Entries by tag: dreams
BUT in between torturing me with a lot of nonsensical shit I won't go into and some tedious hypnogogic stuff which revealed how dull my priorities are at the moment (OMG WHAT IF THE REFURB AT THE GYM REMOVES EQUIPMENT I WANT TO USE? WHAT IF I'M ACTUALLY BEING VERY LAZY AFTER ALL MY FRIENDS ARE DOING TRX CLASSES WITH WEIGHTS WHY CAN I NOT STOMACH DOING CLASSES IS IT BECAUSE I AM LAZY), it also produced a thing which, untangled slowly by my waking mind and rationalised into something useful, works as the set-up for a story.
HERE IT IS
My brain couldn't work out who was the main character here. The person it followed longest looked like a young Ian Hislop & was a civil servant trying to sort out why some money had disappeared and then why someone had been murdered and then became alarmed because it looked like the Queen was at risk, then it turned out to be some giant capitalist conspiracy thing and one of the Royal Household (in this case a shady fucking mechanic, what the hell, who was also a HUGE LACONIC RUSSIAN okay subconscious) explained calmly to him that "parties" were dealing with the over-greedy company (although some higher-ups had fled on a plane in a dramatic stormy escape also thank you subconscious) and when the civil servant asked about the missing money (£60m, but that's... not actually very much in real terms) the mechanic said, "do you think her charities run themselves? do you think this country runs itself? do you think 'tourist money' is so huge?" and there was some fairly dark and in NO WAY BREXIT-DERIVED SHIT about how broke this country is. It was nice though because it at least implied she was very committed to her own peeps.
Secondarily it became apparent that someone was passing a lot of information in every direction, who turned out to be My Personal Favourite, the very damaged, very gay, and very promiscuous illegitimate son of the civil servant and one of the princesses (who had since died, potentially at her own hand, due to Very Poor Mental Health) from when he was a lot younger. Having grown up with whoever happened to be around - as an Embarrassment he was foisted out of the Royal Household and dumped on his natural father as soon as someone could find him, and told in no uncertain terms that his career would SUFFER MASSIVELY if he didn't keep this Out Of the Way, said son was broadly considered unwanted baggage by absolutely everyone, dumped at schools/moved around during holidays, occasionally roaming the corridors of power, and as unattended children so often are, Frequently The Target Of Sexual Predators. Becoming a manipulative, rumour-mongering, tale-bearing, shit-stirring, drug-using occasional spy and occasional prostitute depending on circumstances was almost, as far as he sees it, inevitable. Now Getting On A Bit (by his own standards at least) he deals more in information than sexual favours as he refuses to be a procurer. His relationship with his (unmarried/married to his job) father is Difficult & I think his own investigation into whatever death it is frequently deliberately obstructs his father's.
Thirdly, but non-protagonistly, there is illegitmate son's younger, legitimate half-brother, who has sOMEHOW (and this necessitates this very much not being set where/when/reality that it appeared in my dream because WTF) unexpectedly become the likely heir following the death of The Old Lady (who was somewhat younger in my dream than in real life, more like 60 than 80-something) and become embroiled in the edges of the entire affair. As someone not pegged for inheriting much more than his mother's mental illness and a perpetually absent father he'd also led an early life colliding with some of the same people who screwed up his older half brother, although with the stability of one place to go back to he didn't become as vicious; my dream ended with the elder of the two and the younger of the two engaged in a distinctly unhealthy flirtation while the older also imparted a series of warnings to the younger about the remaining dangerous parties in the civil service/world in general of the "don't end up like me" variety; the younger replied with inside knowledge of the royal household which, the elder being himself, he promptly sold on.
I have a feeling the mechanic had a bigger role in this. He had that air about him.
Anyway, that was the dream.
Blogs
I want to fail in a grander case, on quotation serendipity and the horrifying possibility that writing in the first person makes you immortal.
HERE IT IS
My brain couldn't work out who was the main character here. The person it followed longest looked like a young Ian Hislop & was a civil servant trying to sort out why some money had disappeared and then why someone had been murdered and then became alarmed because it looked like the Queen was at risk, then it turned out to be some giant capitalist conspiracy thing and one of the Royal Household (in this case a shady fucking mechanic, what the hell, who was also a HUGE LACONIC RUSSIAN okay subconscious) explained calmly to him that "parties" were dealing with the over-greedy company (although some higher-ups had fled on a plane in a dramatic stormy escape also thank you subconscious) and when the civil servant asked about the missing money (£60m, but that's... not actually very much in real terms) the mechanic said, "do you think her charities run themselves? do you think this country runs itself? do you think 'tourist money' is so huge?" and there was some fairly dark and in NO WAY BREXIT-DERIVED SHIT about how broke this country is. It was nice though because it at least implied she was very committed to her own peeps.
Secondarily it became apparent that someone was passing a lot of information in every direction, who turned out to be My Personal Favourite, the very damaged, very gay, and very promiscuous illegitimate son of the civil servant and one of the princesses (who had since died, potentially at her own hand, due to Very Poor Mental Health) from when he was a lot younger. Having grown up with whoever happened to be around - as an Embarrassment he was foisted out of the Royal Household and dumped on his natural father as soon as someone could find him, and told in no uncertain terms that his career would SUFFER MASSIVELY if he didn't keep this Out Of the Way, said son was broadly considered unwanted baggage by absolutely everyone, dumped at schools/moved around during holidays, occasionally roaming the corridors of power, and as unattended children so often are, Frequently The Target Of Sexual Predators. Becoming a manipulative, rumour-mongering, tale-bearing, shit-stirring, drug-using occasional spy and occasional prostitute depending on circumstances was almost, as far as he sees it, inevitable. Now Getting On A Bit (by his own standards at least) he deals more in information than sexual favours as he refuses to be a procurer. His relationship with his (unmarried/married to his job) father is Difficult & I think his own investigation into whatever death it is frequently deliberately obstructs his father's.
Thirdly, but non-protagonistly, there is illegitmate son's younger, legitimate half-brother, who has sOMEHOW (and this necessitates this very much not being set where/when/reality that it appeared in my dream because WTF) unexpectedly become the likely heir following the death of The Old Lady (who was somewhat younger in my dream than in real life, more like 60 than 80-something) and become embroiled in the edges of the entire affair. As someone not pegged for inheriting much more than his mother's mental illness and a perpetually absent father he'd also led an early life colliding with some of the same people who screwed up his older half brother, although with the stability of one place to go back to he didn't become as vicious; my dream ended with the elder of the two and the younger of the two engaged in a distinctly unhealthy flirtation while the older also imparted a series of warnings to the younger about the remaining dangerous parties in the civil service/world in general of the "don't end up like me" variety; the younger replied with inside knowledge of the royal household which, the elder being himself, he promptly sold on.
I have a feeling the mechanic had a bigger role in this. He had that air about him.
Anyway, that was the dream.
Blogs
I want to fail in a grander case, on quotation serendipity and the horrifying possibility that writing in the first person makes you immortal.
Yesterday
About the usual amounts of strife; I went to one cafe to do writing/editing work, decided to be nice and go somewhere with Jess briefly after lunch, had one fight about her insisting on having a shower and then taking forever to actually get around to doing this, then another about the fact that she doesn't listen to things like "I will not be here this evening" and "what a GRC is" and will then tell me I've said nothing about it when I've basically gone on about it repeatedly and she just doesn't care about it, etc; managed some of my editing in the Costa (further fight, followed by her being angry with some people for asking if we were leaving or arriving when we got out of our seats, then being angry with me for sympathetically asking if she was peopled-out); the rest on the train on the way to see Doug. Continued reading Secret History, which is finally proving enjoyable in a "mocking these ceaselessly pretentious and useless arseholes and Richard's intense NO HOMO about literally everything which, tragically, is in fact VERY GAY" sort of way, made some notes - more questions, really - for the novelle. This will probably need to be thrashed out with someone but a) in person isn't working because I am great at distracting myself and b) I keep trying to hide from my inbox as I let it get slightly out of control.
Anyway we walked about twenty minutes in the freezing freezing cold down to Doug's sheltered accommodation but he wasn't really able or willing to wake up after over-exerting himself the previous day; we sat for about forty minutes and read and talked to each other for a bit (Linds & I) then left; I insisted on leaving him a note to say we'd been there, because it's bad for him to have someone written down as showing up and them to apparently not show up, he needs to be able to trust his diary, etc.; so we trekked all the way back up to North London again.
I shan't get into the rest but basically going to bed is becoming a nightmare and getting to sleep is literally fucking impossible. My brain does not want to do it, and I cannot drug myself when I need to be up the next day.
TODAY
Gym induction, which was stressful and uncomfortable (I feel like other people have very quinoa-and-juice gyms and we have a prison-routine-continuation-gym which is frankly much less objectionable but initially intimidating because everyone is terrifyingly fit and enthusiastic in a way that I can't hate as thoroughly as I can the Yummies), and the actual test session with Linds which was not at all stressful and actually quite pleasant; did the Couch to 5k first-week session of 90 secs walk-run cycles for 20 minutes, then a twenty minute bike ride through pretend American national parks, which was again fairly pleasant, then promptly died of hunger and had to go and eat half a chicken. Still. Some form of baby step, there.
Following this I went up to quinoa-juice-yummy-hell to format/edit Sussicran, carry on writing a birthday gift for a friend (nothing like lovingly describing the ritualistic murder of a teenager while surrounded by people whose wombs are just BURSTING with maternal productivity; I AM COME TO BRING BALANCE TO THE HILLSIDE FUCKERS), and edit Heavy.
Remaining tasks: deal with the nightmare that has become of my inbox, look up submission guidelines for this anthology, read Liza's application for the awful scholar thing. HAVE BATH.
About the usual amounts of strife; I went to one cafe to do writing/editing work, decided to be nice and go somewhere with Jess briefly after lunch, had one fight about her insisting on having a shower and then taking forever to actually get around to doing this, then another about the fact that she doesn't listen to things like "I will not be here this evening" and "what a GRC is" and will then tell me I've said nothing about it when I've basically gone on about it repeatedly and she just doesn't care about it, etc; managed some of my editing in the Costa (further fight, followed by her being angry with some people for asking if we were leaving or arriving when we got out of our seats, then being angry with me for sympathetically asking if she was peopled-out); the rest on the train on the way to see Doug. Continued reading Secret History, which is finally proving enjoyable in a "mocking these ceaselessly pretentious and useless arseholes and Richard's intense NO HOMO about literally everything which, tragically, is in fact VERY GAY" sort of way, made some notes - more questions, really - for the novelle. This will probably need to be thrashed out with someone but a) in person isn't working because I am great at distracting myself and b) I keep trying to hide from my inbox as I let it get slightly out of control.
Anyway we walked about twenty minutes in the freezing freezing cold down to Doug's sheltered accommodation but he wasn't really able or willing to wake up after over-exerting himself the previous day; we sat for about forty minutes and read and talked to each other for a bit (Linds & I) then left; I insisted on leaving him a note to say we'd been there, because it's bad for him to have someone written down as showing up and them to apparently not show up, he needs to be able to trust his diary, etc.; so we trekked all the way back up to North London again.
I shan't get into the rest but basically going to bed is becoming a nightmare and getting to sleep is literally fucking impossible. My brain does not want to do it, and I cannot drug myself when I need to be up the next day.
TODAY
Gym induction, which was stressful and uncomfortable (I feel like other people have very quinoa-and-juice gyms and we have a prison-routine-continuation-gym which is frankly much less objectionable but initially intimidating because everyone is terrifyingly fit and enthusiastic in a way that I can't hate as thoroughly as I can the Yummies), and the actual test session with Linds which was not at all stressful and actually quite pleasant; did the Couch to 5k first-week session of 90 secs walk-run cycles for 20 minutes, then a twenty minute bike ride through pretend American national parks, which was again fairly pleasant, then promptly died of hunger and had to go and eat half a chicken. Still. Some form of baby step, there.
Following this I went up to quinoa-juice-yummy-hell to format/edit Sussicran, carry on writing a birthday gift for a friend (nothing like lovingly describing the ritualistic murder of a teenager while surrounded by people whose wombs are just BURSTING with maternal productivity; I AM COME TO BRING BALANCE TO THE HILLSIDE FUCKERS), and edit Heavy.
Remaining tasks: deal with the nightmare that has become of my inbox, look up submission guidelines for this anthology, read Liza's application for the awful scholar thing. HAVE BATH.
It'll all be over soon.
(I don't want to get into how tiresome it is being constantly bombarded by politics everywhere I go online now - yours, mine, but perilously little of the rest of the world's - HEY INDIA, HOW YOU DOIN'? NO FUCKER HERE SEEMS TO CARE? - but faughhhhhh if I could just turn off everything and move to space I would).
Dreamed last night what appeared to be a horror film in the mould of Pegg/Wright but with the comedy unfortunately removed. Was nailed to bed for an additional two hours as my subconscious decided to secure a happier ending, however:
Protagonist, for reasons of escaping previously, is now down to his underpants and trainers (he is a tallish, thin, scruffy-bearded hipster of vaguely Mediterranean looks, a little like an idealised Carravaggio self-portrait) and has set off across one of the outlying fields of a wildlife park, having escaped from the centre of the very hilly seaside town the majority of the action took place in. It was night before; now it is the kind of clear, bright blue-skied day that is rarely found in horror movies. There are zebras and giraffes in the paddock but they're milling around the edges by the dark green chainlink fence, and ignoring him. He walks up to a house on the far side of the field, climbs the fence, and goes to hide in an outhouse.
There is already someone there, a man who is obviously not able to use all his faculties; while the protagonist stands frozen in the shadows, someone comes in to help the other man to defecate through a trapdoor in the floor, scolding him.
Then the people who have been chasing the protagonist open the door to the room. They pull out the man with mental disabilities and the person caring for the man, who appears to be on their side. They go outside, and while they are vanishing the protagonist exits through the back door and sneaks around the other side of the house. He encounters some of the people who were chasing him but they stare at him almost without seeing, and the leader says, we're not interested in him right now.
Out on the road, the protagonist can see that the red camper van his friends had been trying to escape in before it broke down has gone. He rightly assumes not that they have escaped, but that they have been caught and "converted". He continues down the road in the opposite direction to a cross-roads, where the end of the wildlife park and its various enclosures is. There are some neglected aviaries, and on the other side of the perimeter fence, some portacabins selling various things. Most of them appear to be shut, but the nearest, which has signs advertising ice creams, "Norwegian Hairbands and Snacks", is open.
He goes inside and, after some negotiation, spends his last 80p on a FAB lolly (the price and the specific lolly are very clear? He was trying to find a different one because it was the cheapest - it had white packaging with a pink little girl on - but she told him to take this one and charged him 80p, the same as the cheapest). Because he is still wearing his underpants, he also tries to buy the only item of clothing on sale, a blue t-shirt which has some vague connection to NASA, but he has no more money and it's £6.99.
He turns up the right-hand fork at the cross-roads, and begins walking between the hedges, on the narrow verge - the roads are a lot like the ones where I grew up - up a shallow incline. He has no real idea where to go or what to do, and he finishes the lolly. Coming up from behind is a man in a red sleeveless t-shirt, carrying two plastic shopping bags full of stuff, possibly groceries.
For a moment the protagonist considers robbing him; then he considers running away in case this man is one of Them - he looks a little like them, because he has tanned skin and dark blond hair and the same peaked, perky nose etc., but when the man gets closer the protagonist sees that although he is wearing ordinary shorts he is also only wearing grey trainer socks, and has no shoes on of any kind.
Still thinking half-heartedly that he might rob him, the protagonist says, "What happened to your shoes?"
And the other man looks at him walking in his underpants, and raises his eyebrows, and they both start laughing, because they realise they'd escaped from the same people.
And that is when I woke up.
+ continuing to have no enthusiasm for anything except occasionally the story i am writing
+ the new david attenborough is Quite Good
+ what with not being at work, not having seen anyone since saturday night and not really had any length of conversation since about friday, in part due to jess's work schedule/reluctance to talk to me, in part to lindsay's game nerding, and in part to my own commitment to shitting out a book ahead of faffing on social media (also not really getting email convos the way i do when I'm at work), on top of the bizarrely isolating effect of winter light, i feel a bit cut off and unreal at the moment.
+ attempting even the mildest level of exercise is hell because i have to wear a binder for it and it squeezes my diaphragm but i am at least able to stretch out my leg muscles in the morning/afternoon now.
+ it's cold and i hate it
+ it's dark and i hate it
+ going out to meet emily for a bit tomorrow night which will hopefully stop me from feeling like i live in the bottle of a lead-lined barrel in the depths of the ocean
(I don't want to get into how tiresome it is being constantly bombarded by politics everywhere I go online now - yours, mine, but perilously little of the rest of the world's - HEY INDIA, HOW YOU DOIN'? NO FUCKER HERE SEEMS TO CARE? - but faughhhhhh if I could just turn off everything and move to space I would).
Dreamed last night what appeared to be a horror film in the mould of Pegg/Wright but with the comedy unfortunately removed. Was nailed to bed for an additional two hours as my subconscious decided to secure a happier ending, however:
Protagonist, for reasons of escaping previously, is now down to his underpants and trainers (he is a tallish, thin, scruffy-bearded hipster of vaguely Mediterranean looks, a little like an idealised Carravaggio self-portrait) and has set off across one of the outlying fields of a wildlife park, having escaped from the centre of the very hilly seaside town the majority of the action took place in. It was night before; now it is the kind of clear, bright blue-skied day that is rarely found in horror movies. There are zebras and giraffes in the paddock but they're milling around the edges by the dark green chainlink fence, and ignoring him. He walks up to a house on the far side of the field, climbs the fence, and goes to hide in an outhouse.
There is already someone there, a man who is obviously not able to use all his faculties; while the protagonist stands frozen in the shadows, someone comes in to help the other man to defecate through a trapdoor in the floor, scolding him.
Then the people who have been chasing the protagonist open the door to the room. They pull out the man with mental disabilities and the person caring for the man, who appears to be on their side. They go outside, and while they are vanishing the protagonist exits through the back door and sneaks around the other side of the house. He encounters some of the people who were chasing him but they stare at him almost without seeing, and the leader says, we're not interested in him right now.
Out on the road, the protagonist can see that the red camper van his friends had been trying to escape in before it broke down has gone. He rightly assumes not that they have escaped, but that they have been caught and "converted". He continues down the road in the opposite direction to a cross-roads, where the end of the wildlife park and its various enclosures is. There are some neglected aviaries, and on the other side of the perimeter fence, some portacabins selling various things. Most of them appear to be shut, but the nearest, which has signs advertising ice creams, "Norwegian Hairbands and Snacks", is open.
He goes inside and, after some negotiation, spends his last 80p on a FAB lolly (the price and the specific lolly are very clear? He was trying to find a different one because it was the cheapest - it had white packaging with a pink little girl on - but she told him to take this one and charged him 80p, the same as the cheapest). Because he is still wearing his underpants, he also tries to buy the only item of clothing on sale, a blue t-shirt which has some vague connection to NASA, but he has no more money and it's £6.99.
He turns up the right-hand fork at the cross-roads, and begins walking between the hedges, on the narrow verge - the roads are a lot like the ones where I grew up - up a shallow incline. He has no real idea where to go or what to do, and he finishes the lolly. Coming up from behind is a man in a red sleeveless t-shirt, carrying two plastic shopping bags full of stuff, possibly groceries.
For a moment the protagonist considers robbing him; then he considers running away in case this man is one of Them - he looks a little like them, because he has tanned skin and dark blond hair and the same peaked, perky nose etc., but when the man gets closer the protagonist sees that although he is wearing ordinary shorts he is also only wearing grey trainer socks, and has no shoes on of any kind.
Still thinking half-heartedly that he might rob him, the protagonist says, "What happened to your shoes?"
And the other man looks at him walking in his underpants, and raises his eyebrows, and they both start laughing, because they realise they'd escaped from the same people.
And that is when I woke up.
+ continuing to have no enthusiasm for anything except occasionally the story i am writing
+ the new david attenborough is Quite Good
+ what with not being at work, not having seen anyone since saturday night and not really had any length of conversation since about friday, in part due to jess's work schedule/reluctance to talk to me, in part to lindsay's game nerding, and in part to my own commitment to shitting out a book ahead of faffing on social media (also not really getting email convos the way i do when I'm at work), on top of the bizarrely isolating effect of winter light, i feel a bit cut off and unreal at the moment.
+ attempting even the mildest level of exercise is hell because i have to wear a binder for it and it squeezes my diaphragm but i am at least able to stretch out my leg muscles in the morning/afternoon now.
+ it's cold and i hate it
+ it's dark and i hate it
+ going out to meet emily for a bit tomorrow night which will hopefully stop me from feeling like i live in the bottle of a lead-lined barrel in the depths of the ocean
Poetry
old world genealogy
Any time my dreams would like to stop being horrific kidnappings of my consciousness awash with guilt and misery and hell I would be fully on board with this decision.
old world genealogy
Any time my dreams would like to stop being horrific kidnappings of my consciousness awash with guilt and misery and hell I would be fully on board with this decision.
Well I sure haven't checked my flist in a while, whoops.
Aside from wanting to strangle various doctors, I've gone on a mission for sushi, started reading a "for fun" (with implications to research) book, and had an increasing number of rows with my girlfriend about literally everything, primarily Being Told Things.
"Being Told Things" includes: being told what I really meant by something; being told what I did conflicts what I think I did; being told what I said conflicts what I think I said; having words directly put into my mouth; being told what kind of mood I'm in; having all of these things asserted to me repeatedly after I've explained what the case actually is. All of which, I am beginning to notice, are triggers to defensive anger and withdrawal because they're Tactics My Mother Uses ("I'm just going to talk over your attempts to be a person with agency until you agree to whatever I've decided is happening"). It's not actually her normal behaviour so I am fucked if I know what's going on either.
I've also had some impressively awful dreams (last night's involved snowstorms, homelessness, and enforced public nudity, all of which I HAVE experienced, but never at the same TIME; the night before had me disappearing into thick black wet soil some several metres above my head because I stepped on the wrong thing, which I suspect may be metaphorical rather than literal - I remember thinking with a kind of resigned panic, "I suppose I'm going to stop breathing soon then".), begun rewatching Hannibal (Which is hilarious and comforting, and hilariously comforting), and last night watched Mary Beard effectively reiterating SPQR on BBC2.
None of which is doing a great deal to shift my sense of overall guilt (why aren't you working it's nearly may you're not going to get this book written everything you do sucks why are you reading that "not everyone can go flat out all the time" is just an excuse you never do any work you're so fucking lazy stop making excuses don't you know no one will care about you if you don't write these damn books -- NO ONE READS THEM ANYWAY -- why aren't you working why haven't you done x why haven't you done y why are you getting into bed you have done NOTHING DO WORK) and sadness (totally implaccable, don't understand where it's coming from or why).
Aside from wanting to strangle various doctors, I've gone on a mission for sushi, started reading a "for fun" (with implications to research) book, and had an increasing number of rows with my girlfriend about literally everything, primarily Being Told Things.
"Being Told Things" includes: being told what I really meant by something; being told what I did conflicts what I think I did; being told what I said conflicts what I think I said; having words directly put into my mouth; being told what kind of mood I'm in; having all of these things asserted to me repeatedly after I've explained what the case actually is. All of which, I am beginning to notice, are triggers to defensive anger and withdrawal because they're Tactics My Mother Uses ("I'm just going to talk over your attempts to be a person with agency until you agree to whatever I've decided is happening"). It's not actually her normal behaviour so I am fucked if I know what's going on either.
I've also had some impressively awful dreams (last night's involved snowstorms, homelessness, and enforced public nudity, all of which I HAVE experienced, but never at the same TIME; the night before had me disappearing into thick black wet soil some several metres above my head because I stepped on the wrong thing, which I suspect may be metaphorical rather than literal - I remember thinking with a kind of resigned panic, "I suppose I'm going to stop breathing soon then".), begun rewatching Hannibal (Which is hilarious and comforting, and hilariously comforting), and last night watched Mary Beard effectively reiterating SPQR on BBC2.
None of which is doing a great deal to shift my sense of overall guilt (why aren't you working it's nearly may you're not going to get this book written everything you do sucks why are you reading that "not everyone can go flat out all the time" is just an excuse you never do any work you're so fucking lazy stop making excuses don't you know no one will care about you if you don't write these damn books -- NO ONE READS THEM ANYWAY -- why aren't you working why haven't you done x why haven't you done y why are you getting into bed you have done NOTHING DO WORK) and sadness (totally implaccable, don't understand where it's coming from or why).
I was trapped asleep by a succession of dreams, including one where I was taxed of my pay raise at work for reasons relating to "wanting to incentivise you to improve your blood pressure, we can't really continue to employ you if it's that high" (the fuck?) and a nurse being bemused that my (something to do with heart and lungs) was astronomically bad when the rest of my health was so good, and suggesting that it was an anomaly. Jess says the meaning of this is obvious but all I can think about is "arbitrary, nonsensical punishment" and my mother's stupid fucking "everything is a sign from the universe [about what you're doing WRONG]" leading to schizophrenic symptoms when I was in my late teens (THE TV IS TELLING ME TO KILL MYSELF).
Went for alleged brunch with Jess today as planned but fucked it because I was being a lazy slow shitsack and failed to get there in time for the breakfast menu, meaning there wasn't actually anything I could eat; changed my plans to be "stay here and edit" given that Owen's has power sockets and WiFi and I had my tablet with me. Which is what I did until some grim yummies came and polited me out of my spot; I got the editing done and even emailed the events person (who excitedly emailed me back the floorplans and didn't tell me off at all for being rude or awful?; why am i so convinced that everyone i speak to is going to yell at me oh wait abuse)... then had a mild breakdown about a stranger being enthusiastic and happy to help me even though i explicitly wasn't giving her any money, and went home.
Feeling DIRE despite lunch, I got on a bus to town; read more of The Janissary Tree (recommended: gender variance, sexuality, and faith and multicultralism worked into the narrative like it ain't no thang, like it wasn't, and like it's natural, and I love that kind of writing: the "I ain't explaining any more than I absolutely need to" with odd nuggets of info), went to various shops, got wound up by people (mostly men) staring at my face a lot, nearly yelled at someone who smiled at me, and a bubble tea on the grounds that dietary requirements are less important than not screaming on public transport.
If I continue to feel shitty tomorrow I'm going to the fucking Mall and buying a helium balloon because I am an adult and no one, not even God, can stop me from fulfilling my fucking balloon-owning needs.
I dreamed I was trying to leave Rome on a train to get to France and was staying in a hostel overnight. For some reason I was going to go to a nightclub with a bunch of other people staying there, one of whom was mysteriously Lucian. I think I decided against it when I realised that both of us were going to be wearing the same outfit (not one either of us, with our very contrasting styles, would ever wear) and while L is okay wearing skirts I am very much not, and the sheer top half of the thing made me worry that because of the skirt as well they'd think I was a girl with boobs out rather than a dude with a bare chest even though, in my dream, I was post-surgery. Then after everyone had gone I went for a wander in the late night town (more like Shrewsbury than Rome tbh, and very quiet) and it was fine. I didn't go to the club. I went back to the hostel, spoke to a couple of people, got into bed and read a book for a bit. Fine. Nice hostel, too, much nicer than ones in real life.
HAVE A GOOD CHRISTMAS/ARBITRARY DAY OFF/NOT DAY OFF also feel free to stop reading after this if you like, I will only be complaining.
My brain is not going to take a break just because it's an arbitrarily-defined calendar day. It has mostly been a good one, though - presents of exciting sort, a nice AVALANCHE OF CALORIES (which I can berate myself over in January), a good round of Cards Against Humanity, no family, some films, moderately little fighting. Nearly forgot to take testosterone, had same old same old problems sleeping.
Also had some intense dreams which, for the first time in a while, produced a character who persisted when I returned to sleep. Possibly because I see a lot of them at the moment, he was a doctor. Possibly because I *lie* to a lot of them at the moment, he was associated with rather a lot of guilt and desperation. Nice man, though.
Links
Don't Feel Bad About Not Talking To Your Parents
In my own life, my mother and I were the only people in our home, and thus, all our conflicts were her word against mine. When my word conflicted with hers, she went to great efforts to proclaim that my memory was cloudy or that I was a liar — to the point where today, at 33, I barely trust my own memory of where I left my keys, let alone my memories of interacting with other human beings. -- she's not only in the same situation but is the SAME AGE.
[things have been made less easy by me seguing from "cheerful remembrance of ways i used to dick around in choir" to jess asking me why my mother didn't take me out of shitty schools when shitty things happened (some thoughts there re: her determination to be both cast as a hero fighting against The System for her child and her desire to have me as far away as she could at all times) to me recalling bad and good relationships with teachers and the fact that behavioural traits which i have which can be fitted into a framework of asperger's can also be fitted universally into "traumatised child" framework too, and that confronted with the child i was with knowledge about what i'd experienced and knowledge that i have relatives with varying degrees of functional autistic spectrum disorder i might not have picked ASD as the more likely culprit... my mother liked it as a diagnosis - and pushed for it - because it meant:
1. i was special and ~magical~
2. it was not her fault that i behaved the way i did and no one could accuse her of shitty parenting
3. she could be a misunderstood heroine fighting The System
i think i do have a lot of traits which align with autism. i also know i get on best with people who are on the autistic spectrum because nerdy hyperfocus, uncontrolled emotion, aversion to eye contact, and a supreme HATRED of being touched but enjoyment of being compressed - either by clothes or by whatever - are things i can understand easily and have in common; but i think also this diagnosis was very convenient for my mother both financially and psychologically and that it did not happen independently of what she wanted.]
... the point of reference was the two of us contrasting our experiences with Being Told Off in primary school/attention-seeking {when I was sub-pubescent I almost never sought peer validation and only wanted authority-figure validation and was very loud about it; in one school I used to bite people who tried to remove me from the book corner/stop me reading a specific book repeatedly - it was about a rockstar cat's secret funeral - and while this is a behaviour that can very easily be ascribed to ASD it is also, as i noticed while we were talking about it, pretty characteristic of trauma responses. given that i'd been moved around a fair bit in the preceding two years and had some experiences which amounted to "fuck familiar circumstances you are going to be stranded somewhere you know nothing about without anyone you know and trust" while, like, five, it's plausible that I wasn't necessarily dealing with that shit in the best way.
Sorry this has turned into Therapy Blog but hey, it does mean I'm unravelling this crap here instead of having undefined unexplained shouting matches with people in person. Also not drinking myself unconscious and bleeding on things. Go me.
My brain is not going to take a break just because it's an arbitrarily-defined calendar day. It has mostly been a good one, though - presents of exciting sort, a nice AVALANCHE OF CALORIES (which I can berate myself over in January), a good round of Cards Against Humanity, no family, some films, moderately little fighting. Nearly forgot to take testosterone, had same old same old problems sleeping.
Also had some intense dreams which, for the first time in a while, produced a character who persisted when I returned to sleep. Possibly because I see a lot of them at the moment, he was a doctor. Possibly because I *lie* to a lot of them at the moment, he was associated with rather a lot of guilt and desperation. Nice man, though.
Links
Don't Feel Bad About Not Talking To Your Parents
In my own life, my mother and I were the only people in our home, and thus, all our conflicts were her word against mine. When my word conflicted with hers, she went to great efforts to proclaim that my memory was cloudy or that I was a liar — to the point where today, at 33, I barely trust my own memory of where I left my keys, let alone my memories of interacting with other human beings. -- she's not only in the same situation but is the SAME AGE.
[things have been made less easy by me seguing from "cheerful remembrance of ways i used to dick around in choir" to jess asking me why my mother didn't take me out of shitty schools when shitty things happened (some thoughts there re: her determination to be both cast as a hero fighting against The System for her child and her desire to have me as far away as she could at all times) to me recalling bad and good relationships with teachers and the fact that behavioural traits which i have which can be fitted into a framework of asperger's can also be fitted universally into "traumatised child" framework too, and that confronted with the child i was with knowledge about what i'd experienced and knowledge that i have relatives with varying degrees of functional autistic spectrum disorder i might not have picked ASD as the more likely culprit... my mother liked it as a diagnosis - and pushed for it - because it meant:
1. i was special and ~magical~
2. it was not her fault that i behaved the way i did and no one could accuse her of shitty parenting
3. she could be a misunderstood heroine fighting The System
i think i do have a lot of traits which align with autism. i also know i get on best with people who are on the autistic spectrum because nerdy hyperfocus, uncontrolled emotion, aversion to eye contact, and a supreme HATRED of being touched but enjoyment of being compressed - either by clothes or by whatever - are things i can understand easily and have in common; but i think also this diagnosis was very convenient for my mother both financially and psychologically and that it did not happen independently of what she wanted.]
... the point of reference was the two of us contrasting our experiences with Being Told Off in primary school/attention-seeking {when I was sub-pubescent I almost never sought peer validation and only wanted authority-figure validation and was very loud about it; in one school I used to bite people who tried to remove me from the book corner/stop me reading a specific book repeatedly - it was about a rockstar cat's secret funeral - and while this is a behaviour that can very easily be ascribed to ASD it is also, as i noticed while we were talking about it, pretty characteristic of trauma responses. given that i'd been moved around a fair bit in the preceding two years and had some experiences which amounted to "fuck familiar circumstances you are going to be stranded somewhere you know nothing about without anyone you know and trust" while, like, five, it's plausible that I wasn't necessarily dealing with that shit in the best way.
Sorry this has turned into Therapy Blog but hey, it does mean I'm unravelling this crap here instead of having undefined unexplained shouting matches with people in person. Also not drinking myself unconscious and bleeding on things. Go me.
1. I am shit at my job. My boss comes to tell me that they've been letting me off until now but i am going to have to be perfect or i will be fired. No one corrects him with the waking truth that i am consistently one of the best in my sector, because my dream is my feelings and they don't believe I'm any good.
When i wake up i analyse where this feeling came from. Is it the continual "we expected better of YOU" from childhood? In therapy i discussed finally feeling sad that the bright, excited, risk taking child i was turned into a lazy, contemptible (i used this word a lot) adult who never pursues opportunities. In secondary school, where the parameters of achievement and hood behaviour were constantly being fiddled with, a system was created of individual tailored goals based around individual abilities and behavioural problems. In theory it sounds sensible. In practice it meant i was allowed to fuck up less than anyone else. I was not allowed to lose my temper as much or as often. It was in effect a formalised refusal to acknowledge that i had any legitimate problems or unhappiness combined with the already planted messianic seeds from my mother: one rule for you, one for everyone else. Sometimes beneficial - no one else got after hours access to classrooms or was allowed off site so much - but alienating, for someone who already had difficulty being part of a group.
2. Someone has brought a pet monkey baby to the room i am staying in. I try to help look after it but i don't want it there because if anything goes wrong i will be blamed. Later, Charlie Brooker's dog is violently sick all over my feet. I am not blamed for this, but because my mother is having sex with someone in the shower i can't wash it off. I try to find somewhere else to wash, aware that if i am too long i will miss out on the extravagant dinner downstairs, and i in fact pass through the dining room in search of a shower. Several people stare and ask why I'm not joining them. I explain about the sick; they react as if i have done this on purpose. Later i get lost in the massive house, trying to find my room, lose my temper, slam and smash something. I am forced to go on the run, still wearing sick-covered pyjamas.
3. I am trying to get home but instead am hitching lifts and getting buses back towards west Devon, where i grew up. There are Christmas lights on everyone's houses and it is training heavily. My mother won't answer the phone, and all i have from her is a text telling me the funeral (i assume for my grandmother) is on Wednesday. It is a Thursday in my dream.
Good news, I had a nightmare so bad that after I woke up once and was put back fucking into the same dream I got up at ass o'clock in the morning and refused to get back into bed.
Basically Doug had apparently wandered out of hospital and gone missing in his current confused state, and time kept elapsing and elapsing until it seemed likely that he had fallen down and died somewhere and we would never find him. I was going to head back to his hospital room to look for him and was opening the door to a darkened room when someone put a black bag over my head and tried to drag me in there. I tried to fight them of - a physical sensation, which ended in me waking up because I was physically trying to fight something.
When I went back to sleep after prowling around the bathroom a bit I was returned to "my" flat where some people including an older woman I took to be Doug's mother (whom I haven't met) were having a kind of memorial service. There was a message on the answering machine apparently from me - it seemed I'd been away for a long time. My flat was full of strangers, none of them seemed particularly happy that I was there, and a few of them got actively angry when I tried to get into my bedroom and found it had been turned into a different room and that I had no business being there at all.
I mean, this is patently an anxiety dream of some sort but I WOULD BE A LOT HAPPIER IF MY IDIOT FUCKING BRAIN WOULD JUST TELL ME THINGS NORMALLY.
Blah blah wrote stuff. Pretentious blog post goes up tomorrow. Awfulness abounds. My ability to not lose my shitting temper seems to be improving but at the cost of me caring about anything very much.
Basically Doug had apparently wandered out of hospital and gone missing in his current confused state, and time kept elapsing and elapsing until it seemed likely that he had fallen down and died somewhere and we would never find him. I was going to head back to his hospital room to look for him and was opening the door to a darkened room when someone put a black bag over my head and tried to drag me in there. I tried to fight them of - a physical sensation, which ended in me waking up because I was physically trying to fight something.
When I went back to sleep after prowling around the bathroom a bit I was returned to "my" flat where some people including an older woman I took to be Doug's mother (whom I haven't met) were having a kind of memorial service. There was a message on the answering machine apparently from me - it seemed I'd been away for a long time. My flat was full of strangers, none of them seemed particularly happy that I was there, and a few of them got actively angry when I tried to get into my bedroom and found it had been turned into a different room and that I had no business being there at all.
I mean, this is patently an anxiety dream of some sort but I WOULD BE A LOT HAPPIER IF MY IDIOT FUCKING BRAIN WOULD JUST TELL ME THINGS NORMALLY.
Blah blah wrote stuff. Pretentious blog post goes up tomorrow. Awfulness abounds. My ability to not lose my shitting temper seems to be improving but at the cost of me caring about anything very much.
Today's been difficult for stupid reasons.
1. I gave myself a mild hangover, which combined with the ongoing Not Quite A Cold Yet to make me feel like death all day.
1a. Solutions have included a) rice cooker-by-the-bed breakfast with additional honey, b) a pleasant walk, c) some time spent in a nice cafe.
1b. The one that worked was the one Jess didn't like, d), drinking more.
1c. At least eating NUCLEAR laksa the last couple of days has cleared my stupid sinuses.
2. My assbag nutjob mother finally got around to responding to that big Gender Thing post, by sending me a predictably batshit email full of predictable passive-aggression "thanking" me for my "lessons" for her and rife with NUMEROLOGY in which she ALSO GOT MY FUCKING AGE WRONG.
3. Misgendered in the garden centre. As noted to Jess, this happens marginally more often when I'm with her than when I'm alone, because people look at us and go "oh, okay, butch lesbian", and presumably also because if I'm alone I'm not talking.
4. Things that I need to do which I just don't feel I have the strength to do:
a) ebaying stuff [successfully listed Dr Martens Wellies, Corset coat, Tudor jacket], TICK
b) submitting manuscript to new agency [ugh, haven't even opened up the agency listing page to find a new agent, why is life so hard]
c) standard amount of weights, which has been increased to 50 reps in varying amounts of sets with 5kg per hand, bicep/tricep/delts. Successful, because I am teaching myself the habit, but somewhere between invigorating and excruciating by the end. I'd prefer heavier weights and fewer reps, but if wishes were horses, Sebastian, we'd have a cavalry charge.
d) replying to a bunch of emails/messages with some kind of intelligence.
5. The return of "Dreams so vivid and all-consuming that they eat up 50% of the day and also seem more real than anything that happens afterward".
1. I gave myself a mild hangover, which combined with the ongoing Not Quite A Cold Yet to make me feel like death all day.
1a. Solutions have included a) rice cooker-by-the-bed breakfast with additional honey, b) a pleasant walk, c) some time spent in a nice cafe.
1b. The one that worked was the one Jess didn't like, d), drinking more.
1c. At least eating NUCLEAR laksa the last couple of days has cleared my stupid sinuses.
2. My assbag nutjob mother finally got around to responding to that big Gender Thing post, by sending me a predictably batshit email full of predictable passive-aggression "thanking" me for my "lessons" for her and rife with NUMEROLOGY in which she ALSO GOT MY FUCKING AGE WRONG.
3. Misgendered in the garden centre. As noted to Jess, this happens marginally more often when I'm with her than when I'm alone, because people look at us and go "oh, okay, butch lesbian", and presumably also because if I'm alone I'm not talking.
4. Things that I need to do which I just don't feel I have the strength to do:
a) ebaying stuff [successfully listed Dr Martens Wellies, Corset coat, Tudor jacket], TICK
b) submitting manuscript to new agency [ugh, haven't even opened up the agency listing page to find a new agent, why is life so hard]
c) standard amount of weights, which has been increased to 50 reps in varying amounts of sets with 5kg per hand, bicep/tricep/delts. Successful, because I am teaching myself the habit, but somewhere between invigorating and excruciating by the end. I'd prefer heavier weights and fewer reps, but if wishes were horses, Sebastian, we'd have a cavalry charge.
d) replying to a bunch of emails/messages with some kind of intelligence.
5. The return of "Dreams so vivid and all-consuming that they eat up 50% of the day and also seem more real than anything that happens afterward".
Poetry
baphomet
HI I SPENT TWO SOLID DAYS DRUNK
I'm more or less fine now but after drinking more than I intended at Ruthi's [and then sitting down in the middle of the road in Walthamstow because I really was that drunk] and drinking more than anyone ever intended at Susanne's [and eating half a massive chocolate cake but not sitting in any roads] I've been becoming unnecessarily belligerent with cis men in particular which is POSSIBLY related to the fact that no matter which gender I'm read, whether they're straight or gay, as I'm apparently THE WORST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED TO THEM--
mate i will come down to your stupid fucking level and i will feed you your own left foot, i'm not taking your shitty fucking judgements
--anyway the game of "challenging all my assumptions about the kind of person I am and the kind of things that means I have to put up with" is exhausting but occasionally yields results. The "find out what you like and what you believe" game is throwing me, occasionally, into conflict with people and I dislike conflict massively so that's ... less easy to deal with.
Book goes chug chug chug. Just finished the character perspective outline, tomorrow I get to grid that shit up and get the timeline in better order and probably rewrite the whole thing again. I threw out a bunch of clothes and INCORPORATED A NEW EXERCISE into my REGIME which would have been more productive had I not been attempting it while still crucified by my hangover.
Dreams have been fucking harsh (I blame the booze), including one where I had two instances of waking into another dream (at one point because the dream I was having was so bad that my own sleeping brain couldn't handle it), and it's just generally very fraught in there. Also spent a while flopping about on the bathroom floor naked and freezing last night as the tail end of drunk hit me simultaneously with unproductive nausea, paranoia, and a headache that appeared to emanate from my eyeballs, sinuses, and teeth and be trying to kill me -- I think I shall be Not Drinking for a little while until I've stopped feeling like I'm on the verge of death so much and also until I have regained the ability to Stop Drinking Before I'm Too Drunk To Make Good Decisions.
On the plus side my hair is outstanding and I'm getting the hang of standing up straight even if I have to remind myself to do it every three seconds and even if it feels broadly unnatural.
baphomet
HI I SPENT TWO SOLID DAYS DRUNK
I'm more or less fine now but after drinking more than I intended at Ruthi's [and then sitting down in the middle of the road in Walthamstow because I really was that drunk] and drinking more than anyone ever intended at Susanne's [and eating half a massive chocolate cake but not sitting in any roads] I've been becoming unnecessarily belligerent with cis men in particular which is POSSIBLY related to the fact that no matter which gender I'm read, whether they're straight or gay, as I'm apparently THE WORST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED TO THEM--
mate i will come down to your stupid fucking level and i will feed you your own left foot, i'm not taking your shitty fucking judgements
--anyway the game of "challenging all my assumptions about the kind of person I am and the kind of things that means I have to put up with" is exhausting but occasionally yields results. The "find out what you like and what you believe" game is throwing me, occasionally, into conflict with people and I dislike conflict massively so that's ... less easy to deal with.
Book goes chug chug chug. Just finished the character perspective outline, tomorrow I get to grid that shit up and get the timeline in better order and probably rewrite the whole thing again. I threw out a bunch of clothes and INCORPORATED A NEW EXERCISE into my REGIME which would have been more productive had I not been attempting it while still crucified by my hangover.
Dreams have been fucking harsh (I blame the booze), including one where I had two instances of waking into another dream (at one point because the dream I was having was so bad that my own sleeping brain couldn't handle it), and it's just generally very fraught in there. Also spent a while flopping about on the bathroom floor naked and freezing last night as the tail end of drunk hit me simultaneously with unproductive nausea, paranoia, and a headache that appeared to emanate from my eyeballs, sinuses, and teeth and be trying to kill me -- I think I shall be Not Drinking for a little while until I've stopped feeling like I'm on the verge of death so much and also until I have regained the ability to Stop Drinking Before I'm Too Drunk To Make Good Decisions.
On the plus side my hair is outstanding and I'm getting the hang of standing up straight even if I have to remind myself to do it every three seconds and even if it feels broadly unnatural.
Ideas from a Hell Night At Work
[WALK IDEA]: Dandy London - locations of popular dandyist hang-outs etc?
[STORY IDEA]: couple who are required to kill someone and hide their body are disturbed to find everyone colluding with them and offering them excuses. They try to hand themselves in to the police but are told no crime has been committed.
Housing solution: everyone now owns the property they are living in. Jointly, if necessary. They ONLY own that property and no others. Any empty property is now owned by whichever council it falls under, to be distributed as social housing. You can sell the place you live in order to buy another but cannot own more than one. GO.
Gresham Institute Free Talks
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/1665-londons-last-great-plague
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/artefacts-and-the-study-of-life-in-roman-london
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/medieval-music-the-stations-of-the-breath
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/a-body-in-the-river-the-application-of-environment-science-in-murder
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-archaeology-of-disease-documented-in-skeletons
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/medieval-music-chant-as-cure-and-miracle
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/poetry-and-co-dependency-the-poetry-of-sylvia-plath
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/envy-of-kings-the-guildhall-of-london-and-the-power-of-the-medieval-corporation
Dreams
I overslept by three hours because my clock had been knocked onto its side and I thought it was earlier than it was. My plans for today are wildly disrupted and I am very pissed off. Had the following dream, among others:
Dreamt a whole, fictional Patrick Wolf album, complete with music videos. It was based around relationships that didn't happen; the overall theme connecting the videos was transit along a New York subway/train line that came around in a specific long thin closed shape - I know it's not a real one and part of the reason I know that is that the head stop of this line was La Guardia airport. I don't know a lot about NYC geography but what I DO know is that part of the reason La Guardia is so shitty is that NO TRAINS GO THERE. One song I remember particularly well was called "Miracle of St Luke's". It was about the singer trying to conceal from a boy the fact that he was in love with them, but in the video every time he thought about him or every time the boy showed up, Patrick Wolf went down to the door of his home to answer it and found a dead, taxidermied white mouse on the doormat. Soon they started appearing all over his house in the positions they'd presumably died in - I'm guessing they stood for missed chances. I didn't get to see the end of the video but logically I think when the key chance comes the mice come back to life and swarm over everything. It had the line "shouldn't i be enough?" in the chorus and sounded... well, very Patrick Wolf, really.
On that note
I tried, half-asleep, to write the rest of the song. It went alarmingly religious. I have abandoned it. I've also got half-memories of other things in my dream that sound a lot like I'm still very frustrated about coming to transitioning so late because of all the crap I've internalised over my life in which my own beliefs about myself and my own experiences aren't trustworthy and I have to consult other people in order to decide who and what I am and what is and isn't real - not because I'm in doubt but because I'm not valid/legitimate on my own? It's been shite.
[WALK IDEA]: Dandy London - locations of popular dandyist hang-outs etc?
[STORY IDEA]: couple who are required to kill someone and hide their body are disturbed to find everyone colluding with them and offering them excuses. They try to hand themselves in to the police but are told no crime has been committed.
Housing solution: everyone now owns the property they are living in. Jointly, if necessary. They ONLY own that property and no others. Any empty property is now owned by whichever council it falls under, to be distributed as social housing. You can sell the place you live in order to buy another but cannot own more than one. GO.
Gresham Institute Free Talks
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/1665-londons-last-great-plague
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/artefacts-and-the-study-of-life-in-roman-london
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/medieval-music-the-stations-of-the-breath
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/a-body-in-the-river-the-application-of-environment-science-in-murder
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-archaeology-of-disease-documented-in-skeletons
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/medieval-music-chant-as-cure-and-miracle
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/poetry-and-co-dependency-the-poetry-of-sylvia-plath
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/envy-of-kings-the-guildhall-of-london-and-the-power-of-the-medieval-corporation
Dreams
I overslept by three hours because my clock had been knocked onto its side and I thought it was earlier than it was. My plans for today are wildly disrupted and I am very pissed off. Had the following dream, among others:
Dreamt a whole, fictional Patrick Wolf album, complete with music videos. It was based around relationships that didn't happen; the overall theme connecting the videos was transit along a New York subway/train line that came around in a specific long thin closed shape - I know it's not a real one and part of the reason I know that is that the head stop of this line was La Guardia airport. I don't know a lot about NYC geography but what I DO know is that part of the reason La Guardia is so shitty is that NO TRAINS GO THERE. One song I remember particularly well was called "Miracle of St Luke's". It was about the singer trying to conceal from a boy the fact that he was in love with them, but in the video every time he thought about him or every time the boy showed up, Patrick Wolf went down to the door of his home to answer it and found a dead, taxidermied white mouse on the doormat. Soon they started appearing all over his house in the positions they'd presumably died in - I'm guessing they stood for missed chances. I didn't get to see the end of the video but logically I think when the key chance comes the mice come back to life and swarm over everything. It had the line "shouldn't i be enough?" in the chorus and sounded... well, very Patrick Wolf, really.
On that note
I tried, half-asleep, to write the rest of the song. It went alarmingly religious. I have abandoned it. I've also got half-memories of other things in my dream that sound a lot like I'm still very frustrated about coming to transitioning so late because of all the crap I've internalised over my life in which my own beliefs about myself and my own experiences aren't trustworthy and I have to consult other people in order to decide who and what I am and what is and isn't real - not because I'm in doubt but because I'm not valid/legitimate on my own? It's been shite.
There are several distinct problems I am facing (one is the strong desire to punch the Passport Office in the dick it doesn't have) but one of the others is that the blindfold I bought to help facilitate drugless sleep, which works very well, also apparently gives me WEIRD INTENSE VIVID NIGHTMARES
although lbr basically being alive frequently does that and it's probably just the uninterrupted sleep
IS THERE ANY. WAY. i can stop dreaming? or just have NICE dreams? or at least BORING unstressful ones? instead of these things that feel more real than my waking life.
although lbr basically being alive frequently does that and it's probably just the uninterrupted sleep
IS THERE ANY. WAY. i can stop dreaming? or just have NICE dreams? or at least BORING unstressful ones? instead of these things that feel more real than my waking life.
Two dreams, as reality is the definition of unbearable. Both in the same night.
1. An element of the dream is that I am now being hunted by a selection of wretched ex-public schoolboys who are armed with small, shiny metal cubes that float in swarms. These seek out the specific mitochondrial DNA in your cells and eventually penetrate your body in order to get to it in your blood.
2. An element of the dream is that scientists working to look into a void that has appeared in the universe (And which no one must know about) have learned that our whole reality is merely the shadow cast by the oar of a vast ship moving through unknowable cosmic seas, and will soon be extinguished. Some have begun worshipping strange and dark gods. Others are calmly and casually trying to start nuclear Armageddon. I am trying to find a good report on my behaviour and a bag of sherbert lemons.
1. An element of the dream is that I am now being hunted by a selection of wretched ex-public schoolboys who are armed with small, shiny metal cubes that float in swarms. These seek out the specific mitochondrial DNA in your cells and eventually penetrate your body in order to get to it in your blood.
2. An element of the dream is that scientists working to look into a void that has appeared in the universe (And which no one must know about) have learned that our whole reality is merely the shadow cast by the oar of a vast ship moving through unknowable cosmic seas, and will soon be extinguished. Some have begun worshipping strange and dark gods. Others are calmly and casually trying to start nuclear Armageddon. I am trying to find a good report on my behaviour and a bag of sherbert lemons.
I woke up from another stupid anxiety dream about fucking everything up at work, went to the loo, sternly told my brain we were not focussing on this bullshit, and went back to sleep to a deeply involved dream about visiting war memorials and castles in a place called Bakum, because I'd failed to get my connecting flight to visit my friend in a more remote town which was called "Finger" which was further west (pronounced differently, although I only saw it on a map). The whole country was called something in the vein of Slovenia or Slovakia but wasn't in Europe and was in some non-existent part of the world where logically you'd think Burma would be except more northerly and Steppe-ish and graced by three consecutive inland seas (one was called the Borovean, I don't remember the other two), which shared borders with, improbably, Afghanistan (proving that my subconscious has no concept of actual geography), and was across the Borovean from some territory which was described on the map as "being fought over by India and China, neither appear to be winning and [actually these other two colour-coded countries] have gained more territory". In the closing moments of my dream I was staying in a very brightly-painted hotel room, waiting for my flight home (it was supposed to be the previous day but apparently Bakum's major airport operated on a fairly lax approach to schedules and for some reason in my dream this did NOT send me into an insane panic spiral), and I had just sold a large red abstract canvas of my own creation to a man for £2000 and was internally laughing my head off. He seemed very happy with it - I realise it's under what people are supposed to pay for paintings of that size (nearly five feet by four feet) but for verisimilitude it was actually on a canvas I'd acquired for free when I was at secondary school (same dimensions) and in my dream I'd also painted it when I was there, so the paint was free too, and basically it represented a massive profit on a few hours' work many years ago and would help prevent me from being out-of-pocket for my holiday to weird fictional north-east Asia.
The castles, or what I remember of them, were pretty rad. One looked more like an English Gothic Cathedral, and there were some English tourists complaining (of course) about the large wooden structure - like an encircling ramp - which had been built about 200 yards out from the edifice. It rose up to about 3 storeys up and went back down again - you weren't allowed inside the castle itself for safety reasons. The tourists were complaining that it spoiled the view. I tried to explain to them that it was so that everyone - including people in wheelchairs - could see all of the castle up close and at different heights and that it was actually very thoughtful and practical especially for something we didn't have to pay to see, but they just huffed at me and said it ruined the look of the thing and that people who couldn't walk just had to "cope with limitations on their lives". I am afraid I said something rather rude to them and left.
Of the war memorials I remember one, which was a dried-out fountain with a kind of mirrored mosaic under a stone statue. It showed an ancient king astride his horse etc, but the mirrored mosaic itself showed his crest and was quite clever because it was all made of the same stuff - the crest was visible because those shards of mirror reflected light from a different direction, being set at a different angle. I remember being quite taken with it. My grandmother (Why was she there? who knows) was not impressed, which sounds like my experience of every family outing ever.
Yesterday was busy and outdoors and in theory productive in an important way: my brain hasn't decided to yell at me because I actually did everything I'd said I was going to, so that's good. I went out around lunchtime, got passport photos taken, got the bus down to visit Shira, whom I haven't seen in ... like ... six years ... and experienced an awful clash of emotions at leisure afterward - "hooray, Shira is back where I can see her" vs "holy god everything is so terrible and the reason she is back here makes me impossibly sad" (although, yaknow, not as fucking sad/angry as it's made her). Parted company with Shira, got the bus down to Soho and met up with Alex, who I suspect I haven't seen for about four years at least, and got my passport photos countersigned. Mooched around Chinatown with her, had a DELICIOUS PORK BUN for the ABSURDLY REASONABLE PRICE of £1.70 (if I am ever hungry in Central London again: Chinatown. I had no idea the bun guys were there. My god), got back on a bus burdened with more exciting groceries ("FIRED GLUTEN BALLS"; startlingly low calories for something so greasy, mainly because they are basically a thin film of fat over MOSTLY AIR).
Today, of course, I am meant to be doing a thing which frankly isn't likely to happen (walk/skate to the library, do research) because the weather is Happening again. I do have to leave the house (boo) because we're out of milk and because if I don't eat approximately a tonne of vegetation a day I become convinced I'm dying of fucking scurvy, and we don't have sufficient vegetation left.
So I'm looking forward to being beaten up by my brain but the whole "get soaked in the name of something you can actually do at home" thing does not appeal.
The castles, or what I remember of them, were pretty rad. One looked more like an English Gothic Cathedral, and there were some English tourists complaining (of course) about the large wooden structure - like an encircling ramp - which had been built about 200 yards out from the edifice. It rose up to about 3 storeys up and went back down again - you weren't allowed inside the castle itself for safety reasons. The tourists were complaining that it spoiled the view. I tried to explain to them that it was so that everyone - including people in wheelchairs - could see all of the castle up close and at different heights and that it was actually very thoughtful and practical especially for something we didn't have to pay to see, but they just huffed at me and said it ruined the look of the thing and that people who couldn't walk just had to "cope with limitations on their lives". I am afraid I said something rather rude to them and left.
Of the war memorials I remember one, which was a dried-out fountain with a kind of mirrored mosaic under a stone statue. It showed an ancient king astride his horse etc, but the mirrored mosaic itself showed his crest and was quite clever because it was all made of the same stuff - the crest was visible because those shards of mirror reflected light from a different direction, being set at a different angle. I remember being quite taken with it. My grandmother (Why was she there? who knows) was not impressed, which sounds like my experience of every family outing ever.
Yesterday was busy and outdoors and in theory productive in an important way: my brain hasn't decided to yell at me because I actually did everything I'd said I was going to, so that's good. I went out around lunchtime, got passport photos taken, got the bus down to visit Shira, whom I haven't seen in ... like ... six years ... and experienced an awful clash of emotions at leisure afterward - "hooray, Shira is back where I can see her" vs "holy god everything is so terrible and the reason she is back here makes me impossibly sad" (although, yaknow, not as fucking sad/angry as it's made her). Parted company with Shira, got the bus down to Soho and met up with Alex, who I suspect I haven't seen for about four years at least, and got my passport photos countersigned. Mooched around Chinatown with her, had a DELICIOUS PORK BUN for the ABSURDLY REASONABLE PRICE of £1.70 (if I am ever hungry in Central London again: Chinatown. I had no idea the bun guys were there. My god), got back on a bus burdened with more exciting groceries ("FIRED GLUTEN BALLS"; startlingly low calories for something so greasy, mainly because they are basically a thin film of fat over MOSTLY AIR).
Today, of course, I am meant to be doing a thing which frankly isn't likely to happen (walk/skate to the library, do research) because the weather is Happening again. I do have to leave the house (boo) because we're out of milk and because if I don't eat approximately a tonne of vegetation a day I become convinced I'm dying of fucking scurvy, and we don't have sufficient vegetation left.
So I'm looking forward to being beaten up by my brain but the whole "get soaked in the name of something you can actually do at home" thing does not appeal.
One of the places I got lost in my dream last night was this fantastic complex of old buildings that married a traditional Japanese style with a traditional (Tudor?) English one, with lots of open doorways, narrow passageways, hanging signs, and dark halls, almost all poorly-lit by natural light. It was raining like the absolute devil. I climbed up into a kind of loft space in a tavern and ended up participating in a kind of live gay porn shoot thing where a man who looked somewhere between a hairy-ass biker with a shit ponytail and a fucking pirate (race indeterminate, some mixture of white and east asian) burned my arm with cigarettes. I kept whining about it and he said I had to be stoic and take it without complaint because people came here to see "real men" and I said it wasn't my experience that people didn't want to see visible signs of pain but he told me to shh and stop spoiling the show - not in a violent or angry way, just blunt and impatient. In my dream I was also trying to conceal the non-presence of a penis on me, as this wasn't one of the lucky (but ultimately upsetting to wake up from) dreams where I've just got one; but when it became apparent that it wasn't there no one in the loft/hammock/sling thing doing the performing gave a shit, they just colluded to hide it from the people in the bottom of the pub.
By the time it was over most of the people in the tavern had left, for which scaryhairybikerpirate blamed me - again, not particularly angrily - "they don't want to see someone being a little bitch, now we're not getting paid" - I excused myself and left, as it had stopped raining briefly, although I was very cold because I was only wearing a small pair of red underpants.
[Overall dream was way, way bigger and stuff but this bit stood out for rather obvious reasons. The setting was impressive - there was one point where I opened a door to a large, mostly-empty hall where people were sitting around on school chairs eating their lunch, and someone had just started up teaching some girls how to soft-shoe, but it was very clearly a closed environment that I was not welcome in and didn't know anyone in, so I backed out and left].
By the time it was over most of the people in the tavern had left, for which scaryhairybikerpirate blamed me - again, not particularly angrily - "they don't want to see someone being a little bitch, now we're not getting paid" - I excused myself and left, as it had stopped raining briefly, although I was very cold because I was only wearing a small pair of red underpants.
[Overall dream was way, way bigger and stuff but this bit stood out for rather obvious reasons. The setting was impressive - there was one point where I opened a door to a large, mostly-empty hall where people were sitting around on school chairs eating their lunch, and someone had just started up teaching some girls how to soft-shoe, but it was very clearly a closed environment that I was not welcome in and didn't know anyone in, so I backed out and left].
Grim and frustrating dreams in which someone who IRL was a fairly decent person showed up and had been a child-rapist/general abuser, and I was trying to communicate this fact to a) my mother and b) someone who was responsible for my studies at a college, and a) decided to just "bring him in to talk to him" and b) couldn't be found. No amount of "I don't want to be left alone with this person" would dissuade my mother, which is at least lifelike, given her propensity for dumping me on all kinds of creepy-ass fuckers so she could go and look at x or participate in y when I was being "difficult" and didn't want to cooperate with spending 8 hours walking around a boiling hot step well or going on a 5-mile walk because for some reason five-year-olds don't have the stamina adult humans do, who knew.
Have noticed that when I get towards waking up, my dream changes into a difficult struggle to find transportation back form wherever the dream is taking place (sarcastically referred to as "Eden" this time, although there was someone with a house build over a warren of tunnels that contained a white rat and later several marmosets). Suddenly all efforts are diverted towards getting on a coach or trying to convince someone that my out-of-date ticket is still valid or that I'll pay when I can or - quite often - just trying to get on a train at all. Could be standard anxiety but it does always come at the end, like I'm trying to get back to consciousness in time for waking up. Alarming.
Have noticed that when I get towards waking up, my dream changes into a difficult struggle to find transportation back form wherever the dream is taking place (sarcastically referred to as "Eden" this time, although there was someone with a house build over a warren of tunnels that contained a white rat and later several marmosets). Suddenly all efforts are diverted towards getting on a coach or trying to convince someone that my out-of-date ticket is still valid or that I'll pay when I can or - quite often - just trying to get on a train at all. Could be standard anxiety but it does always come at the end, like I'm trying to get back to consciousness in time for waking up. Alarming.
Dreamed about the ghost of Titus Pullo talking to Lucius Vorenus's daughter; about a weird and heavily elephant'd flavour of the Vietnam War (even in the middle of it my brain said suddenly: all the movies about this are about the American experience; they don't tell you about the politics of Vietnam at the time); about trying to reclaim my place in my dormitory from a boy who had taken it, and then trying to move all my belongings, on my own - a sense that there were too many, and many of them horrible statuettes of the sort my family misguidely got me when I was younger, aware in a vague way of my interests in "foxes" and "dragons" and unable to properly translate the fact that I was 13, 14, into "just give the kid money" or "book tokens are literally always acceptable".
I was impressed that even in the heavily Western-flavoured, Imperial outlook of my dream (I think related to some world-building I'd been noodling with), even though I was blatantly practicing necromancy and suchlike, and had scared people on both sides with ghosts and so on, the treatment my subconscious gave to my "enemies" was still better than the movies. ;)
I was impressed that even in the heavily Western-flavoured, Imperial outlook of my dream (I think related to some world-building I'd been noodling with), even though I was blatantly practicing necromancy and suchlike, and had scared people on both sides with ghosts and so on, the treatment my subconscious gave to my "enemies" was still better than the movies. ;)
Dreams update: Unpleasant events in dream rendered fond by the inclusion of two (male) friends, one of whom was a kind of amalgam of two (very definitely not friends of mine) boys I knew at school, behaving uncharacteristically nicely. Also one moment where, in an attempt to get to the hospital, I was walking up a flight of stairs outside a dark brick building - the kind of dirty brickwork you get in South East London a lot, even in my dream it was definitely South London (I was relating the whole thing to someone later on and said South London) - and the kind of railway-esque architecture and dirty yellow bricks rose up against a piercingly blue early morning sky, and in my dream I stopped and looked up and had this momentary - the same feeling I sometimes get when I do that while walking through City on the way back to the train station around sunset - this momentary lift, a feeling that everything was beautiful and worth saving.
Except of course everything was NOT beautiful in my dream, and part of the reason we'd blundered through a wood and up these stairs and went to a hospital (where I sat with a bunch of other people who were worried they had the same thing) was that I had some very worrying symptoms. The doctor doing the group diagnosis said a number of things and most people looked relieved, while I sprawled on an a&e bed and weakly smiled or raised my hand when things applied to me. Fever. Muscle spasms. Disorientation. Vomiting.
I was talking to one of the boys I'd come in with. I made some joke about being untouchable and a plague vector, already so disassociated from what was happening that the whole business of potentially dying just seemed unreal and inconsequential. I said something like "well who'd have me now", and one of them agreed: the other said, bluntly, "me. I would." I had been mockingly flirting with him, and he with me, but the rules of engagement here took an unexpected turn and I became blustering and incoherent and making excuses. He said "I know, now isn't a good time, is it?" and gestured to the waiting room. I touched the back of his head - his hair was very soft - and he recoiled anyway.
Except of course everything was NOT beautiful in my dream, and part of the reason we'd blundered through a wood and up these stairs and went to a hospital (where I sat with a bunch of other people who were worried they had the same thing) was that I had some very worrying symptoms. The doctor doing the group diagnosis said a number of things and most people looked relieved, while I sprawled on an a&e bed and weakly smiled or raised my hand when things applied to me. Fever. Muscle spasms. Disorientation. Vomiting.
I was talking to one of the boys I'd come in with. I made some joke about being untouchable and a plague vector, already so disassociated from what was happening that the whole business of potentially dying just seemed unreal and inconsequential. I said something like "well who'd have me now", and one of them agreed: the other said, bluntly, "me. I would." I had been mockingly flirting with him, and he with me, but the rules of engagement here took an unexpected turn and I became blustering and incoherent and making excuses. He said "I know, now isn't a good time, is it?" and gestured to the waiting room. I touched the back of his head - his hair was very soft - and he recoiled anyway.
Last night I dreamt I had ebola. That was pretty much the entire dream. In an odd sort of way it was a pretty good metaphor for the feeling of perennial isolation and toxicity which I'd always believed was the human condition.
After one night of positive dreams (friends with a celebrity, beat up a mugger, Rose made a zombie apocalypse cake that was both beautiful and delicious, I lived in a tiny house) it's back to the maelstrom at 300% worseness, featuring: illegally trespassing in my old house, my mother, my mother lying about where the car was, trying to pull a scam on a very rich man who collected stuff (mostly stolen), lots of backstabbing (someone was pretending to be someone else - Elizabeth Oliver Swift was the name I remember as it was stated repeatedly), a young cousin of mine who doesn't actually exist in real life who was dressed like a 20s flapper driving a 50s car down an 80s highway EXTREMELY BADLY despite me trying to stop her and make her let me drive, an escaped tree shrew I was trying to get her to not run over at one point, a chemist working in abandoned therapeutic swimming baths and using them as salt flats to distil various poisons - multicoloured ricin? That's not how ricin works, subconscious - which I was attempting to steal so I could murder either the rich dude, his wife, or my mother; a necessary dip in one of the swimming pools which resulted in my fitbit displaying the message "happy holidays" and then apparently accurately determining that I was in Argentina...
That was the second half, btw, after waking up once. The first half involved being stuck in dormitories in what I suspect was meant to be my old school and cursing the fact that I was still there at 31 while everyone else had moved on - symbolic much - I was supposed to be in a play where I had to simulate sex onstage with a girl I used to be in theatre class with, only naked, and she was being rude about my acting skills and I was concerned that a lack of pubic hair would make people think the play was more rude than it was, and there was a bit in a costume-making area where I managed (I think deliberately) to cut myself so badly in my ribcage area that I passed out from blood loss. More stolen stuff, possibly mine, a long bus journey, homelessness, and something to do with space?
So. That was very eventful and now today is dark and oppressive and at least I had a revelation concerning an important plot point for the KBV book.
That was the second half, btw, after waking up once. The first half involved being stuck in dormitories in what I suspect was meant to be my old school and cursing the fact that I was still there at 31 while everyone else had moved on - symbolic much - I was supposed to be in a play where I had to simulate sex onstage with a girl I used to be in theatre class with, only naked, and she was being rude about my acting skills and I was concerned that a lack of pubic hair would make people think the play was more rude than it was, and there was a bit in a costume-making area where I managed (I think deliberately) to cut myself so badly in my ribcage area that I passed out from blood loss. More stolen stuff, possibly mine, a long bus journey, homelessness, and something to do with space?
So. That was very eventful and now today is dark and oppressive and at least I had a revelation concerning an important plot point for the KBV book.
Dreamed last night that I had a fucking massive spider caught in my hair, one big enough that the bite would have been a problem, and I couldn't see it to get hold of it safely and release it. I kept asking people to help me but they kept running off or screaming or going omfg no or asking how I could let something like that happen. Someone offered me a mirror, I explained that I need both hands and I think my head is in the way of being able to do this safely, but that was all anyone was willing to do.
As analogies go it's pretty thin.
Wasn't sleeping at first and went on Twitter on the tablet so got news of Robin Williams that way; unsurprisingly have woken up to an internet full of people holding forth on suicide and depression, and you know you're not in a great frame of mind when your reactions to this are:
1. Well at least SOMEONE escaped.
2. It's not just depression that leads to suicide.
People I know try to replace the traditional, wrong narrative of suicide with a more nuanced but not globally-applicable narrative of suicide. They say "it's complicated and has many contributing causes"; they forget to mention that sometimes suicidal gesture becomes suicide by dint of accident or intensification; people talk, relentlessly, about depression. Other mental illnesses cause suicidal ideation and suicidal behaviour. I know this because I live with one which is very much high-risk for suicide and self-harm. This is why, now the diagnosis exists, I get a gentle interrogation from the Halliwick in case anything sounded like suicide attempt or like I might need to see a doctor as a result. Impulsivity is an overlooked factor in these things. The classic warning signs are "people setting their affairs in order" and suchlike; I've attempted suicide in the afternoon of a day when I was happily making Christmas cards in the morning; I've attempted suicide late at night when my day was one full of excitement and interest.
Suicides aren't just performed in a kind of dead sadness but in hysterical unrest. People leave this life for as many reasons as people stay in it and the only connecting factor I can think of is that "staying alive seems like it will cause too much pain to cope with", whether that pain is physical (as in the case of people with some chronic and terminal illnesses), emotional/mental (bereavement, depression, borderline, other mental illnesses), or social (cultural shame, fear of punishment after conviction). People commit suicide to escape, not just from sadness but from fear, from violence, from hatred, from rape, from persecution, from self-loathing, from grief... from humanity, from natural disaster, from loss, from prison...
Every time this happens the world fills up with people screaming about cowards or sad clowns or whatever archetype they think fits the moment, and every time it happens I see an upsurge in feeling like I should be out of the door myself not because I think people will speak any better of me, or speak of me at all outside of the usual anger aimed at private citizens who exercise control over when they die, but because it would be an escape from the knowledge that I am surrounded by unsafe, unsympathetic human beings who hijack someone else's escape to bully those around them consciously or unconsciously who might have the same feelings.
tl;dr today looks like being bullshit, I am staying off the internet.
As analogies go it's pretty thin.
Wasn't sleeping at first and went on Twitter on the tablet so got news of Robin Williams that way; unsurprisingly have woken up to an internet full of people holding forth on suicide and depression, and you know you're not in a great frame of mind when your reactions to this are:
1. Well at least SOMEONE escaped.
2. It's not just depression that leads to suicide.
People I know try to replace the traditional, wrong narrative of suicide with a more nuanced but not globally-applicable narrative of suicide. They say "it's complicated and has many contributing causes"; they forget to mention that sometimes suicidal gesture becomes suicide by dint of accident or intensification; people talk, relentlessly, about depression. Other mental illnesses cause suicidal ideation and suicidal behaviour. I know this because I live with one which is very much high-risk for suicide and self-harm. This is why, now the diagnosis exists, I get a gentle interrogation from the Halliwick in case anything sounded like suicide attempt or like I might need to see a doctor as a result. Impulsivity is an overlooked factor in these things. The classic warning signs are "people setting their affairs in order" and suchlike; I've attempted suicide in the afternoon of a day when I was happily making Christmas cards in the morning; I've attempted suicide late at night when my day was one full of excitement and interest.
Suicides aren't just performed in a kind of dead sadness but in hysterical unrest. People leave this life for as many reasons as people stay in it and the only connecting factor I can think of is that "staying alive seems like it will cause too much pain to cope with", whether that pain is physical (as in the case of people with some chronic and terminal illnesses), emotional/mental (bereavement, depression, borderline, other mental illnesses), or social (cultural shame, fear of punishment after conviction). People commit suicide to escape, not just from sadness but from fear, from violence, from hatred, from rape, from persecution, from self-loathing, from grief... from humanity, from natural disaster, from loss, from prison...
Every time this happens the world fills up with people screaming about cowards or sad clowns or whatever archetype they think fits the moment, and every time it happens I see an upsurge in feeling like I should be out of the door myself not because I think people will speak any better of me, or speak of me at all outside of the usual anger aimed at private citizens who exercise control over when they die, but because it would be an escape from the knowledge that I am surrounded by unsafe, unsympathetic human beings who hijack someone else's escape to bully those around them consciously or unconsciously who might have the same feelings.
tl;dr today looks like being bullshit, I am staying off the internet.
My subconscious heard my plea for less awful dreams and responded with one in which I killed five men, graphically, including one where I hacked off his face with a small knife; where I was subject to not one but two back-alley abortions, including in the second one an abrupt vaginal exam which I distinctly remember FEELING; a continual flip-flopping on the part of the narrative as to whether I was dating Jess or Katherine (first girlfriend); the end of civilisation again with murky aftermath; and a version of London's docklands where all the warehouses had no fronts so you could see into the offices, and everything was slightly flooded.
Graphic facial mutilation, murder, and abortion with attendant graphic miscarriagey bits and vag exam WERE NOT WHAT I WAS AFTER, SUBCONSCIOUS.
Graphic facial mutilation, murder, and abortion with attendant graphic miscarriagey bits and vag exam WERE NOT WHAT I WAS AFTER, SUBCONSCIOUS.
On Friday morning I woke up in a fairly unpleasant mood thanks to a dream in which people were publicly displaying the mutilated corpses of enemy soldiers: they were all youngish white men wearing red jackets which were similar to but not the same as British Royal Horse Guards uniforms, and the mutilations consisted primarily of posed dismemberments. One person's arms and legs had been removed and positioned on high-tensile wires so that they looked as if they were marching by themselves, and several others, their heads drooping, had been bisected just below the waist and sort of pushed repeatedly into the air on a kind of wire swing. The mood of the dream was CELEBRATE THIS OR YOU'LL BE JOINING THEM & was accompanied by some pretty distressing scenes of animal neglect - a whole cacophony of different animals (horse, cow, couple of pigs, several dogs, some sheep) all shovelled into a long thin pen no wider than my bathroom and not much longer than my flat, and apparently just kept there indefinitely as another display.
Today's dream was better in many ways, despite contacing a natural disaster which wiped out an entire civilisation (if you count dragons as a natural disaster, which people in my dream appeared to), forced marriages, a snail-mermaid being given non-consensual oral sex to distract her from raising the alarm, and several instances of small children witnessing their parents being hauled away for "questioning". Part of the improvement, apart from the lack of obvious corpse defilement and/or threat to me, was that at one point in my dream I started singing "Jerusalem", again as a distraction both for myself from the situation and for others from what someone else was doing, and now I am earwormed with it.
At some point I'd quite like a dream where I, I dunno, visit a really nice formal garden and have tea. Or hold some kittens. And nothing terrible happens to anyone.
Today's dream was better in many ways, despite contacing a natural disaster which wiped out an entire civilisation (if you count dragons as a natural disaster, which people in my dream appeared to), forced marriages, a snail-mermaid being given non-consensual oral sex to distract her from raising the alarm, and several instances of small children witnessing their parents being hauled away for "questioning". Part of the improvement, apart from the lack of obvious corpse defilement and/or threat to me, was that at one point in my dream I started singing "Jerusalem", again as a distraction both for myself from the situation and for others from what someone else was doing, and now I am earwormed with it.
At some point I'd quite like a dream where I, I dunno, visit a really nice formal garden and have tea. Or hold some kittens. And nothing terrible happens to anyone.
Well this morning's Googling has demonstrated that it's important to check memory against medical progress: happy to report that what I recalled of the success rates of phalloplasty and its relative userfriendliness in end product was badly out of date.
My subconscious hates me and wants me to know this, in the crudest possible terms. Last night it gave up on subtlety or symbolism and more or less sat there bellowing EVERYONE HATES YOU UP TO AND INCLUDING DAVID ATTENBOROUGH for about eight hours. What larks.
And now I have to somehow herd several human beings, some of whose phone numbers I do not have, into one place among the crowds at Pride. I should probably shower first, though.
My subconscious hates me and wants me to know this, in the crudest possible terms. Last night it gave up on subtlety or symbolism and more or less sat there bellowing EVERYONE HATES YOU UP TO AND INCLUDING DAVID ATTENBOROUGH for about eight hours. What larks.
And now I have to somehow herd several human beings, some of whose phone numbers I do not have, into one place among the crowds at Pride. I should probably shower first, though.
It is somewhat redundant to say "I had extremely vivid and fraught dreams" because that's what I always do, but "I find it easier to remember what I've done when I was asleep than when I am awake" is a bit annoying.
Fantastic and strange post-fucked architecture, lame conspiracy, endless adulterers, flight, food, and the usual attempts to deceive everyone: as usual the most striking things were the colours and the music, neither of which I can now describe. One can communicate a narrative, even if it doesn't make any sense, but language is left struggling to explain the non-verbal somewhat. It was blue and white in the way that an English seaside town is. But they called it Venice. IDK.
Fantastic and strange post-fucked architecture, lame conspiracy, endless adulterers, flight, food, and the usual attempts to deceive everyone: as usual the most striking things were the colours and the music, neither of which I can now describe. One can communicate a narrative, even if it doesn't make any sense, but language is left struggling to explain the non-verbal somewhat. It was blue and white in the way that an English seaside town is. But they called it Venice. IDK.
I dreamed about architecture, for which I blame a lot of architecture documentaries, and I dreamed about being hideously betrayed by a long-term friend, which I blame on having the brain that I have.
Am immensely fed up with LITERALLY EVERYTHING, a set of circumstances I hope to remedy with sleep if my brain will actually allow me to do that for more than an hour at a time.
Am immensely fed up with LITERALLY EVERYTHING, a set of circumstances I hope to remedy with sleep if my brain will actually allow me to do that for more than an hour at a time.
Poetry
Colony Collapse: Remix
Pre-Fall Collection
Finished my heraldic embroidery but now need to repair the thing I did it on, and make a lining and some sleeves. The fun never ends! As I wasn't feeling much up to that yesterday after lugging a surprisingly heavy bag of fabric and a very heavy coat all the way around London, I just put it to one side and started on SECRET EMBROIDERY PROJECT FOR MARIKA which is brilliant because I get to indulge all my tackiest loves: in this instance: metallic thread, glow-in-the-dark thread, and HOLOGRAPHIC THREAD. AS jcaoiscjioahcao.
I had an anxiety nightmare about work last night, which makes approximately NO SENSE as literally nothing is going wrong there. Maybe I'll get an almighty bollocking on Monday or something? Maybe my brain is just mistranslating things.
(You know what sucks, though? Being continually ashamed of things you'd quite like to have, because everyone around you constantly makes fun of them; oh it's twee, it's self-indulgent, it's white, it's blah... for five minutes I'd like to actually feel like I can TALK to my damn friends about some fairly major problems without them apparently using this material as comedy. But shit happens! I will continue to be sad instead).
Colony Collapse: Remix
Pre-Fall Collection
Finished my heraldic embroidery but now need to repair the thing I did it on, and make a lining and some sleeves. The fun never ends! As I wasn't feeling much up to that yesterday after lugging a surprisingly heavy bag of fabric and a very heavy coat all the way around London, I just put it to one side and started on SECRET EMBROIDERY PROJECT FOR MARIKA which is brilliant because I get to indulge all my tackiest loves: in this instance: metallic thread, glow-in-the-dark thread, and HOLOGRAPHIC THREAD. AS jcaoiscjioahcao.
I had an anxiety nightmare about work last night, which makes approximately NO SENSE as literally nothing is going wrong there. Maybe I'll get an almighty bollocking on Monday or something? Maybe my brain is just mistranslating things.
(You know what sucks, though? Being continually ashamed of things you'd quite like to have, because everyone around you constantly makes fun of them; oh it's twee, it's self-indulgent, it's white, it's blah... for five minutes I'd like to actually feel like I can TALK to my damn friends about some fairly major problems without them apparently using this material as comedy. But shit happens! I will continue to be sad instead).
Among other things, last night's dream involved a classically beautiful blonde cabaret singer who, because of something her husband did, had to have both her legs amputated not far below the hip. She appeared later in a long royal blue satin gown, sitting on a bar stool and singing about how it was fine that her husband had basically had part of her removed, and then she pulled up her dress to reveal her absence of pants (or indeed pubes), and waggled her stumps provocatively, and I think I got someone else's sex dream by mistake and can I have an exchange please that was weird.
Radfems! Man I love radfems. You have to be a special person to decide that your sexual orientation can be chosen for political reasons, and to take "society is misogynist", "society is homophobic" and synthesise them into "lesbians are misogynists".
Radfems! Man I love radfems. You have to be a special person to decide that your sexual orientation can be chosen for political reasons, and to take "society is misogynist", "society is homophobic" and synthesise them into "lesbians are misogynists".
Last night I dreamed that I had to make a custom dress for Jennifer Lawrence, which was immensely fun - I was measuring her and passing her tins of this and that or piles of fabric and telling her to pick one for X part of the outfit - then we got moved by my boss at the dressmaking place from a small studio to a massive cathedral with a huge wooden table, I went on editing the basic pattern for J-Law, and then the whole thing basically turned into a cut-scene from a video game or something because this GIANT MECHA came in and started shooting people, and forcing people into "death by Pockalips" which was this multi-headed monster living down a stone well, and J-Law basically survived this by hiding down a side shaft of the well before she could be forced there. Then I was at gig at the Union Chapel, except the seats weren't pews, they were seats, and went all the way around the back of this rhomboid stage (not many people were there) and there was this indie band made up of three women who were apparently very Tumblr famous but they didn't have any instruments and were singing to a backing track which got stuck - they covered for that with good humour, but I didn't like them and didn't see the point of the gig and was pretty annoyed by the whole thing, but the people I was with - incl. Doug - really liked them and found my remarks about it irritating, so I left.
Sent a query letter to an agency, bought Doc Marten Wellies, saw Maurice at the BM with a selection of people who were clearly familiar with the film and in good spirits, wandered around Wood Green with Holly & Jess, picking up $stuff (in this case: a pair of dark red cable knit leggings, and some clasps for necklaces, a pair of angora socks like the ones Jess already had, shower gel, spice jars, and huge sachets of spices - boring stuff). Came home and had tea and pizza and horrible horrible puns until Holly went home.
Pleasant weekend so far, despite feeling physically like death on and off. I think I'm probably well enough to go back to work, although still not well per se. My copy of "Tame" arrived and there's a typo on the back cover but I've decided that means it's a collector's edition and I'm not bloody changing it until I've made enough from selling the damn thing to cover the revision fee.
Tumblr continues to annoy literally every time I look at any blog that contains words.
Sent a query letter to an agency, bought Doc Marten Wellies, saw Maurice at the BM with a selection of people who were clearly familiar with the film and in good spirits, wandered around Wood Green with Holly & Jess, picking up $stuff (in this case: a pair of dark red cable knit leggings, and some clasps for necklaces, a pair of angora socks like the ones Jess already had, shower gel, spice jars, and huge sachets of spices - boring stuff). Came home and had tea and pizza and horrible horrible puns until Holly went home.
Pleasant weekend so far, despite feeling physically like death on and off. I think I'm probably well enough to go back to work, although still not well per se. My copy of "Tame" arrived and there's a typo on the back cover but I've decided that means it's a collector's edition and I'm not bloody changing it until I've made enough from selling the damn thing to cover the revision fee.
Tumblr continues to annoy literally every time I look at any blog that contains words.
14. If you won the lottery...
I would not tell anyone. That way my decisions, generosity, and shoring up of my own safety vs charitable behaviour would not be subject to scrutiny from outsiders.
There was after this a long discussion amidst the household, which ended in "none of us play the lottery" and some ruminations on HOUSES.
Dreams last night were a) fraught because when aren't they, and b) set in Bremen for some reason. I have never been to Bremen but my subconscious was quite clear on where we were supposed to be. There was a cathedral. I had my wallet stolen. The traffic was driving on the wrong side of the road for it to actually be Germany, I think; there were some outrageously beautiful clothes (we were there for someone's wedding) and some outrageously awful ones. This would have been all par for the course and a not especially traumatic dream (there was an international food market with a petting zoo in the corner which sounds to me like the opposite of hygiene) but to GET to Bremen we went on a ship which, after spotting the ferry behind us going FULLY UNDERWATER (and making me panic), ours then did the same for "half an hour", during which it was pitch black and I had the overpoweringly oppressive sense of being surrounded by tonnes of ice cold water. Not the first time that's happened in a dream but the first time it's been combined with the "and you are stuck inside a ship and soon that will break through and drown you and you can't swim to the surface" element involved. Cheers, brain.
I would not tell anyone. That way my decisions, generosity, and shoring up of my own safety vs charitable behaviour would not be subject to scrutiny from outsiders.
There was after this a long discussion amidst the household, which ended in "none of us play the lottery" and some ruminations on HOUSES.
Dreams last night were a) fraught because when aren't they, and b) set in Bremen for some reason. I have never been to Bremen but my subconscious was quite clear on where we were supposed to be. There was a cathedral. I had my wallet stolen. The traffic was driving on the wrong side of the road for it to actually be Germany, I think; there were some outrageously beautiful clothes (we were there for someone's wedding) and some outrageously awful ones. This would have been all par for the course and a not especially traumatic dream (there was an international food market with a petting zoo in the corner which sounds to me like the opposite of hygiene) but to GET to Bremen we went on a ship which, after spotting the ferry behind us going FULLY UNDERWATER (and making me panic), ours then did the same for "half an hour", during which it was pitch black and I had the overpoweringly oppressive sense of being surrounded by tonnes of ice cold water. Not the first time that's happened in a dream but the first time it's been combined with the "and you are stuck inside a ship and soon that will break through and drown you and you can't swim to the surface" element involved. Cheers, brain.
i had the most horrific dreams
i went to an unexpected job interview at a poetry magazine and spent the entire time being relentlessly and creepily hit on by middle-aged women but i wanted the job so i didn't say anything
and then this elderly dude just sat there with his hand against my crotch
and when i finally got my shit together to complain about it the editor agreed it was horrible and tried to write me a cheque for compensation but the old dude laughed and said it was my payoff and i knew what that made me didn't it
i went to an unexpected job interview at a poetry magazine and spent the entire time being relentlessly and creepily hit on by middle-aged women but i wanted the job so i didn't say anything
and then this elderly dude just sat there with his hand against my crotch
and when i finally got my shit together to complain about it the editor agreed it was horrible and tried to write me a cheque for compensation but the old dude laughed and said it was my payoff and i knew what that made me didn't it
Poetry
The Evolution of Talk
in which no one differentiates between love and murder
instructions on how to cry:
the discretion of monsters
a love more ordinary
i will scream this outside your houses
clothes to wear while burning down your old life
gardener's lament for absent ladies
Slow Poison
pluto in four movements
Blog Posts
Slightly Embarrassing Change Of Plan, Now With Added Shakespeare
Something we all know, but never take on board
How to Have Better Sex
Jewellery
Shakespeare
Original Fic
Test Writing for BBB
Fanfic
Skyfall snippet
last night i dreamed i was being persecuted for selling parts of my body - parts of my heart - to people. i was told to go and collect them to help my case, but i'd sold them to people who were trying to get better. and then it hadn't worked, and people were trying to get me to eat the rest of me, or to punish me for having a shit heart.
subtle, subconscious.
The Evolution of Talk
in which no one differentiates between love and murder
instructions on how to cry:
the discretion of monsters
a love more ordinary
i will scream this outside your houses
clothes to wear while burning down your old life
gardener's lament for absent ladies
Slow Poison
pluto in four movements
Blog Posts
Slightly Embarrassing Change Of Plan, Now With Added Shakespeare
Something we all know, but never take on board
How to Have Better Sex
Jewellery
Shakespeare
Original Fic
Test Writing for BBB
Fanfic
Skyfall snippet
last night i dreamed i was being persecuted for selling parts of my body - parts of my heart - to people. i was told to go and collect them to help my case, but i'd sold them to people who were trying to get better. and then it hadn't worked, and people were trying to get me to eat the rest of me, or to punish me for having a shit heart.
subtle, subconscious.
last night i dreamt about running away. well, trudging away. people kept trying to stop me leaving but in a very "we're being nice to you now to try and keep you here until the police come" way. i didn't know where i was going but i was more prepared than i usually am when fleeing. i was trudging through a wet meadow in an unlined army coat and screwing up a messy green ink suicide note of mine that i'd found lying in the hedge. no idea where i was going. my last thought on waking was "i need to line that coat in case i need it" (since i do own said coat).
my brain remains convinced that i am one fuck up away from being an exile.
my brain remains convinced that i am one fuck up away from being an exile.
I dreamed about tidal waves last night and trying to persuade this paralysed old dude's sons that they needed to move him before the storm hit them and they just kept assuring me that they'd be all right and I kept telling them I'd seen a wall of dirty brown water sweep away a hundred people and their cars, which was mostly interesting because I've not had the Cassandra Complex dreams before and because in terms of psychology it was a good illustration of the "this has to be done therefore I have to do it" mentally instilled in early childhood which refuses to even consider the possibility that there ARE other people who can do the thing, never mind that they will be willing to, EVERYTHING IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY.
Poetry
naiad at teatime
Poetry
naiad at teatime
The very last part of my dream before I woke up (as opposed to the many many things I dreamed before, shit was INVOLVED) was that a concerned police commissioner had been handing out ecstasy pills to teenagers in a car park to divert them from taking this other new dangerous stuff I'd radioed in an anonymous tip about (which didn't actually exist), and I gathered up a massive handful of them, ran past my friends (who were adjudicating a fight with nun-chucks and stuff) and flashed them at them. My friends were all HEY SHARE and I was facetious and shouted NOPE THE POLICE COMMISSIONER GAVE THEM TO ME THESE ARE ALL MIIIIIIINE.
Long story short, I now want MDMA.
Long story short, I now want MDMA.
i dreamed i tried to blow up myself with a nuclear bomb i bought on the internet and i had to sign stuff when the police came around to say that i'd bought it knowing what it was and they gave me a load of leaflets about mental illness. :( and then i got on a train to nowhere in particular and ended up at a beach house just watching these other people having fun, and when i left one of them said "goodbye" to me and i got freaked out and asked if he'd meant me and he said yes and looked confused, and i'd explained that i'd been having kind of a shitty week and couldn't work out why anyone would be that nice, and then someone tried to hand me back in to the police.
thanks, subconscious.
thanks, subconscious.
I laid off the diphenhydramine last night, fell asleep in significantly better time and wasn't so restless (presumably this would also happen if I took the max dose instead of twice or three times the max dose), but continue to have hallucinogenically vivid dreams. This time involved a lengthy and weird story which begin in ruined houses and a kind of fun park and then involved trying to run escape from this compound, which I eventually did, via climbing over several canals and fences and so on. I was accompanied by a friend, which makes a nice change from my younger "being chased" dreams where it was the entire world vs me, but I'm still not happy about the return of the Being Persecuted dreams. Later on when I tried to evade this extremely persistent guy I ended up on the sea shore, jumped down into what turned out to be quick sand and was basically drowning in sand (eeeeenormously vivid) and shouting to my friend to get anyone's help because I no longer cared if I got caught or not. Was pulled out by the guy who'd been chasing me and dragged off to a hotel with long narrow rooms that had two bathtubs per room. At this point I unintentionally disrupted a pre-planned romance story by trying to help and ended up as the heroine of it despite trying to push for the intended heroine to take her rightful place. The guy who'd pulled me out of the sand locked me in a cage and lowered it into the bath.
Thank you, subconscious, I have no idea what the hell you're trying to imply any more.
Thank you, subconscious, I have no idea what the hell you're trying to imply any more.
So after spending a good six hours reading through the Nightmare Fuel section of TV Tropes I was expecting nightmares, but my subconscious is clever and decided that they should be about forgetting when my flight back from Australia is, forgetting my belongings, losing my plane ticket, losing my ride to the airport, getting hopelessly lost in somewhere my brain insisted was Australia even though it was blatantly small-town France, some gross stuff about becoming infected with something, my grandfather committing suicide with a garden tool, brandy that had been turned rancid because a crazy ship's captain had been storing a tarantula in it - guys can brandy even go rancid it's alcohol - and ending up lying in a doorway screaming and crying "why won't anyone help me" after repeatedly trying to call and text everyone in my phone (which had virtually no battery) and receiving no reply from anyone except, hilariously, BBC!Mortiarty who told me he didn't have to help me and hung up.
SO THAT WAS A FUN DREAM.
SO THAT WAS A FUN DREAM.
Blog Posts
Excerpt from a letter 2
I had weird dreams about a serial killer dude who ate rotting human flesh and everyone sent to track him down ended up helping him instead, and there was also Idris Elba as an American beat cop (he got busted down from detective) and the guy who played the psychic cop in heroes and they were flirtiiiiiing and it was very cute.
It was disturbing in places but not for the killing (which took place off-screen) so much as for serial killer dude - who was unassuming and quiet and had cute glasses - never knowing who he could trust and also feeling like he couldn't control himself. he set up a school and was a very good head teacher and left the kids alone and everything but when the teachers had gone to bed he opened up the kitchen cabinets and there was a dead tramp rotting under the sink full of maggots and he turned to me - he was the only one who could see me - and said i've been holding off but it is very hard. i just want to put it in my mouth. only a little bit.
There was a lot of stuff about how people were tracking him, and there was some weird interactive map bit as well. My sleeping brain evidently feels cartography is important. Then there was a row of nine stone tanks which they were planning on punishing him in, piece by piece, and the last one had this weird not-exactly-shark thing in it that was almost all mouth. Then in the river next to it - maybe a fjord? - there was an actual shark roughly the size of a bus which kept rushing at me while I was waiting to see if the women (there was a whole collective of them who had been sent to capture the man but kept trying to help him escape) would save him this time.
( memeCollapse )
Excerpt from a letter 2
I had weird dreams about a serial killer dude who ate rotting human flesh and everyone sent to track him down ended up helping him instead, and there was also Idris Elba as an American beat cop (he got busted down from detective) and the guy who played the psychic cop in heroes and they were flirtiiiiiing and it was very cute.
It was disturbing in places but not for the killing (which took place off-screen) so much as for serial killer dude - who was unassuming and quiet and had cute glasses - never knowing who he could trust and also feeling like he couldn't control himself. he set up a school and was a very good head teacher and left the kids alone and everything but when the teachers had gone to bed he opened up the kitchen cabinets and there was a dead tramp rotting under the sink full of maggots and he turned to me - he was the only one who could see me - and said i've been holding off but it is very hard. i just want to put it in my mouth. only a little bit.
There was a lot of stuff about how people were tracking him, and there was some weird interactive map bit as well. My sleeping brain evidently feels cartography is important. Then there was a row of nine stone tanks which they were planning on punishing him in, piece by piece, and the last one had this weird not-exactly-shark thing in it that was almost all mouth. Then in the river next to it - maybe a fjord? - there was an actual shark roughly the size of a bus which kept rushing at me while I was waiting to see if the women (there was a whole collective of them who had been sent to capture the man but kept trying to help him escape) would save him this time.
( memeCollapse )
Lots of dreams, all bad. Closest to waking was the one where war broke out behind my old house and stray rounds were coming in through the windows. I cannot remember who won - I don't particularly care - but they decided to stage executions of defectors and prisoners in my kitchen for convenience (what convenience? There was a massive field outside) and I was being held captive because, basically, it was my house and therefore I was untrustworthy because I lived there.
Woke up feeling sour and trying to make sense of current political events and so on, came to the conclusion that a lot of law-proposers are delusional and think that there are more police than civilians in a country or that somehow banning protest will somehow work better here or in America than it did in, say, Egypt. Becoming more repressive only makes it more likely that people will asplode at some point, you idiots.
Trying not to think about it because HEY I HAVE ENOUGH OTHER SHIT TO CONCENTRATE ON RIGHT NOW but I think that's going to necessitate a Twitter hiatus so people had better damn well email me with interesting shit during the day because I'm PULLING OUT STAPLES all day today...
Woke up feeling sour and trying to make sense of current political events and so on, came to the conclusion that a lot of law-proposers are delusional and think that there are more police than civilians in a country or that somehow banning protest will somehow work better here or in America than it did in, say, Egypt. Becoming more repressive only makes it more likely that people will asplode at some point, you idiots.
Trying not to think about it because HEY I HAVE ENOUGH OTHER SHIT TO CONCENTRATE ON RIGHT NOW but I think that's going to necessitate a Twitter hiatus so people had better damn well email me with interesting shit during the day because I'm PULLING OUT STAPLES all day today...
Dreamed about being fired from a job I haven't actually started yet. Then dreamed that 
clockworkwasp sacrificed herself to some awful psy-vampire thing despite my best efforts to keep her away from it, and that everyone was horribly offended by my t-shirt from Berlin. Have achieved bugger all today because I decided to have a lie-in and then my uterus went into revolt and I am thoroughly sick of the sight of my bathroom right now.
Thanks to Tara I am now in the throes of covetousness over this, and just in general very desirous of this. Mind you, I would probably just buy endless maps and engravings of London and human anatomy if left to my own devices, and dwell among them like a guinea pig in newspaper shreddings.
Blog Posts
The Passive voice in fiction
Plans
Blue velvet at the NFT on the 24th.
March 10th: Miranda drinks?
Jewellery
Second chance: Green and gold beaded chain necklace (REDUCED from £12 to £10)
clockworkwasp sacrificed herself to some awful psy-vampire thing despite my best efforts to keep her away from it, and that everyone was horribly offended by my t-shirt from Berlin. Have achieved bugger all today because I decided to have a lie-in and then my uterus went into revolt and I am thoroughly sick of the sight of my bathroom right now.Thanks to Tara I am now in the throes of covetousness over this, and just in general very desirous of this. Mind you, I would probably just buy endless maps and engravings of London and human anatomy if left to my own devices, and dwell among them like a guinea pig in newspaper shreddings.
Blog Posts
The Passive voice in fiction
Plans
Blue velvet at the NFT on the 24th.
March 10th: Miranda drinks?
Jewellery
Second chance: Green and gold beaded chain necklace (REDUCED from £12 to £10)
35 and three quarter inches / 91.5 centimetre beaded chain with gold plate findings, raw brass plates, acrylic, metal, and lucite beads.
A single-strand necklace long enough for looping, this warm-coloured chain will look fabulous both on its own or in combination with:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/88231475/amber-lucite-and-brass-rosary
or other amber-hued lucite jewellery.
Chain can be shortened by removing links, if you feel 35 and three quarter inches is surplus to requirements, please convo me and let me know how long you’d like your necklace!
Click on Image for Listing
27 inch / 68.5 centimetre vintage jet bead and glass pearl rosary with St Christopher medallion.
100% vintage recycled parts! This lovely St Christopher pendant rosary is warm to the touch thanks to the jet beads, and looks monastically fabulous with almost anything. It goes especially well with velvet, and dark reds.
Click image for listing
Unbelievably shitty dreams rife with gang-rape, beatings, people shooting their friends to stop them from escaping, hateful bullshit, and just an avalanche of DNW. No one at any point turned into a monster or could fly; everyone who objected to the terrible things happening was beaten and/or shot by the people who had been their friends a few minutes before. O_O Why, brain? I can see that shit on the news. About the only relief was when Sonja Sohn, who was playing an undercover military police person trying to prevent the a) drug-smuggling across the border and b) abuses of power that were taking place (like, oh, say, the gang-rape of new recruits stationed at the outpost and the rifle-butt beatings/leg shootings of anyone who objected, like the guy from East Hollywood - apparently - who casually informed his friend in the ranks that he though this was some fucked up shit and he wasn't enjoying sitting in the next concrete room listening to the sounds of terrified suffering floating over the partition wall and neither was the guy he was getting stoned with, and was shot in the thigh with a handgun for his trouble) ... she did knock out one of Big Freddy's (the guy running the drug-smuggling) bizarre pink-wigged enforcers by throwing a baseball at her face. That was good. But. RUsoudgvigvaigca HORRIBLE DREAM. Would probably have made a great book but I'm not going to be the one who fucking writes it.
Reminder: if ANYONE would like to see me get older, your options are 1pm at the Imperial War Museum on Saturday, 1pm at the Three Compasses on Hornsey High Road on Sunday, or come to the Canal Cafe on Sunday evening to be distracted by Ben Target and The Lovely Dec. After that we can just take it as read that I got older in your absence and therefore my decrepitude and imminent death are wholly your fault.
And now here is a post that I actually made last night but as the DAY on my netbook is set wrong and I didn't notice, I actually posted it into THE FUTURE.
Apollyoggies, my brothers. I was not having a strop, but rather a precautionary "livejournal security seems to have gone a bit wank" fit, hence the deletion. Work has been grating the last couple of days - I suspect because of the suddenly bleak weather - and emails are very much appreciated because then I get to talk to people.
Things
+ My Netbook has arrived! It is distressingly tiny and light. It is hard to take it seriously as a real computer. It is a garish shade of red.
+ Dilligent boyfriend found a copy of Office (and bought an optical drive so I can actually use it) so I now have access to my world-building and planning files. In theory this means I am set for NaNo. In practice this probably means I'm going to get hit with monster writer's block on day one and pitch a tantrum the likes of which you will not have seen before.
+ I dreamed about T E Lawrence last night, and I suspect this will continue. Reading through craploads of background on the Arab Revolt and the history of Empire in the pennisula is proving surprisingly interesting to someone who dropped out of history in school to take geography (admittedly this was at least 50% because my geography teacher was a massive hippy who bribed us with sweets while my history teacher was a massive weirdo who kept trying to debate with me about my somewhat unreasonable tendency to throw things at him)
+ Reminder: Until the 1st of November, How Not to Write & Pass The Parcel have 20% off their list price.
+ Speaking of things what I wrote, Protect Me From What I Want. Man, only like 3 people have bought this? You're all fools. It's funny and sharp and sad all at once. One of my better things, and you're missing out.
+ I've been making jewellery with keys and stars on it. I also fell over on ASOS and added nine billion cheap jewellery items to my wishlist in a fit of pique. Clearly I need ALL that stuff, I mean, I barely have any jewllery at all, it certainly isn't pouring out of my very large jewellery box and taking over my entire bathroom.
+ After a somewhat HARROWING October, things are mostly in order. I still need a new hard drive for one of my computers, but it's less pressing now. The toilet seat is no longer a violent deathtrap; I am still relegated to baths until next week because of shower woes but I am choosing to view this as permission to have a lot of bright green, glittery, perfumed, salt-filled baths with my book and various bags of chocolate buttons/cups of tea/packets of crisps.
+ Those Muji thermal t-shirts/longjohns really are the bomb. I recommend them wholeheartedly. Mine are doing service as Quite Expensive Pyjamas (actually I think they cost the same as my Man Pyjamas from M&S and are much more comfortable).
+ I actually made a proper world-building post for once instead of one of those interviews (I know they were kind of fun, but I'm reading an Actual Proper Book at the moment and it's rubbed off on me). The post is here: Prehistory: How The Gated Continent Became Gated and the password is as ever "giantbugorama". Feel free to comment back here with questions.
And now here is a post that I actually made last night but as the DAY on my netbook is set wrong and I didn't notice, I actually posted it into THE FUTURE.
Apollyoggies, my brothers. I was not having a strop, but rather a precautionary "livejournal security seems to have gone a bit wank" fit, hence the deletion. Work has been grating the last couple of days - I suspect because of the suddenly bleak weather - and emails are very much appreciated because then I get to talk to people.
Things
+ My Netbook has arrived! It is distressingly tiny and light. It is hard to take it seriously as a real computer. It is a garish shade of red.
+ Dilligent boyfriend found a copy of Office (and bought an optical drive so I can actually use it) so I now have access to my world-building and planning files. In theory this means I am set for NaNo. In practice this probably means I'm going to get hit with monster writer's block on day one and pitch a tantrum the likes of which you will not have seen before.
+ I dreamed about T E Lawrence last night, and I suspect this will continue. Reading through craploads of background on the Arab Revolt and the history of Empire in the pennisula is proving surprisingly interesting to someone who dropped out of history in school to take geography (admittedly this was at least 50% because my geography teacher was a massive hippy who bribed us with sweets while my history teacher was a massive weirdo who kept trying to debate with me about my somewhat unreasonable tendency to throw things at him)
+ Reminder: Until the 1st of November, How Not to Write & Pass The Parcel have 20% off their list price.
+ Speaking of things what I wrote, Protect Me From What I Want. Man, only like 3 people have bought this? You're all fools. It's funny and sharp and sad all at once. One of my better things, and you're missing out.
+ I've been making jewellery with keys and stars on it. I also fell over on ASOS and added nine billion cheap jewellery items to my wishlist in a fit of pique. Clearly I need ALL that stuff, I mean, I barely have any jewllery at all, it certainly isn't pouring out of my very large jewellery box and taking over my entire bathroom.
+ After a somewhat HARROWING October, things are mostly in order. I still need a new hard drive for one of my computers, but it's less pressing now. The toilet seat is no longer a violent deathtrap; I am still relegated to baths until next week because of shower woes but I am choosing to view this as permission to have a lot of bright green, glittery, perfumed, salt-filled baths with my book and various bags of chocolate buttons/cups of tea/packets of crisps.
+ Those Muji thermal t-shirts/longjohns really are the bomb. I recommend them wholeheartedly. Mine are doing service as Quite Expensive Pyjamas (actually I think they cost the same as my Man Pyjamas from M&S and are much more comfortable).
+ I actually made a proper world-building post for once instead of one of those interviews (I know they were kind of fun, but I'm reading an Actual Proper Book at the moment and it's rubbed off on me). The post is here: Prehistory: How The Gated Continent Became Gated and the password is as ever "giantbugorama". Feel free to comment back here with questions.
Dreamt I forgot my own birthday and left people waiting. Hahah. More likely the other way around, do we not think, brain? All sorts of other jumbled rubbish which made waking up a relief; admittedly not much of one when I woke up and my inbox was like "fuck you, no one likes you", but the joke's on my inbox because one of us had leftover steak and ale pie for breakfast and it certainly wasn't an electronic virtual construct with no mouth or digestive system!
That cat in the background wasn’t a Sphinx originally. Diane just shaved her and then spun her fur into wool. Then she’s going to knit that bitch a jumper.
Reading about Game Theory very briefly certainly gave me a whole new insight into all those blogs which I am planning on removing from my blogroll (I think I'm keeping ... Bad Science, and this blog about a long-term study of hyena behaviour in Kenya. Everything else goes, because they were all getting on my tits from various directions and I couldn't stop myself from reading the comments): specifically the Zero Sum/NonZero Sum game distinction. The idea that a lot of people treat sympathy or even human rights as a zero sum game, that if one person gets then everyone else does not, or relative to my own thought processes which are still home to those vile invaders, when I think "Actually it's pretty sad that dudes of the 20th century found themselves in a hideous bind with regards to being constantly bombarded with BE A MAN RULE THE WORLD and constantly prevented from doing it the way they'd been taught by the world, you know, being something totally different, leading to IDENTITY CRISES and BREAKDOWNS" it doesn't mean I suddenly stopped thinking "wow, colonialisation, the subjugation of women, reproductive control, lynching, and starvation all suck!". But no, apparently it does.
Mostly I just really, really need to purge myself of people who want to tell me what I should think.
That cat in the background wasn’t a Sphinx originally. Diane just shaved her and then spun her fur into wool. Then she’s going to knit that bitch a jumper.
Reading about Game Theory very briefly certainly gave me a whole new insight into all those blogs which I am planning on removing from my blogroll (I think I'm keeping ... Bad Science, and this blog about a long-term study of hyena behaviour in Kenya. Everything else goes, because they were all getting on my tits from various directions and I couldn't stop myself from reading the comments): specifically the Zero Sum/NonZero Sum game distinction. The idea that a lot of people treat sympathy or even human rights as a zero sum game, that if one person gets then everyone else does not, or relative to my own thought processes which are still home to those vile invaders, when I think "Actually it's pretty sad that dudes of the 20th century found themselves in a hideous bind with regards to being constantly bombarded with BE A MAN RULE THE WORLD and constantly prevented from doing it the way they'd been taught by the world, you know, being something totally different, leading to IDENTITY CRISES and BREAKDOWNS" it doesn't mean I suddenly stopped thinking "wow, colonialisation, the subjugation of women, reproductive control, lynching, and starvation all suck!". But no, apparently it does.
Mostly I just really, really need to purge myself of people who want to tell me what I should think.
Last night I dreamt of a trailer for The Girl With A Dragon Tattoo where Hollywood had turned it into a romantic comedy about a (blonde) Happy Hooker who teaches a sad man to love again by having sex with everyone in his town while dressed in funny costumes. Then I woke up, thought a bit about the differences between the Swedish and American posters for the ACTUAL film, and pop, just like that, came up with a brief sentence that explains my entire problem with the fannish/bloggish approach to the media model.
Which is this: media representations of people are symptoms of societal attitudes.
Soothing symptoms makes you feel better but doesn't remove the cause, and removing the cause would remove the symptoms as well. I am pretty sure the media model exists so that people can feel self-righteous about watching TV.
Christ, that's the rubbish that gets into my brain the minute I wake up? Clearly I need to drink more.
Which is this: media representations of people are symptoms of societal attitudes.
Soothing symptoms makes you feel better but doesn't remove the cause, and removing the cause would remove the symptoms as well. I am pretty sure the media model exists so that people can feel self-righteous about watching TV.
Christ, that's the rubbish that gets into my brain the minute I wake up? Clearly I need to drink more.
After strange and intense dreams about summoning T-Rexes through holes in the universe using a cracked glass necklace and the moon, I woke up (not easily, mind, because I apparently take 30 secs to HEAR my alarm clock) paranoid and agoraphobic. DON'T WANNA GO TO WORK, SOMETHING IS WAITING FOR ME ON THE STAIRS AND I WILL DIE. I also woke up covered in blood and with a hole in my memory, although all available evidence suggests blood is mine, so at least I haven't turned into a serial killer.
I spent the morning at work listening to I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, which rather brilliantly constitutes researching this book, and also doubles up as being a little like being drunk. Unfortunately, I kept enjoying it. No, I mean, that's not the unfortunate part. The unfortunate part was that I was enjoying and luxuriating in the silliness and the affability and the childish innuendo and surrealism, which means that I'm a terrible human being because as that helpfully internalised Mad Blogging Twat in my head can't help but point out, it's a bunch of old white dudes making stupid childish twelve-year-old jokes about sex and DEREK AREN'T YOU MORE GROWN-UP THAN THAT?
No, still not. Last night I dreamed about my mother repurchasing our old house. She had returned to the state she has fixed to in my mind - fatter than she actually is now, with shorter, darker hair than she has now - basically, the way she looked when I was small. And she was less mental. And the house was too small. Every time I dream about that house it is too small. So small that I'm afraid of getting stuck going through doorways, afraid that I won't get out of rooms I've got into, afraid of being wedged in the staircase. It's not a difficult dream to decipher, really, but on the heels of the last dream even less so. I feel like I've outgrown a lot of things, I suppose the next thing to outgrow is being so catastrophically frightened of people that I waste hours of my life hiding in toilet cubicles. The times I spend doing that are diminishing, but they are still too many. What the fuck is there to be gained from sitting on a toilet, not peeing, not pooing, not even reading a book because the lights are off or I didn't take one with me and I don't want anyone to know I'm there?
I would be a little more pleased with myself if I could be arsed to get on with things when I get back from work, instead of gravitating toward bed by 7pm with a bottle of cider and a feeling of heaviness and irritation. There are necklaces to be made - fuck knows why, it's not like they sell - and I probably do need to put more into planning the book. I was considering splurging on a microphone but then I thoguht: self, do you really want to listen to your own shitty podfic, or do you want to buy audiobooks?
Fnrgh. My clothes MADE ME BLEED today. This is such bullshit. I resent massively the fact that I apparently cannot just be paid to sit naked in a bathtub like an endangered whale and cry about spy fiction while drinking children's booze. I also massively resent that people are apparently incapable of filling in forms properly. I don't think you should be allowed into university if you cannot manage to tick some boxes and read a form.
No, still not. Last night I dreamed about my mother repurchasing our old house. She had returned to the state she has fixed to in my mind - fatter than she actually is now, with shorter, darker hair than she has now - basically, the way she looked when I was small. And she was less mental. And the house was too small. Every time I dream about that house it is too small. So small that I'm afraid of getting stuck going through doorways, afraid that I won't get out of rooms I've got into, afraid of being wedged in the staircase. It's not a difficult dream to decipher, really, but on the heels of the last dream even less so. I feel like I've outgrown a lot of things, I suppose the next thing to outgrow is being so catastrophically frightened of people that I waste hours of my life hiding in toilet cubicles. The times I spend doing that are diminishing, but they are still too many. What the fuck is there to be gained from sitting on a toilet, not peeing, not pooing, not even reading a book because the lights are off or I didn't take one with me and I don't want anyone to know I'm there?
I would be a little more pleased with myself if I could be arsed to get on with things when I get back from work, instead of gravitating toward bed by 7pm with a bottle of cider and a feeling of heaviness and irritation. There are necklaces to be made - fuck knows why, it's not like they sell - and I probably do need to put more into planning the book. I was considering splurging on a microphone but then I thoguht: self, do you really want to listen to your own shitty podfic, or do you want to buy audiobooks?
Fnrgh. My clothes MADE ME BLEED today. This is such bullshit. I resent massively the fact that I apparently cannot just be paid to sit naked in a bathtub like an endangered whale and cry about spy fiction while drinking children's booze. I also massively resent that people are apparently incapable of filling in forms properly. I don't think you should be allowed into university if you cannot manage to tick some boxes and read a form.
Last night my dreams involved ecstasy, and variations on old themes which are actually kind of positive. Including me reviewing footage and going "oh dear, I appear to have danced topless. At least my tits looked good". Patrick Wolf was in my dream, as was Some Irish Comedian Or Other, a couple I used to date in Brighton, and Liza.
This morning, Pingy has combined two of my favourite things - Tom Hardy hitting people, and poetry - into one thing - a poem about Tom Hardy hitting people - and I am well content with this. All is not lost. If I can avoid vomiting on the train we will be GOLDEN, bro. Y'know, until I get back, it gets dark, and the whole gloomy cycle start sagain.
This morning, Pingy has combined two of my favourite things - Tom Hardy hitting people, and poetry - into one thing - a poem about Tom Hardy hitting people - and I am well content with this. All is not lost. If I can avoid vomiting on the train we will be GOLDEN, bro. Y'know, until I get back, it gets dark, and the whole gloomy cycle start sagain.
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