Dream Drool

The last two nights I have had such cruel dreams. Because my dreams are so far from the norm they are always semi-lucid, I am never unaware that this is a dream even though I never quite gain full control over events. Probably the writer in me has too much respect or expectations of the narrative. A wasted faith. The narrative of a dream is shoddy at best.

There was such abuse, cruelty. It was bullying, a word which will always bring to mind, first, the school yard. This is a dangerous distraction. Worse bullying happens much, much later. I was the victim, and I watched the victim, and so experienced simultaneously the terror of being targeted, hunted and toyed with, and the helpless empathy of the audience unable to intervene. I don't want to remember the details. Only that when I woke, even I found the dream to be out of character for my treacherous sleeping mind.

Today I had the fate of all souls. Some green vials, for the pure. Blue for the good. Red for the mean. And there was so much red. I had to decide how to disperse these colours over the course of history. The first, simplest model was to release them one at a time: green first, then blue, and then red over took all the lights in the cube. There was no way to recover from this. We'd distract ourselves, hiding in folded pockets in buildings for which there was no physical space, while the people whose souls we were determining went about their primary school graduation parties. I tried mixing the colours, all at once, but there was too much red. There just wasn't a way. The cube of light always ended red.

Helpless. I had the power to decide the fate of the world, but was unable to change a thing. 

Splort

My unconscious plagiarised both Pacific Rim and Halo, and there was-

Wait, remember that other dream? That dream in which I was part of some massive intergalactic military fleet and there was a massive intergalactic and interspecies war going on – pretty much just riffing off Halo – and I was an officer on some grand battleship somewhere in the outer rings, with some special fancy dignitaries needing pampering while on board and me being the last person to piss the captain off so getting that duty, and running around trying to do I don't even know what when a massive alien battleship dropped into space right next to us. Massive. Standing by a window watching it glide past, taking whole minutes, and my ship wasn't exactly wee. This was deep shit. We had to get a message to fleet command or Earth or whatever, and warn them that the aliens were here, and being the last person to piss the captain off for some reason this rather important task was my responsibility and...and why the fuck, this far in the future, is Microsoft Outlook being used? For intergalactic communication? Are you fucking kidding me? Do you think I could find the appropriate position-based email account to send a message to? Was I 100% certain that most of these accounts were monitored? Captain shouted someone's name at me, to email them, and sudden onset dyslexia screwed that up. Also my first message was something like "omg we're fucked" which when I told the captain just got me in more trouble as it wasn't useful and I had to send another email.

And then there was that dream that was riffing Pacific Rim, with kaiju coming up out of somewhere and being shit, being utterly shit. Some people were special super soldier x-men type people with special powers made for dealing with the kaiju, and I was one of them, although I don't remember what my power was, just that it's hard to look after a wetlands exhibit with all the animals AND slay kaiju at the same time. I remember being underwater. I remember being pretty awesome. I remember that it was established there was one giant kaiju which, if eliminated, would solve all our problems. I was sent to slay this kaiju. The kaiju in question was the sun. The fucking sun. It was a blue network of nodes, with a small gold segment in the middle. My ship was a special shipperson designed just to trump gravity and, you know, the sun being the sun, so I could get inside an just...turn off the gold bit. Which extinguished the sun. Completely. And me and the shipperson, we just turned around and started on our merry way back to Earth, patting ourselves on the back for a job well done because we'd totally just saved the world, while the other me, the me that can't help but critique the fucking narratives of my dreams even as they're unfolding, is stomping and yelling all what the fucking hell did you just do? You extinguished the sun? THE SUN? Just killed all life in the solar system?

And then there was this morning's dream which was totally just copying Game of Thrones with the five bazillion various parties involved in machinations and manipulations in order to gain more power, land, resources, kingdoms, etc, treehouses and magic trains and women with poisons and kings who are really fucking dumb, I mean really. I'm some sort of conscientious objector, or some other faction which has no interest in gaining power, nor do I appear to be championing any party over the others. My sole purpose appears to be to sabotage the lot of them. All of them. I'm some nazgul banshee made of quicksilver and smoke. I kidnap kings. I foil queens. Eventually, everyone becomes aware of me, and that none are able to outwit me, and thus they all give up their silly games and just settle down and let people get on with things. For a while. They meet behind my back, in someone's mother's house. Quietly. They think it is a secret, but it isn't. I waltz in as they're discussing how to displace me, usurp me. It never works. All this, and I have a sick budgie. I can control kingdoms, but the store attendant won't listen to me when I tell them I have a sick budgie.  I'm not elegant dealing with the crime lord because I don't have time to make the story perfect, I have a sick budgie. 

Unconscious is writing shit fanfiction, clearly. 

Extra Hours of Uselessness

I've had sleeplessness. Sometimes brought on by a racing brain, sometimes from shift-work broken sleep patterns, sometimes even just plain ol' insomnia that doesn't appear to have any cause. Sleep and I have always had an inconsistent relationship.

The last couple of years sleeplessness hasn't been an issue (which let me take a moment to say YAY). Instead fatigue has come to rule and now, while I still don't ever seem to be able to get enough sleep, I'm getting heaps of it. Without the structure imposed by core business hours, I will sleep more than 10 hours a day. Every day. Regardless of what those days may hold. It's easy to recognise that I just need more rest than most, but so far has been impossible to accept as I don't wake feeling rested and renewed. Sure, I really, really, really like sleep. Really. But this sleep is like fake sweetener, it does nothing for me, and fucked if I'm not mighty resentful at losing nearly half of the day to it. If I keep going like this, that's half my life gone. It already feels like there isn't enough hours in the day without sleep getting greedy.

Waffling on a bit. Brain is mighty woolly.

The night before last I just didn't sleep. At all. It wasn't anxiety driven, brain wasn't chewing over anything, heart wasn't stewing, had had a single cup of tea that morning, no sugar beyond the afternoon, easy exercise during the day. My body just didn't feel like powering down, and while I wasn't pleased to watch the small hours become larger hours, the frustration and annoyance that usually comes with sleeplessness didn't feel like playing, and mostly I just listened to podcast fiction between attempts to lie still and breathe slow.

Hell, I actually felt alright when my alarm went off, and the only reason I didn't go to work was because I knew the instant I got out of bed and started doing, that would change.

Fibromyalgia and RSI management requires sleep be respected. The meatsack relaxes in sleep in a manner that's near impossible to invoke while awake. The less sleep you get, the less time the nerves and muscles have to recuperate, the inverse result being that I simply get really fucking sore. And dumb. But mostly sore.

Fuck I'm waffling so much. So very dumb.

Anyway, I figured I'd sleep just fiiiiine last night, because my body's reaction to "not enough sleep" is "HIBERNATE FOR THE NEXT WEEK ALRIGHTY!!!!!!!!!"

And I didn't.

Annnnnnd it's actually really weird. This is not even close to the default behaviour of my body for the past few years, and I'm well and truly out of practice in managing sleeplessness, if my old methods would even apply.

And. And. And. I honestly can't remember what the point of this post was. Other than maybe just leaving a record for myself? Um?

I think it might have been to do with the fact that if I'm letting my body sleep as much as I want I lose too many hours being unconscious, but if I'm not getting enough sleep then I haven't gained any time at all because my mental faculties are – herein demonstrated – shitclogged and I'm so full of aches and fatigue all I can really do is sit and stare at nothing in a daze before gently keeling over onto a pillow that never feels comfortable and still staring at nothing in a daze.

I think it might have been something to do with betrayal, in that my default attitude toward my body is resentment, fury and contempt that it sabotages my capacities and abilities across the spectrum, and then this, whatever this is, comes along like a rogue planet as if to say, "You thought I was talented before, now check this out!"

I think it might have been better crafted. Nuanced. Actually a smooth, interesting reading experience. But this is the exact result of all this body betrayal. A whole lot of flibbertigibbet.

Man, I feel like I'm gonna chunder.

Have a kind day, yeah.

Wake

Tokyo. That was an incessant city. London was indefatigable. Sydney is bursting. Sleep is a similar city. To sleep is to try and traverse the main street of all of these cities on a weekend, a holiday weekend before an event that requires all to do extra curricula shopping, also it is a beautiful day, the first after winter, and there is a parade.

Sleep is never a straight and empty road in a featureless land. Sleep is not windless water. Sleep is not rest.

I am not haunted. My dreams are not nightmares, shames, guilts, fears or secrets. They are only dreams of living libraries, water suits, rollerblading on uneven paving and leaping from high platforms because gravity is for other people. They are only dreams.

There are always dreams.

Always running. Always negotiating. Always solving. Always seeking. 

And then I wake.

Such a simple word; wake. A single syllable. Staccato. Wake. To open your eyes is as long as that syllable. As if the crossing from one state to another were such a small, easy thing. 

Is it? Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps I am doing it wrong. It's likely that for most of you it is.

In the city of Sleep I am so many other people. I live so many lives, with so many other faces and furies. My agendas are diverse and legion. To wake is not to wake. To wake is to stop being these other people, stop pursuing their goals and fighting their circumstances. To wake is to suddenly and abruptly become me.

Bewildered. Confused. Untethered. 

I do not go to sleep; I go away.

I do not wake; I come back.

And between those two points of transformation, I do not exist at all.

Circles or Spirals

The last time I was unemployed I had moved back to Melbourne from Canberra after breaking up with my fiancée of five years, I had just finished an arts degree, was living with my parents and had only retail work experience to my name.  It took a year and half of applying for jobs and smiling at interviews before I finally landed a full-time position.

Being unemployed when you don't want to be is awful. Quite a number of the blog posts in the archives are dedicated to the subject of just how awful it is. Very awful. Extremely awful. Awful to the point of staying in that full-time job despite it also being awful because I never wanted to go through that again.

There's been oceans of water under the bridge since then. I've exercised pure financial independence, collected some mean skills to toss on my resumé and climbed the organisational ladder (mostly to find a less crap job). It's one thing to know you're a fantastic worker; quite another to have the track record to prove it.

We've been in Glasgow a month and a half with not so much as a sniff of possibility. I had assumed, not unreasonably I think, that this time around the job hunt would not be as demoralising or as hard. Look! This piece of paper shows how awesome I am! I have references and everything!

Not a bite. Nowhere. On nothing. I've widened my net and started applying for jobs well below my ability and still nothing. No response when applying for a data entry position? I don't even warrant that?

Demoralising. Internal erosion. Cracking security. Despair.

It is different this time though. We've paid several months of rent up front on this place, and have savings to keeps us going those months as well as take us to Iceland. I do have a platform of proven amazingness from which to launch myself from. There are two of us. He's picked up shifts at a pub and I'm doing freelance editing. My worry and despair keeps his optimism grounded, and his optimism keeps my despair in check.

I sleep around 12 hours out of 24, and I feel good. Whole and rested. Even when I have full control over how many hours I spend working on the computer my body gets cranky much swifter than I plan for. It aches and I fight on in frustration, pushing myself into a stupid cycle of forced down time.

These things make me look at my future and wonder how I am ever to fund the dreams I wish to pursue. If I do require that much sleep to be sane, how am I to work a full time job and do any sort of writing or have a social life at the same time? If computers are the devil to my arms, what work can I do? Not housekeeping, that was just as damaging, if not worse. Customer service positions would result in mental stress, and to be honest I'd prefer the physical pain and psychological strain of a desk job than the mental stress of a face-to-face job.

I'm awesome. Really. I'm the most disgustingly great employee ever. And I am a completely spent monkey.

But.
It's different now.
I do not know what dreams I have, let alone which I wish to pursue.
Perhaps here and now is enough.

Girls Goin' a Roamin'

Most hostels offer female only dorm rooms for those of us who are for whatever reason uncomfortable sharing a room with the sausage-wielding sex. I've even seen a few places that offer male only dorms as well, as is only fair. Typically beds in such dorms cost a little extra, so I've been bunking in mixed dorms. Until now.

This room is very pink.



On seeing the wall fitted out with 3 mirrors, stools, dressing table as well having a hair dryer and hair straightener (!!!), my initial reaction was somewhat indignant. Who wants all that cliched crap?

Well, to be honest I was pretty damn excited to see the hair dryer. Wet hair in this climate is a little uncomfortable. It only works for two seconds on the highest setting before entering torpor, as I discovered.

This led me to consider the hair straightener, because dammit I wanted to go outside and I did not want wet hair at the same time. Now, I've never used a hair straightener in my life. Partly because my hair is pretty damn straight, but mostly because I'm lazy and don't believe in high maintenance hair. Pfffft.

The general theory behind hair straighteners I understood, but exactly how one uses them...uh, are they supposed to vibrate anxiously when you clap the tongs together? Because this one did. I gave my hair a few swipes before being far too disconcerted by the trembling appliance and thus ended my first and probably only experiment with hair straighteners.

Huh. Sniff. Disdain.

It was a full house last night, and in the morning I was woken by the others springiness out of bed to stand in front of the mirrors and do...things. I have no idea what any of them were doing but there was a lot of it. The hair straightener was used. The hair dryer was used (on a lower setting). There were all sorts of tubes and powders and touching of hair. All this before they were even out of their jammies.

Me, I rolled out of bed, changed into be-seen-in-public clothes, and staggered downstairs for breakfast without even putting deodorant on.

I don't think I'm very good at being a woman.

Still, there is some merit to gender stereotyping. For example, "girls snore far less than boys" IS THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH.

Insomnia visited me again last night. It was unexpected, I had and had not done all the things I need to during the day that would normally moderate insomnia off.

I missed my alarm.

The Dragon cannot transcribe the past few minutes of choked silence. I can think of no better way to describe the hour it took me to make a single decision this morning. Choked. Whether to get up, go and simply work late, or call in sick. There were a ridiculous number of factors that I took into consideration when weighing the pros and cons of each. Indecision was paralysing me, and I knew it, and I knew, no, I know that means that I am running too close to empty.

It feels ridiculous saying that, “willing to staytoo close to empty" (the Dragon interpreted that, truth is a slip of the Dragon?) When I have been running on empty for I don't even know any more, I think I remember what it felt like to have will end determination and strength.

The Dragon still cannot translate words thrown tears.

I lay there long enough that eventually the decision was made me, and I called in sick.

Of course, having made the decision I instantly felt better and felt that I could face work to do this. And now I am choking on the same decision a second time . In a

Did I tell you I was referred to a psychiatrist? They have not called back. I can't commit to a decision to go or not to work today this; thought of calling to make an appointment to this is a I can't work on and if five

Don't know what do. There are no safe place is in the world.

When The Unconscious Drives

Some of us do peculiar things while we sleep, such as talk or fight or walk or make sandwiches etc etc etc. Some of us even snore. I have only been accused of snoring. On occasion. That said, I have from time to time found evidence of a rather peculiar nocturnal activity. That is to say, on waking, I have on occasion found evidence of what appears to be earwax (really thick orange gross earwax) beneath my finger nail. It would appear that my unconscious is taking care of my aural hygiene while I am not driving the body.

This is kind of weird.

Albeit not actually of any concern. Just a little bit gross.

This hasn't happened for a little while, and I had completely forgotten about this bizarre behaviour until today. I was changing the sheets on my bed and discovered a small colony of what appears to be earwax (really thick orange gross earwax) crusted on my cotton blanket.

I can only conclude that my unconscious noted that I had noted its activities due to the physical traces it left behind, and concluded that the best way to continue operations was to somehow negate these traces, ergo, covering my finger with the blanket so that the result of such nocturnal excavations would not be so readily apparent in my fingernails.

This is also kind of weird.

And a little bit irritating, given that earwax stains, and blankets are far more hassle to clean.

Dear Unconscious, I hope you are listening. Stop that shit.

(Hark! And awaken!) "-but not necessity, and-"

It can take minutes for my alarm clock to drill down through my dreams and the barricades of sleep. "Minutes" is plural, and not specific. "Minutes" could mean four, or forty (frequently, it means forty). When the radio (being my second alarm; I never hear the first ten minutes of obnoxious beeper alarm) finally registers as external and irritating, I do not wake. Instead, I'll ascend near the surface of waking, only close enough to have gross motor functions and slap the snooze button.

This generally goes on for an hour.

(Do not ask how early I set my alarm.)

Some people can leap out of bed right on waking. I'm not one of those people. My brain needs several run ups before it can work up the gumption to breach the surface and wake the fuck up.

This morning, I heard the radio within a minute. The music dove straight down like sugar-coated electricity, and my mind shot up, wild-eyed and quite awake, and I listened.

I thought it was bagpipes at first, but it was the war cry of the fiercely needless. Deep booming drums. Addictive stick rhythm. And then they started singing.

I was awake, so very awake, shocked to be so ambushed before the day had even started by something that tasted...like...

A feverish trawl of the Triple J forums with the only lyric the song had gave me treasure. The responsible party is kyü, a Sydney-based band, and the song itself, Pixiphony, is available for free download at Triple J Unearthed.

If it isn't rare enough to find a song that affects me so, I discovered another unexpected present; they're opening for Junip in January, a gig for which I already have a ticket.

Such fortune worries me. Bad things are going to happen in balance.

Suffice to say, I did not get back to sleep this morning.

Nap Attack

I lay on the bed a moment "to think" and I've lost an hour and a half.

This is why I don't do naps. It just isn't possible to wake up twice in one day. I feel decidedly disgusting, inside and out, and am certainly no longer in any condition "to think".

I dreamed I gave birth to twin girls. I couldn't give them names because to do so would be to take away all the other potential names they could wear, and there were no names that understood how amazingly wonderfully perfectly delightfully devastatingly existent they were. I couldn't even bring myself to feed them, as that would then ground them in this world, like Persephone and the pomegranate, and they were so much more than that. They didn't need feeding. They didn't need defining. They just were, and they changed everything.

And then I woke up.

The next person who tries to argue with me when I say my subconscious is out to get me gets it in the neck.

Trepanation From The OutsideIN

Someone in my immediate surroundings, who shall remain anonymous, lost the ability to sleep in. Apparently their brain found the alarm function, and in fiddling around with said function set it to 7AM, and now this someone who shall remain anonymous wakes up DING! regardless of exhaustion or what time sleep was achieved, and can sleep no further.

I lol'ed to hear this, because I'm a jerk like that.

And then I started doing the same.

Did you know that an inner alarm clock was contagious? I didn't. It must have taken prolonged exposure, or maybe it had a long incubation period, but suddenly, DING! I can't sleep past 7AM.

I'm not cool with that.

Someone who shall remain anonymous has apologised for inflicting this on me. In light of such an apology, my brain has decided to go one-up, and for the past two weeks I have been waking up at THREE O'FUCKING-CLOCK IN THE MORNING.

WHY

I DO NOT KNOW

Stupid brain.

Unsurprisingly, I'm a little frazzled right now. A couple of days back I went to bed and to sleep at 7PM. Woke up, it was dark, my alarm wasn't going off so I sighed. Hello again 3AM. Rolled over to check the time and OMFG IT'S PAST NINE I'M LATE FOR WORK I'M no wait hang on that's PM.

I'd only been asleep for two hours.

Dreams have been a little too active of late as well, so what sleep I am getting is not particularly restful. I dreamed I was Hunter S. Thompson, in some lovely woodland glade, and I had a stick. One long thin stick. John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson of Pulp Fiction were out to get me. They had machine guns and chainsaws. It didn't end well.

Stupid stick.

And Papa Bear Said

The encroaching cold isn't all bad. There is one side-effect of winter that I cannot complain about, that I adore and love and welcome with open arms and handcuffs in the hope it never leaves again.

Sleep.

The nights are so cold, my hibernation engine goes into overdrive. You have no idea. It's light speed, warp speed, ludicrous speed. I'm actually a bear, and my body listens to the signalling seasons and goes, "Right then! Time to get my coma on!" The sleep I sleep is incredible. Deep enough to drown in. My brain shuts down entirely, I know, because when I wake up I feel wonderful, so sated and rested and utterly blissed out. I reel about the day drunk on sleep, and can't wait to get home and do it again.

This does occasionally mean I miss my alarm, wake up four hours after I'm supposed to get up, and being very late for work. I must confess, though, that with sleep like that, I don’t feel the slightest bit guilty about it.

And the dust

What happens in sleep?

I went to bed really happy last night. Sort of delirious and giggly and stupid and quite in love with the world. Which is just ace, by the way, I heartily recommend such a state of mind.

And I woke up furious and bitter and toxic. For no reason whatsoever. Mood set before getting out of bed. Before even checking the time on the clock. Which is not ace, by the way, I think that's just fucked up.

Makes me wonder if maybe my brain is so unfamiliar with happy hormones that it treats a good mood like a dose of methylenedioxymethamphetamine, pumping out the serotonin gogogo, and then hitting me with the appropriate withdrawl and backslide. Stupid brain.

I think my unconscious is still out to get me.









And I've run out of tea.

I've slept in this room more than anywhere else in the world. Of twenty-seven years, I'd guess maybe six years of accumulated sleep has occurred outside these walls. I don't know what I do when I sleep or how the space I sleep in affects me, but I can't help believing that means something.

I haven't stayed the night back home for a while. There was a pattern emerging, or, I saw what I wanted to see to find a pattern. Lying in this bed, in this room I've slept and dreamed and breathed most of my life in, I'd fall down a hole. No matter what my state of mind, no matter what the events of the day, closing the door and turning the light out guaranteed me a tearstorm and no sleep.

Half believe in the idea of the memory that space keeps of us.

I don't believe this room holds good memories of me.

I'm turning the light out now.

don't you wish you'd never met her

It's like I'm at some party. I don't really know anyone here, and have managed to find niche and nook in the peripheral of groups, but I'm not engaging in any conversation and am drinking too fast. I'm nervous. Sleep is here. I caught a glimpse when I first arrived, and that was all it took. That one hard thump in my chest, and that shrinkage in my longer bones, and the party was doomed. At once devastated and ecstatic knowing I breathed the same air, inhabited the same space. Julius Caesar could have been present and I wouldn't have noticed. I've eyes only for Sleep.

Sleep doesn't even know I'm here. I force myself to remain, in this room, with this conversation about who knows what I'm not listening, because as much as I want to follow Sleep from room to room, I don't want to be some sad puppy dog chasing coat tails. It's enough to acknowledge the wreckage the sight of Sleep has done to me.

I watch as Sleep passes by the door, moving down the corridor, arms linked with some other man.

Another hard thump in my chest, further shrinkage in my bones. I can taste my jealousy, and wash my mouth with the last of my drink.

Someone else following Sleep pauses at the door, their gaze lingering and yearning. They turn and enter the room.

Oshitoshitoshit it's Insomnia. And there's an empty seat next to me.

Fuck.

I angle my body away, towards the group I'm not a part of, which helps not a bit. Insomnia makes a bee line for me, flops down heavily and too close and starts sounding off right away. Awkward sentences. Observations intended to be witty and clever but come off as try hard. Nervous laughter.

I feel like a toad, but I can't be seen with Insomnia, oh gods, imagine if Sleep saw me with Insomnia, it'd be a death sentence, a lifetime rejection. Not that it matters, Sleep is off somewhere sleeping with that man, but I can't, I really can't. I mutter something and get up, striding away with purpose and the illusion of direction.

I catch a glimpse of Sleep, lounging against a banister, one hand on a girl's arm. Thump. Shrink. Fuck. Keep moving.

There's a spare bench on the patio, and I slide on, giving those others at the table a nod. They read my posture, the jumpy dart of my eyes. One of them obliges and sits up, hiding me further.

Insomnia is not so green a hunter, and barrels out of the house with too much self-conscious bluster. A chair is snagged, steel legs screeching over the ground, and pulled up again much too close. Again, the prattle, the chatter, the inane comments that have no malice behind them but are so thoughtless as to be war-starting offensive. I give the others an apologetic shrug. Insomnia's embarrassing and embarrassed miasma chokes the patio. The group says something about it getting cold, and head inside. I follow.

There is Sleep, disappearing into a bathroom, pulling someone by the hand.

And this way, I destroy the entire party. With every passing encounter with Sleep, seeing that who I desire making out with every single other person present, bitterness hardens my joints and sets the line of my mouth. I sit myself at still other groups, knowing full well I bring about their doom as Insomnia, the one person I actively dislike, follows in my wake. The atmosphere is destroyed. People are leaving. I'm running out of cover. I run out of cover.

I sit on the couch where I started, staring at the carpet, and Insomnia talks to me. That voice is wearing away at my core, chiseling away the veneer of civilisation and polished manners, and fury raises its head to make a fitting companion of bitterness.

I tell myself this is fine. This entire situation is just fine. Sleep can go sleep with all the strays in the world. I don't care. Really. This is my choice.

I don't go as far as to make eye contact with Insomnia.

I'm fine. Really. I like it this way. I mean, I'm used to it. This is the way parties like this usually pan out, you know, I have a pathetic awkward loser magnet. People seem to think I want to listen. They just want to hear themselves talk, and need a cover. And Sleep, I mean, pfft. Who'd want that? Town bicycle, you know.

Insomnia never shuts up.

Five hours later, I'm in tears, but I can't leave, and Insomnia never shuts up. I'm on the verge, no, I am going to scream, the intent is there, the air is there, and Sleep walks into the room, nods at Insomnia, and holds out a hand.

I hate Sleep. I need Sleep. I'm starved and desperate and I take that hand without even the pretense of reluctance and let Sleep do away with me.

A couple of hours later, my alarm goes off. The bed is empty. Sleep is gone.

every time i lose altitude

It has taken me 27 years to figure out that yes, summer dresses are designed for summer. For the past 26 years I've been schlepping about in jeans and t-shirts on 40 degree days. I have no idea what I was trying to prove, but hallelujah I have seen the light. I barely noticed the mercury hit 33 today, 'cause I was too busy poncing about in my girly dress and bare feet, and being all, you know, not stinking hot and dying. I'm converted. Some more dresses and slip on shoes and I might even like summer. Pity about my blinding white legs.

Thanks for stopping by Jeff's blog while I trashed it. It went better than I expected, and look! I had no picture for the triumphant little old lady, so the mischievous KJ Bishop drew one:



I think she's adorable. No ninja or pirate could defeat that, not without the spectre of their mother and their mother's mother and their mother's sister and their great-great aunt rising up to haunt them with a vengeance. I love the milk carton, heh. Thanks Kirsten!

Sleep has been coy of late. She relents, eventually, but the nights are getting longer and I'm not seeing much of reasonable hours. It isn't too much of an issue right now, as I'm staring down a barrel loaded with a week and a half of afternoon shifts, but I suspect it will be a long season of sleeplessness.

I need to get back into the practice of making use of these hours. My insomnia muscle is out of shape.

I dreamed I was kidnapped by guerilla horticulturalists and forced to tend to plants, day and night, and learn nusery fu. They were very strict, but I learned a lot, and woke with a greater understanding of my ignorance when it comes to plants. There was one fruit, a cross between a tomato, a chilli and a strawberry, that I grew very fond of, and spent most of my energy attempting to steal/eat.

My brother, on discovering that I said "guerilla horticulturalists" and not "gorilla horticulturalists", was very disappointed.

I SLEPT FOR 13 HOURS

BOOYAH!

(Except for that bit in the middle where I dreamt of, I shit you not, the zombie apocalypse. At the time, I was back in high school, and on a school camp. We were doing school camp type things, which largely involved swimming around some underwater palace (which was more than my actual school camps involved), and the teachers hearding us into a dinky little cottage country cafe, all the while this incredible sense of impending doom was growing, and for no very good reason that I could see. The teachers began pushing and whispering to get us back to camp, NOW, except there were no buses or cars. There were, however, helpful people with horses. Yeah. Who put us in groups of three to a horse (THREE TO A GODDAMN HORSE!?!? WTF!?!?!). Try organising a whole year level of high school kids into groups of threes when a whole heap of them have never ridden before, and none of us know what is going on other than something BAD was happening. This didn't last long, as other people turned up - what helpful people country folk are! - with more horses. I sat on a hoary old nag which would not stop walking, no matter how tight I pulled the reigns in. Teachers and horsey people had us lined up around a paddock, and were running around getting everyone saddled and seated, ready to trot off back to camp, and on this pain in the arse horse I walked around, and around, and around this loop of all my school mates, catching snippets of conversation that involved zombies, and further snippets that indicated exactly how freaked out everyone actually was, and this horse WOULDN'T STOP WALKING. I had an EPIPHANY; the zombie plague did not originate in Gippsland, it had finally reached Gippsland, but did not originate there. The suburbs of Melbourne were already over run, and in fact so was all Australia. There was no where for us to go, no safe places left in the world, but still, we must go. That's what teachers do, guide their students away from danger. But my god, it takes a long time to get hundreds of kids on horses. And then, just when finally, everyone was ready, there was one shrill scream, and I looked over my shoulder, past everyone else, and saw ONE ZOMBIE. SHAMBLING. VERY SLOWLY. And that was all it took to start an insane panic, a stampede into a highway full of cars, with half of us unhorsed and trampled, and the rest of us with no safe place to go to.)

(When I woke up, I was in my old room, which achieves pure darkness, in my old home, which achieves pure silence, and you're damn right I freaked the fuck out.)

waiting waiting waiting

I had a couple of drinks last night, because I'd crossed the line between tired-but-fully-functional and just plain fucked up. Alcohol and sleeping pills are the same evil to me. I don't want to lean on either of them, ever. Because they work, they're more than tempting. All the cold air falls out of the fridge while I stand there looking at a bottle of pills and a bottle of swill, knowing that either might give me a good night's sleep, knowing that neither will actually give me anything more than one single good night's sleep. I'd rather be exhausted and fucked up than lean on them.

But, every now and then.

It was a nice sleep. A relaxed sleep. I dreamed of hotels and lions. I was confused about who I was when I woke up, because my jaw didn't ache. I was so comfortable, so relaxed, until I remembered how to be me. Clenched jaw, frown, balled fists, tight muscles; a system of tension that seems to provide all the cues I'll ever need to know who I am when I wake. I'm one walking clench. A walking, talking, breathing, sullen clench of locomotive meat, braced against the impact of morning, afternoon, evening, night.

I'm going to get the picnic blanket out off the cupboard, and lie on my back in the backyard, with the trees, and the dogs, and the grass, and the wind. My feet are cold. That's okay.