Caffeine Good. Sleep Bad.
If I didn't already know I'm nuts, I'd be worried. Honestly. I've been dreaming my own death for the past few nights, and it's not pleasant. I don't mean dying in bed at the age of one-hundred. I mean bad death. Nasty, painful, prolonged death. And it's lucid dreaming, which is even more bizarre. Lucid dreaming is when you know you're dreaming, so as I'm dying I'm having these bizarre conversations with myself...
Lucid Me: Damn... What's wrong with you? Don't do that.
Dreaming Me: I can't help it.
Lucid Me: Like hell... How about a kitten and a ball of yarn?
Dreaming Me: Would if I could.
Lucid Me: Seriously. Just wake up or something.
Dreaming Me: Kinda busy here.
Lucid Me: Yeah. Unpleasant. Stop it.
Dreaming Me: Can't. Christ. This really hurts.
Lucid Me: Duh. You fucking moron. How about a unicorn?
Dreaming Me: Maybe when I'm done here.
Lucid Me: Yeah, well... What if you dying in your dream really kills you?
Dreaming Me: That's retarded. Now shut up. I'm busy.
In one dream, I killed myself by running full-force into a stone wall over and over. Must have been a hundred times at least. Smash into the wall, get back up, do it again. I could hear my bones cracking as I was doing it. When it was almost over, I was limping over my own bloody footprints. Eventually, I couldn't get back up, so I just stayed on the floor and stared at the ceiling. Like, the fuh? Blunt-force trauma is not a good way to go. Actually, I'm guessing that dream was a sort of subconscious meta-statement about the state of my job-hunting. You know, the whole running-into-walls thing. Literally.
My favorite dream, in terms of sheer fuckupedness, was probably the nastiest dream I've ever had. With my vivid imagination... that's saying something. In this one, I suppose my death was the result of blood loss and shock, which... Also? Not a good way to go. Did you ever bite your tongue or get, like, a piece of sand in your eye? Hurts like an expletive, right? Yeah. I cut out my tongue with a pair of dull-ish kitchen shears, then clawed my eyes right out of their sockets. And it took a really long time to die after that. If there's a meta-statement for that I haven't found it yet.
I have no idea where these no-good-really-bad dreams are coming from, either. No depression, no high-stress situations... Yeah, looking for a new job sucks, but it's not at freak-out level. I'm generally happy with my life. I annoy myself occasionally, but not to the level that I'd actually dull kitchen shears. Really, if you're dreaming of self-mutilation, wouldn't you want something sharp? The fact that I dreamed up the dull just has the strangest element of self-loathing, doesn't it?
Worse, I'm going to have another nasty dream tonight, and this one will be entirely my fault. My biggest "horrible death" situation has always been being burned alive. So what do I do? I read a book about a whole lot of people being burned alive. I'm so fucking clever. I can never resist. It's that "slow down and look at the accident" thing. I swear I have a complex. Oooh... Fire... Pretty... Shit. Burns are the worst, aren't they?
So in my sheer idiocy, I read a book about the Hartford Circus Fire. 1944, the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey big top, waterproofed with a mixture of paraffin and gasoline, goes up in flames. How many elements of the Bad Death are in that? Getting burned, getting trampled, getting crushed, suffocating... And clowns. Clowns are just... Damn. ::shudders:: And really, it was the circus, for the love of God. One of the happiest places in the world. Cotton candy, dancing elephants, trapeze artists, fire, oh dear God, FIRE! So not cool.
Yeah. I'm going to have fun dreams tonight. Having a good imagination can be a very bad thing. This is what totally fucked me over... (from Stewart O'Nan's The Circus Fire: A True Story of an American Tragedy)
"The fire came crackling over the paraffined canvas, a soft rushing whoosh like the approach of wind... The praying stopped, and then there was just screaming. People outside were stunned to hear women and children moaning and crying for their lives. Like howling, witnesses described it as. Terrible, eerie screeching. Several survivors said the one thing they will never forget about the circus fire as long as they live is the sound of the animals as they burned alive. But there were no animals."
That last line. So trite. So ominous. So monsters-under-the-bed. And anyone with an imagination even slightly less vivid than mine will think I'm a lunatic for finding that creepy, but... Damn. Un-fucking-pleasant. Not just the sounds, but the heat and the smell. You know what burning hair smells like? Ugh. Stomach-churning. It makes me long for a pair of dull kitchen shears...
Lucid Me: Damn... What's wrong with you? Don't do that.
Dreaming Me: I can't help it.
Lucid Me: Like hell... How about a kitten and a ball of yarn?
Dreaming Me: Would if I could.
Lucid Me: Seriously. Just wake up or something.
Dreaming Me: Kinda busy here.
Lucid Me: Yeah. Unpleasant. Stop it.
Dreaming Me: Can't. Christ. This really hurts.
Lucid Me: Duh. You fucking moron. How about a unicorn?
Dreaming Me: Maybe when I'm done here.
Lucid Me: Yeah, well... What if you dying in your dream really kills you?
Dreaming Me: That's retarded. Now shut up. I'm busy.
In one dream, I killed myself by running full-force into a stone wall over and over. Must have been a hundred times at least. Smash into the wall, get back up, do it again. I could hear my bones cracking as I was doing it. When it was almost over, I was limping over my own bloody footprints. Eventually, I couldn't get back up, so I just stayed on the floor and stared at the ceiling. Like, the fuh? Blunt-force trauma is not a good way to go. Actually, I'm guessing that dream was a sort of subconscious meta-statement about the state of my job-hunting. You know, the whole running-into-walls thing. Literally.
My favorite dream, in terms of sheer fuckupedness, was probably the nastiest dream I've ever had. With my vivid imagination... that's saying something. In this one, I suppose my death was the result of blood loss and shock, which... Also? Not a good way to go. Did you ever bite your tongue or get, like, a piece of sand in your eye? Hurts like an expletive, right? Yeah. I cut out my tongue with a pair of dull-ish kitchen shears, then clawed my eyes right out of their sockets. And it took a really long time to die after that. If there's a meta-statement for that I haven't found it yet.
I have no idea where these no-good-really-bad dreams are coming from, either. No depression, no high-stress situations... Yeah, looking for a new job sucks, but it's not at freak-out level. I'm generally happy with my life. I annoy myself occasionally, but not to the level that I'd actually dull kitchen shears. Really, if you're dreaming of self-mutilation, wouldn't you want something sharp? The fact that I dreamed up the dull just has the strangest element of self-loathing, doesn't it?
Worse, I'm going to have another nasty dream tonight, and this one will be entirely my fault. My biggest "horrible death" situation has always been being burned alive. So what do I do? I read a book about a whole lot of people being burned alive. I'm so fucking clever. I can never resist. It's that "slow down and look at the accident" thing. I swear I have a complex. Oooh... Fire... Pretty... Shit. Burns are the worst, aren't they?
So in my sheer idiocy, I read a book about the Hartford Circus Fire. 1944, the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey big top, waterproofed with a mixture of paraffin and gasoline, goes up in flames. How many elements of the Bad Death are in that? Getting burned, getting trampled, getting crushed, suffocating... And clowns. Clowns are just... Damn. ::shudders:: And really, it was the circus, for the love of God. One of the happiest places in the world. Cotton candy, dancing elephants, trapeze artists, fire, oh dear God, FIRE! So not cool.
Yeah. I'm going to have fun dreams tonight. Having a good imagination can be a very bad thing. This is what totally fucked me over... (from Stewart O'Nan's The Circus Fire: A True Story of an American Tragedy)
"The fire came crackling over the paraffined canvas, a soft rushing whoosh like the approach of wind... The praying stopped, and then there was just screaming. People outside were stunned to hear women and children moaning and crying for their lives. Like howling, witnesses described it as. Terrible, eerie screeching. Several survivors said the one thing they will never forget about the circus fire as long as they live is the sound of the animals as they burned alive. But there were no animals."
That last line. So trite. So ominous. So monsters-under-the-bed. And anyone with an imagination even slightly less vivid than mine will think I'm a lunatic for finding that creepy, but... Damn. Un-fucking-pleasant. Not just the sounds, but the heat and the smell. You know what burning hair smells like? Ugh. Stomach-churning. It makes me long for a pair of dull kitchen shears...