Wednesday, 21 November 2012

Cactus to nightmare. It makes sense in context.


Returning from Tenerife I bought home three little cacti, whom I've yet to name, but I got a serious feeling that one of them is a Bertie. After a brief period sitting on the windowsill, it was decided to move the little buggers because with every twitch of the curtain they'd snag it and go leaping off the windowsill with glee abandon, spraying the floor with dirt. With no where else to adequately place them for the time being, they sit next to my deodorant.

It is, without doubt, a decision I am going to regret in the future.

I am fully aware that I am absolutely useless in the mornings - to the point of non-function. I once spent a good half hour looking for said deodorant when I had inadvertently moved it to my computer desk from it's usual position: a grand total of eighteen inches of movement. But it wasn't where it was meant to be! Sorcery! So I know, I know, I know, that at some point... Some not too distance point... Some not too distant point in the near future that I will stagger from my room in the early hours... shower, half dress, fall across the room... and grab the wrong thing and vigorously apply a cactus to my bare armpit.

It is only a matter of time.

Of course, you all realise that the simple solution is to a.) not be such a cockwomble, or b.) simply move the bloody cacti, but you forget: I am a royal cockwomble and will be addressed formally so at all times. Secondly, there is just no where else to put them. I spent literally one, maybe two minutes looking for an alternative space. That's a potential one hundred and twenty seconds just looking. For such a manly man that I am that is an incredibly long time spent just looking. Now they must remain there for all time. The domestic equivalent of a red coffee button next to the red nuke button.

My one spark of hope was that the fact that I didn't do so this morning may mean that this royal cockwomble has hope of abdicating into mere common nobility. In that I mean I grow to be less of an idiot. To not be one at all is either a miracle, an evil clone, aforementioned sorcery or a combination thereof.

Because this morning I awoke from such a nightmare that I'm impressed I got to work dressed at all, let alone correctly. I spent the first half of the morning so desperate for work to keep my mind of what I had dreamt that a stack of laptops to gut for parts was a godsend; simple work for the hands, yet just complicated enough to require constant attention because there's a fucking screw still in there somewhere. Somewhere. Look, it's gripping right here but there's no... fucking... screw. Maybe it's a clip? From what angle do I push? Ah! It is a screw! The fucker was underneath the sticker all along. Cunning bastard.

Because it turned out what my brain wanted this morning was a departure from the norm. Somewhere along the line, it went, 'God, mere horror. So bored of that. Huh, what's that? Physiological terror? Ohhhh. That sound's nasty. Let's do that.'

I mentioned this before, and I'll say it again; my brain can be quite the dick sometimes.

In my dream, I spent three weeks at a place that was a curious amalgamation of my university and college. It had the full and varied timetables of college (I had maths. The horror.) But it also had the scale and the communists of university.

(Small tangent here: America, stop using the word 'socialist' as an equivalent to the word 'evil.' Look. I knew communists. I've read the Communist Manifesto. Amongst the 'not work your employees to death' angle I approve of, I found it hard to take totally seriously 'cos of that one paragraph that denounced the bourgeois for constantly wanting to prostitute out their daughters and wives, and I could never look past that hilarious nit pick. Just... look. Let your children go to university, declare themselves communists, nod sagely at them... and fifteen minutes after leaving university and they discover the need to get employed for all the nice things materialism offers they'll get over it. It's just a phase. Except for the hardcore ones, and honestly, them seem to put themselves into a cycle of perpetual university course taking and thus can be safely ignored.)

Yes, I understand being at this uni/college combo isn't quite 'nightmare' territory... but. I wasn't going back to university. According to dream logic, I had gone to university again. A new one. Right now.

I had left behind my responsibilities, my job, my rent payments (which I was aware were due and I wasn't earning anything to pay it) as well as my family and friends. I had left my girlfriend, whom I've lived with for over a year now, to only see every fortnight, and then not at all. In the three weeks I was there, I spoke to no people. I went to no lectures or seminars. I couldn't bring myself to look at my timetable, so I was constantly uncertain where I should be. Three weeks. Everyday I got up. Wandered the campus. Went back to bed. Everyday I had the knowledge that I wasn't doing the work I needed to do. I wasn't learning what I needed to learn. I was wasting the money I spent to get there, and debts were piling up at home that I could no longer pay. I didn't have the friends I met from when I first went to university, I was completely isolated from everyone I cared about. I was completely alone, of my own doing, gnawed at by the guilt of not doing any work, not able to muster the will to try, and that most damningly of all; I'd already been to university once. That even if I did this work it was utterly pointless, as I'd only achieve what I had already accomplished. I had made a terrible decision, and in keeping to it, I was completely and utterly wasting my life.

Also there was lightning surrounding the campus so I couldn't leave.

Did I not mention the lightning? Yeah, that's weird, but I had enough reasoning whilst asleep to note the redundancy of my situation and my failing of my responsibilities but not enough to question the lightning. Dreams, right?

I was so depressed in this nightmare I can see on waking that I was getting to the point of suicidal. Now here's the thing – have you ever dreamed someone you know has died? That you have done something truly awful? When you wake up, even though it was a dream, it wasn't real, you know that, you're still sad throughout the day? I spent the morning with a whole heaping dose of the '|I have made a terrible mistake, my life is pointless' and Je-suss, where the fuck did that come from? I haven't suddenly signed up for uni for a second time. I haven't made that mistake, it never happened. I don't feel like I'm wasting my life at all (at least not to that strong degree.) But I did this morning. It didn't go away. For something I didn't even actually do, I felt completely dejected.

Bwwaaaaaah. Thanks brain. Thanks for that. That's what I wanted. Not a fantastical dream, hanging out with Captain Sisko while we battle Daleks in the fields of Middle-Earth while Miracle of Sound plays Sovngarde Song in the background? Not an intensely realistic sex dream with, I don't know, ANY of the many pornstar's I've seen in porn cluttering around my brain, presumably saved over the 'Advanced Mathematics' section? Wanna pick half a dozen, make it a party? No? Look, I'd settle for a dream of me actually defeating my younger brothers in any video game – intentionally - just once? No? Not once? No? You want me to spend some of the day questioning my point of my worthless existence until I stop fixating on it and realise that's not me at all? That's... that is what you want to do? Really. Really? Really? Captain Sisko just started punching Daleks out here and lo and behold, a support squad of pornstars are charging from the north on the dawn of the third day as the riff kicks in! No? No? But... but... oh, come on!

Fine. Personal self-inflicted psychological torture it is, then.

You know what? Fuck you brain. I'm getting a cider and watching an Uwe Boll film tonight.

That'll learn ya'.

Prick.

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