Nightmares

The first nightmare I ever had, that I remember, is something that happened when I was very, very young, probably just old enough to walk, talk, and read a little. (Reading came on the heels of talking for me, in a house with a lot of books and no television or computer.) I remember, very, very vaguely, more as feelings and general tones than actual memories, being warned about electricity, and about lights, and bulbs, and sockets. My dad knew enough—knows enough, even—to know exactly how dangerous that kind of thing is. Most people do, but he also knows how to do things with electricity without ever being in danger, or how to deal with danger. But to me, at that age, electricity was just one of those things, like cars, or lightning, or fire, that just… Were. Were forces of danger, things my parents gave dire warnings against, enforced by spankings and more dire warnings of a general, and, in order for this nightmare to have occurred, specific nature, I suppose.


Our house was very old, for an American building—over a hundred years old, inherited from my great-grandparents, two stories plus a basement and an attic. My sister and I shared an upstairs bedroom, the one in the front of the house, with two windows looking onto the street, through the branches of two evergreen trees—I could never tell you what kind. Through the hallway was the staircase; above the staircase, in that hallway somewhere, was a narrow staircase that led to the attic. But past the main staircase was my parents’ room, the master bedroom, past that was… a closet, I believe, on one hand, and on the other, a bathroom which led into what would’ve been my brothers’ room, farther on. My brother may have been sleeping in it even then; I don’t remember. He was very young. Down the stairs, there was the living room under our bedroom, and in the back of the house, the kitchen, very dark, I remember, for some reason. I have a vague impression of tan floor tiles, but that may be wrong. There was a pantry, and somewhere there were stairs to the basement. Where, exactly, I don’t remember.


In this dream, I remember, my little brother, David—then, he was my only brother—and I were sitting on the floor, in the attic, which was bare and dusty and lit well. There were piles of Christmas-tree lights on either side of us, bundled and coiled, and we each had a strand. We were unscrewing the light bulbs, checking them for something, to see if they lit up or something like that, and then screwing them back in. (It occurs to me that one important thing about the trigger of this nightmare may have been my mother’s hatred of Christmas decorations.) Someone, either my older sister, Serenity, or one of my parents, called from downstairs about hot chocolate. I put the strand of lights down, eagerly, and told David to come on, and stood up. And he said, “Just this last one,” and unscrewed a light bulb, and it shocked him somehow, and he collapsed, dead.


And that was the most horrifying thing that I have ever dreamed, to this day. I have dreams of demons, and horrible nightmares, and vivid, lucid brawls, and chases where I can’t get away, and dreams of betrayal, and dreams of cannibalism and pain. But that was the worst dream I ever had.


There was one, a few years later, where I was tied to the little tree out behind the fence, at the corner of our fence and our next-door-neighbors (to the right, the Andersons), and a man drove up in a green Model-T Ford, a man with white hair and a white beard and a top hat (I think, I may be misremembering the top hat), and he took me by the wrist and tried to get me to get into his car. I remember being in the backyard with David and a bunch of shouting, screaming twenty-ish people drove through the yard in screaming red sports-cars, and we were scared. He dreamed the same dream, the same night, I think. Or maybe I imagined that.



But the scariest, worst, most nightmarish dream I have ever had, or probably ever will have, is remembering sitting there on the attic floor, screaming, and him dead on the floor next to me.

Things in my life, literal and otherwise

On my desk, which has finally been organized, I keep a handful of rocks. There is a dark gray rock that fits almost perfectly in my fist, which I kicked along the park once, and decided to keep; the feel of it, solid, cold, heavy in my palm reminded me that I was real. The second rock is a polished tiger-eye, very reddish in color, compared to most stones of that nature. It’s very pretty, and it reminds me of Mohan, my friend. Then there’s a little piece of clinker, very dark gray, like a shadow on the bottom of a river, it glistens in the right light; I found it in my favorite park, by the riverside, upstream. Two more rocks my best friend gave me, smooth and flat and elliptical, one more tawny and one more gray, a pencil-gray, both the right size to hold in my hand at night. The sixth rock is a small lump of pink granite, black-flecked, that I found at the beach; the seventh is a tan, white, dark rock that I picked up from the sidewalk on my way home, last night, after a friend told me everything that was in my own heart, poisoning me from the inside out. I’d known; before leaving, I’d written something along the same lines, bemoaning my inaction and resolving to get off my ass and do something. But hearing it from someone else was kind of painful, which I should have seen coming. Perceptive friends are a double-edged sword.

I loved the person I was on the road to becoming; I wanted to be that person, I want to be someone who lives life to the fullest, someone who cares and creates and loves. I hate the person I am, I hate the person I am becoming now, instead. I have no creative energy, I waste most of my days daydreaming without doing anything about it, I sit around and do nothing. I am, quite simply, a waste of space right now.

There is a lot of shit being thrown at me in life right now. I’d love to use that as a shield; in my own mind, I have been, have been excusing all my lackluster as an effect of the world around me. This is basically complete bullshit. There are so many things that could be worse in my life, I have been so lucky, and there really is no excuse for my situation right now. I’m not going to college because I fucked up my grades and then didn’t apply to enough schools. I’m not going to Sacramento because I didn’t get a second job soon enough, didn’t save carefully enough. I’m still living with my family—well, because I’m not going to college and don’t have enough money to move to Sacramento. This is no excuse to laze around and whine.

There’s a mirror on the dresser, to my right. I don’t hate the person looking back at me, most of the time. I used to. I hate the potential there, and I hate the lack of energy. I hate the potential because it forces me onward, because I don’t want to waste the few things I do have. I hate the lack of energy because it’s my own fault, because I could do better. I hate that people see more in me than is really there. I hate that my friends think I’m so damned smart, I hate that I can’t hide my faults from them, I hate making an idiot of myself so often. I hate the irresponsibility, and I love the foolhardiness. I try not to hate myself. That way lies madness; most ways, actually, lead to madness. I try not to think about that too hard, or I wind up curling up into a useless ball in a corner for hours. I wish I was joking. I wish I wasn’t crazy.

One of the things I hate about mental illness, one of the major things, is that it really is a life sentence. That’s one of the first things a friend told me, when I told everyone what the diagnosis was: she said, “It’s not a life sentence.” But it is. It changes the way people look at you, even your best friends, even the people who accept you. For the rest of your life, people will expect certain things from you; for the rest of your life, if you show some quirk in behavior, people will ask, “Have you been taking your meds?” And if you say yes, they will roll their eyes in semi-disbelief, or wry acceptance, and if you say no, they will sigh hopelessly and either give you a lecture, or simply be content with quiet disappointment, far worse than any lecture. And it will never go away. And you will never be normal, and you will never be accepted, and you will never be able to fit in.

But, for all that, there’s really no excuse for sitting around whining about it. The only way to get around something like that is to take the shit you have, and do something with it. So, even if this story is horseshit, I may as well write it, if for nothing better than to satisfy the characters.

Rain, life, it's actually quite simple.

The rain is falling quite prettily now; the drops are so fine they’re almost mist, but it still soaks you if you stand in it long enough. It’s pretty, but it’s not my favorite kind of rain. I love the raging storms, gales that ravage the landscape, leaving leaves strewn across the sidewalk, hurling sheets of water into your face even under an overhang, deafening you with thunder and blinding streaks of lightning across the face of the sky. I feel so alive, with a storm so fierce in my face that they spawn tornados and hail and think nothing of it. It’s a rush of adrenaline; it’s the marrow of life and the core, and the lifeblood of my soul. Even as a child, I feared thunderstorms but was drawn in by them. Logically, I knew they could kill me, burn down the house, anything. But I loved that feeling. It’s something that hasn’t gone away; if anything, that’s grown stronger as I got older. I seek out that feeling now, the rush of life.

When it’s dark, and cold, and the air is thick with swirling snow, I slip out the back door, and only manage to keep my hood up for a few minutes before I need more. I love the silence, the breeze in the icy air, the snow in my hair, the flurry just visible in the orange light here and there, at just the right angle. On days in early winter, when the sleet comes and the ice pounds my windows, I rush out into the biting evening, and chase the twilight through the sidewalks, quiet but for the crackle of frozen leaves and the ongoing rattle of tiny droplets of ice hurtling onto the ground. There’s ice in my hair, and on my coat, and in my eyelashes, and I’m wind-burned by the time I get home, but it’s a good thing.

Someone wrote the newspaper to complain about those punk kids who lurk around at night, and I smiled, seeing their preemptive anger concerning preemptive vandalism, and register with amusement the annoyance at all those stupid fools who come out of the woodwork on summer nights. Yes, teenagers roam in the summer nights. But you haven’t lived until you’ve wandered the streets in the middle of a raging winter storm; when the summer thunderstorms come, it’s best to lie on the ground, or lean on a fence, and let the rain wash your worries away.

It’s a pretty, quiet rain tonight. That’s probably why I’m sitting here, listening to music and typing up a blog entry, instead of curled up against a rock in the park, watching the drops fall.

Again, on love, and life, and indifference.

indifference, numbness, cold. things i want, desire, need. since the first day desire touched the heart of a man, since the first night a woman suffered dreams, since the first emotion in the first moment of the world, it has been as much a harm as a help, if not moreso. more, actually, definitely. Indifference is a wall, a shield, an insulator that we need so much, that never comes when we need it most; indifference is a thing that changes us, takes our most human parts and cloaks or steals or destroys them. unfair, perhaps, but true, nonetheless.

i do not want to be human, today. i do not want to love, i do not want to hurt.

there are times, when in despair or jest, i tell those i trust of my most beloved, terrifying dream, in sleep or awake. but, despite it all, i am human, whether i will or no.

And I feel, and love, and hurt. And I am powerless to stop that. I am powerless to deny platonic love, the empathetic pain that comes with it; I am powerless to deny romantic love, and all the desire and pain that comes with that; I am powerless to hold back emotion for my family, as much as that hurts me. As many times as friends may hurt me with a careless, or aimed, jest, as many times as I am betrayed, as many disagreements as we may have, I will love them. As many times as I am denied, or lied to, or used, I will fall in love, stupidly, helplessly, repeatedly. As many times as my family hurts me, denies me, turns from me, steals from me, lies to me, I will love them. Each and every one of them. Forever. And my God, it fucking hurts. Because love doesn't always mean turning the other cheek, especially when more than one life is at stake. Love doesn't always mean gentle kindness. So I'm not sorry. I'm sorry for the events that led up to this, and I'm sorry that it had to happen, and I'm sorry for the pain. But, it was not my decision, and, that aside, I would stand by it.

Friends that I grew up with, and friends I made later, might notice with disapproval that Agape I have left out of the above. And Charity. Both of those are as true, and as painful, in a way-- Charity, I have had less reason to fear; I suspect that I'm not doing it right. Agape? Painful. More personal, less for and to other people. Agape is a private thing, I think, especially for one without a church. I love God. It's true. I think, sometimes, that I have been given ample reason not to. But, nevertheless.

Dancing, or something a bit like it.

One of my favorite things about life is the crazily silly dances I manage to get away with most of the time, alone. Anyone who knows me would be able to tell you that I Do Not Dance, mostly because I Cannot Dance. But the crazy bobbing-head and waving-arms gestures that pop up around my keyboard must surely count for something! Every so often I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the screen and have to suppress the embarrassed part of my brain, because a wince would interfere with the beat. And there is a beat, and I do carry it, in my own rather wild way. The other fun thing is the crazy leaping, twisting, capering-and-cavorting sort of dance that I only do when it is a truly joyful song on my mp3 player and I am on the part of the path by the pond that is completely hidden from the rest of the park. Or the crazy dance that came with Pride, by U2, which was performed in a series of leaps and twirls, and presented the major problem with this entire category of behavior.

As with so many of the things I do, there is no good explanation. There is no respectable way to explain a minor injury incurred while dancing wildly away from observers. Fortunately, the worst that ever happened was when I landed partly on a piece of furniture, on my ankle, in the living room in mid-leap and was limping for a day or two. With any luck at all, I’ll never have to explain a sprain in my shoulder or something this way. I might just have to make something up.

I have been wandering

I have been wandering, as is my wont, at night, in the dark streets, under the orange streetlights, under the pale stars, the waning moon, down paths that have been mine for so long. Down into the woods I go, when dusk is beginning to scatter in the face of the darkness of night, and I find a place, and I sit, and think, and look, and wonder. In this place, these woods, this pond, I have found sanctuary, I have found reason, I have found peace. I have seen the great birds and the small birds soar, I have heard the song of the bullfrogs like living violins and teeming bass drums, I have seen beaver, and possum, and hawk, and heron. I have gone and watched the night glitter and shine in the light of thousands of fireflies, wherever you look a sparkling light, orange and yellow and green, a little different in each flash, which becomes apparent when they fly past your face, two inches away. I have been lost in the trails when it began to rain, in the dark—that was years ago, I could not be lost there now if I tried. I have found peace, and hope, and despair, and hurt, and love in that place, I have seen snow-covered trees lit by only the moon’s blue light, I have gone to the path for solace and been confronted by my own shadow and more. I have found myself on my knees in the mud, ice touching the bare skin of my legs as I cried aloud in a voice I did not know I had. I have sung, in the dark night, in the pitch between the trees and the dusk in the sky, I have whistled in the day, I have prayed for a thunderstorm, I have reveled in the mist; I have laid flat on my back, and seen the sky, framed by trees, gilt by the sunset, glorious.

Often, I have been convinced that such a place is all I need in this world. It is a place for peace, one of the few in my life. I am still convinced that I could spend the rest of my life wandering the wilderness, at peace, without seeing another office building ever. I am probably not alone in this view.

I do think that peace and restlessness are not incompatible. I think that true peace needs more than tranquility, I think that a balance is necessary. I remember running out of the house, down the driveway, angry and hurt and barefoot in the full moon, and walking far on sidewalks that seemed better than the alternative. I remember crying aloud, punching telephone poles bare-fisted, full force, in the dark, because I did not know where to turn. I remember standing for long, long moments on the street before a church, watching, wondering, wishing, more alone than anything. I remember nights of shadows, masks in the dark behind me, figures that haunted the corners of my eye, impossible, terrifying.

Restlessness is a part of me. Peace is a part of restlessness, something unattainable, something impossibly beautiful, a moment that surprises by being real, after all. Peace cannot be taken, it cannot be bought, it cannot be sought out. Restlessness is a part of me, and peace is a part of restlessness, and this does not strike me as impossible, because life is made up of paradoxes.

Stories

the thing is, i don't know if i want a normal life. i don't think i even want a normal job. i don't want to get rich selling juice-- or even sharing juice. i don't want an excellent business opportunity, i don't want to have a LIFE, in any sense of the word. i don't. want. anything. at least, not anything like that. and yet, you people continue to tell me that it is Necessary, and that i should Compromise, or at least look beyond whatever stupid world i'm living in in my head (okay, you haven't said it like that, but i think you want to, at least a few of you, a few times), and try to get some kind of stability before i try to be an Artist. here's the thing though.

I don't WANT to be an Artist. Or, really, a Writer. (I want to meet a very specific writer sometimes, but that's different.)

I want to tell stories. That's all, in one way. In another way, I want to LIVE, to feel the salt on my face in every way possible, to climb mountains like a goat like i did when i was young, to see forever the dappled sunlight on the forest floor, to hear forever the brook singing over rocks, to lose myself in the thunderstorms, spontaneous and forever. but mostly, i want to tell stories. I want to take all the characters floating around in my head, and all the landscapes that exist a thousand worlds over, and all the meadows and flowers and faires and sprites and genies and gargoyles and assassins and thieves and shepherds and everything. i want to live, live all of it forever, and then come back and tell people.

and that's often why i don't mingle well, or why i can't be coaxed to dinners and parties and things, and why you meet me in the mist and the dark, with no good reason for being there, and why i might choose a notebook over a car. because mingling, gossip about folks who aren't there, laughter, light, takes me away from the Stories, mine or someone else's, and life as it should be pales in contrast with life i want to live.

there is a part of a book i read that says something like "The thing about stories is, they don't mean a damn if there's nobody listening," which sometimes i kind of agree with. I want to go to the edge of the world, the end of life, and then come back and tell the stories to people who want to hear them. And it seems like that's not an acceptable goal, these days. And that saddens me.

So it turns out Neil Gaiman really is that amazing.

Sometimes, my life feels like something out of a nightmare. I came home from food-not-bombs yesterday to find three lawnmowers at random places in the backyard, the shed door open, and the light inside on. Sighing, I went into the house to find corn kernels drying to the floor and counter in the kitchen, living room, hallway, and bathroom—only, in the bathroom they were accompanied by a fist-sized ball of crushed up hotdog roll in the sink, also slowly drying to the surface. In the kitchen and parts of the living room, they were accompanied by sparse handfuls of cheerios. On the kitchen counter, where there were no dishes, there was a plastic bag of taco shells, a container of cheerios, an open bag of hotdog rolls, a nearly empty jug of iced tea, and other unidentified debris. In an attempt to clean some of this up, I started by taking out the over-full garbage under the sink, rescuing two glass bottles and an empty milk jug in the process, and found that, outside, there was a smashed glass all over the patch of pavement behind the steps. The irony to all this is that, that very morning, my brother, who is one-and-a-half years younger than me, had called telling me that my father had agreed to lend him twenty dollars through me if he mowed the lawn and did the dishes (which entails cleaning the kitchen to some extent). When I had left the house, the only messes were that the lawn was a bit shaggy, and the sink was full of dishes (with some overspill on the counter, I’ll admit).

It is scenes like this which make me chant under my breath, “I hate my life, I hate my life, I hate my life,” as though verbalizing it somehow makes it a little easier to bear. (When my brother came home, at seven-thirty, demanding twenty-five dollars, as he had mowed the lawn, he applied the very excellent method of asking me to babysit two eight-week-old kittens, smaller than my head, as a surprise for his girlfriend, so I really couldn’t say no, because they were SO CUTE.)

Anyway, I soon gave up on the mess, went into my room, and wrote something on my other journal about Neil Gaiman, and his super-inspiring powers which bring me back to the passion of writing that I had so many years ago. And, being a little curious about this amazing writer who pretty much is a huge part of why my life is bearable, I looked him up on TV Tropes, which told me that he is One Of Us, which is pretty obvious, and linked me to an interview with Stephen Colbert (which made me first smile, and then laugh aloud), and also told me that he has remained kind and very nice to his fans, which was… not surprising, but kind of surprising to read. Know what I mean? It wasn’t that he was nice that surprised me, but that he was so nice that it was a mentionable fact. Curious, I checked Wikipedia, and found that he had his own blog, which I immediately headed over to, and started poking through.

About six hours of reading through his blogs (after the first three entries or so, I went back to the start of the archives, where he’d begun it as a project for American Gods, and started reading chronologically, which is a bit of a hassle with the scrolling, but definitely worth it), Neil Gaiman has skyrocketed to the very head of my list of Awesome Dudes, about even with Bono/U2 (they’re awesome, but they’re not geeks; also, they’re awesome, but they’re rock stars. I will never be a rock star, lacking as I do any real skill in that area). Seriously. As though his amazing writing wasn’t enough (and, I’d bet my last dollar and a whole lot more than that), the guy is basically the sweetest, most personable, amazing person imaginable. And he feeds birds. And loves his kids, and his dog. I am now even more determined to go buy a copy of Sandman, or at least Coraline, or one other of his books or WHATEVER. He’s freaking amazing. I am determined to meet him one day, and after I found myself too tired to continue reading, laid in bed and wrote him a fan letter, which I may or may not be too embarrassed to send, written as it was at about three in the morning, and thus lacking any kind of self-censor. (Not in the area of crudeness, but… squeeing and generally rambling. And stuff.)

So yeah. Neil Gaiman? Awesome Dude.