract from the severity by turning whatever they were saying into cleverly rhyming hymns. I was rather impressed with myself.
I can hardly remember the rest, only flashes, even though it was just fifteen minutes ago. The religious man, chasing the young man through the jungle. He had dirt on his face, and was very strong but terrified.
If I'm internalizing what I'm reading about guerillas and persecution in South/Central America during the cold war as I'm cramming for an exam, that's really crazy, because it literally feels like I'm cramming. When I read and even take notes it seems to get filed in a very superficial place and it feels like I'm hardly even grabbing onto that.
Another dream, from the night before last:
I was the guest in a house, again. I had JT's computer, which was a 90s era Apple PC. It started vibrating and I was worried because he might be missing an important contact opportunity, and he was nowhere near and I didn't know how to use the platform. I eventually calmed the machine down and saw he had a bunch of messages from people sending him videos of themselves singing things a capella. It was a new trend, like throwback thursday, and also the right commercialized holiday for it.
The people who were hosting me were kind of passive aggressive, and wanted me to leave which I had to gather from painful, personal ways. I never saw them in the dream. It might have just been a feeling dream Nyssa layered on the situation. I went into the basement to gather my things - it reminds me of the Gill's basement, from my childhood. The toilet was murky and clogged and since I was the last one to use it I felt obligated to unclog it. My efforts rewarded me with water and sewage rising out of the toilet and spilling over, getting all over me and my clothes. I started taking off my clothes and then I was covered with the sewage. I didn't know what to do because I was supposed to be getting out of there. Then JT's computer started buzzing again and then my phone started buzzing too, which I apparently felt compelled to check despite being covered in shit. It was a bunch of people sending me a capella/spoken messages. The only one I saw was a woman who I didn't recognize saying she was going to read me a John Whittier poem, since he is so under-read these days.
And finally a dream I wrote down elsewhere, from Feb. 8:
I went to an apartment of this house where girls were sitting on the carpet - thin, beautiful, spunky college aged girls like out of an urban outfitters catalog, like nicki's friends that made me a little jealous a few days before in real life. and those damn twenty year old girls in all my classes. what do you want from me.
Anyway I walked in the apartment like I lived there, because I once had. It was an apartment I lived in in Arcata - though in real life there's not resemblance to any of the seventeen or so houses I've lived in. The girls got really hostile and I explained the situation to them and asked if they minded if I studied there - I was tired of studying at my new home, because every home feels too small. They were definitely not receptive. I had some flashes of places I've only been to in other dreams (or I felt a strong sense of recognition - I think this may be a separate feeling from the phenomenon. what if recognition is just a chemical effect?) including some weird metal stairs on the outside of a building.
Later on, I am traveling again. I don't remember with who. I seem to often be going place in groups, in my dreams, but in life I am solo about 75% of waking hours. We were sitting at a table with a woman who was our host. She was about 27 and had a resting face that was bitchy. Everyone else was discussing what to do about a certain person in the group, because a person who was absent from this place, his home, would be really angry when he returned, to find this young man. I gathered that the absent person was very religious, and being my normally bratty self I decided to distract from the severity by turning whatever they were saying into cleverly rhyming hymns. I was rather impressed with myself.
I can hardly remember the rest, only flashes, even though it was just fifteen minutes ago. The religious man, chasing the young man through the jungle. He had dirt on his face, and was very strong but terrified.
If I'm internalizing what I'm reading about guerillas and persecution in South/Central America during the cold war as I'm cramming for an exam, that's really crazy, because it literally feels like I'm cramming. When I read and even take notes it seems to get filed in a very superficial place and it feels like I'm hardly even grabbing onto that.
Another dream, from the night before last:
I was the guest in a house, again. I had JT's computer, which was a 90s era Apple PC. It started vibrating and I was worried because he might be missing an important contact opportunity, and he was nowhere near and I didn't know how to use the platform. I eventually calmed the machine down and saw he had a bunch of messages from people sending him videos of themselves singing things a capella. It was a new trend, like throwback thursday, and also the right commercialized holiday for it.
The people who were hosting me were kind of passive aggressive, and wanted me to leave which I had to gather from painful, personal ways. I never saw them in the dream. It might have just been a feeling dream Nyssa layered on the situation. I went into the basement to gather my things - it reminds me of the Gill's basement, from my childhood. The toilet was murky and clogged and since I was the last one to use it I felt obligated to unclog it. My efforts rewarded me with water and sewage rising out of the toilet and spilling over, getting all over me and my clothes. I started taking off my clothes and then I was covered with the sewage. I didn't know what to do because I was supposed to be getting out of there. Then JT's computer started buzzing again and then my phone started buzzing too, which I apparently felt compelled to check despite being covered in shit. It was a bunch of people sending me a capella/spoken messages. The only one I saw was a woman who I didn't recognize saying she was going to read me a John Whittier poem, since he is so under-read these days.
And finally a dream I wrote down elsewhere, from Feb. 8:
I dreamed I took a huge shit-the cylindrical mass of a five year old. It kept
coming and coming, and all my organs. I panicked and started shoving them back in.
Then I took a picture with my iPhone of the rest to ask my mom if I was going to
be able to live. A nickelodeon alarm clock, and a bunch of other things covered in
shit. I also dreamed I was on the couch in JT's living room, where I actually was,
and the landlord came in a back door for some middle of the night tour. He was
showing prospective around. I was supposed to be quiet because jt isn't supposed
to be living there technically, but I also wanted the landlord to know I was only
getting four hours of sleep. So as a compromise I made little yelps. I think maybe
they were ghosts.
I included that last one because I seem to keep having dreams about pooping and feces. I just browsed a few dream interpretation websites which say poop means money - according to Freudian analysis and Chinese wisdom. Or it means something shameful and scary that originates in myself, that I don't know what to do with. It may literally mean ridding myself of a lot of shit, or feeling covered in it.Friday, May 2, 2014
Having bizarre dreams again.. I'm usually traveling in a place that could be real, but has one bizarre sci-fi or surreal element. Like in one I crawled into a gutter, through a tunnel, into a concrete room with slanted floors and slanted ceilings and florescent lights. JT had dragged a mattress there and we were just chilling. I told him this was an outrageously boring vacation, and he was like, "what's wrong with you, why can't you just be happy?".
And last night I was with Madeline and some others at a really fancy restaurant in the country that we had just stumbled upon. I convinced everyone we should stay and eat, it would be fun. Their menu was only one course, one dish, but you had to order anyway. We were arranged at two long tables (there were about five or six of us) but only on one side, like the Last Supper. Or like a lecture hall. The food was bizarre. I don't remember what it was, but everyone was really uncomfortable and I was trying to tell them it was cool, it was a new experience, it was the way they did things out here. After dinner, we wandered around the house. Madeline was drinking some mixed drink - it was huge and very alcoholic - strange because I have never seen Madeline drink in my life but she was wasted. The house had exhibits, kind of. Movies playing on loops, displays. I found an upright cylinder made of thin wood or birch bark that I discovered you could turn and it would make the words printed on the cylinder play out in real life. It projected a little black boy playing in a yard with some chickens and hiding behind a tree. All of a sudden he was being shot! Over and over! And slowly he sunk to the ground, against the tree. I cried "NOOOOO!!!" but I was so far away I couldn't help him. I stopped turning the cylinder and all sorts of wood mites and tiny, polished beetles were crawling out of it. I felt so disgusted but I felt like it was important to keep going. Everyone else had left, without saying goodbye, because they didn't want me to convince them to stay.
And the night before last, I was in a messy room - ostensibly mine, but I didn't recognize it; I've had so many rooms - and a bird landed in front of me. It was a dove, but covered in muted and harmonious blues, reds, oranges, purples, teals.. I was curiously examining it when another one landed. If the first was all these colors but mainly blue, the second was all these but mainly red. I overcame my awe to remember the reason I was in my room - because my hedgehog had had another jailbreak in the night and I was looking for him, pressing gingerly on every pile of clothing to listen fo that little Hiss that means a hedgehog is underneath. Everytime I was sure I'd found him, I was wrong and I was getting frantic. Then my cellphone started buzzing and I couldn't find that either. Then JT was pushing me and it was real life and my phone was actually buzzing - my alarm - and JT was telling me to turn that fucking thing off.
And last night I was with Madeline and some others at a really fancy restaurant in the country that we had just stumbled upon. I convinced everyone we should stay and eat, it would be fun. Their menu was only one course, one dish, but you had to order anyway. We were arranged at two long tables (there were about five or six of us) but only on one side, like the Last Supper. Or like a lecture hall. The food was bizarre. I don't remember what it was, but everyone was really uncomfortable and I was trying to tell them it was cool, it was a new experience, it was the way they did things out here. After dinner, we wandered around the house. Madeline was drinking some mixed drink - it was huge and very alcoholic - strange because I have never seen Madeline drink in my life but she was wasted. The house had exhibits, kind of. Movies playing on loops, displays. I found an upright cylinder made of thin wood or birch bark that I discovered you could turn and it would make the words printed on the cylinder play out in real life. It projected a little black boy playing in a yard with some chickens and hiding behind a tree. All of a sudden he was being shot! Over and over! And slowly he sunk to the ground, against the tree. I cried "NOOOOO!!!" but I was so far away I couldn't help him. I stopped turning the cylinder and all sorts of wood mites and tiny, polished beetles were crawling out of it. I felt so disgusted but I felt like it was important to keep going. Everyone else had left, without saying goodbye, because they didn't want me to convince them to stay.
And the night before last, I was in a messy room - ostensibly mine, but I didn't recognize it; I've had so many rooms - and a bird landed in front of me. It was a dove, but covered in muted and harmonious blues, reds, oranges, purples, teals.. I was curiously examining it when another one landed. If the first was all these colors but mainly blue, the second was all these but mainly red. I overcame my awe to remember the reason I was in my room - because my hedgehog had had another jailbreak in the night and I was looking for him, pressing gingerly on every pile of clothing to listen fo that little Hiss that means a hedgehog is underneath. Everytime I was sure I'd found him, I was wrong and I was getting frantic. Then my cellphone started buzzing and I couldn't find that either. Then JT was pushing me and it was real life and my phone was actually buzzing - my alarm - and JT was telling me to turn that fucking thing off.
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