hells_half_acre | Entries tagged with dreaming

Today, for the first time in quite a while, I woke up at 8am and left the house in order to work. I had meetings in Hull. (For those who don't live in Ottawa: Look up Ottawa, ON, on Googlemaps...you see all that city-stuff on the north side of the river? That's Hull). I don't like going to Hull for two reasons: 1)I get lost as soon as I cross over the bridge (any bridge) 2)It's hard to know where to park when you are lost.

I studied Googlemaps before I left, but once again, I got lost the moment I drove over the bridge - this is quite an amazing feat, since the building I needed was RIGHT BESIDE THE BRIDGE. Anyway, I parked over by the Museum of Civilization, because that's the only thing I know how to get to in Hull, and I walked to where I needed to go.

As I was sitting through meetings, it occured to me that I really didn't mind being there. Firstly, Hull isn't as bad as some people (and by some people, I mean me) make it out to be. It's small, and maybe the only thing of real interest is the Museum of Civilization, but there are a couple of streets that are quite pretty, and the view of Ottawa and the Ottawa river are really nice. Secondly, although I have always felt like working for 8 hours a day was a waste of my life, it occured to me that working in the morning really isn't that bad. I'm usually asleep all morning anyway, so working instead wasn't actually wasting my time at all. What I'm trying to say is that working is the same as sleeping. You are alive, but you aren't really living. So, working all morning and sleeping all morning seemed like interchangable things.

I had this revelation as I was driving home (I must say, the drive to and home from Hull is something I don't mind at all - I really like the parkway, especially when there is no traffic). It's a long way home from Hull though. I had left Hull at around 1:15. I had the revelation about working in the mornings being not-so-bad at about 1:30, just as I was coming to the end of the Parkway. At about 1:50, as I was pulling onto Flewellyn for the remaining 20 minutes of my commute, my body decided to remind me why work and sleep are actually NOT interchangable.

Tiredness hit me like a slap-in-the-face. This has always been something that annoys me about myself. I never gradually ease into either tiredness or hunger. I am either not hungry or starving to death. I am either awake or about to pass out. It is never a good thing to be driving when my body decides it is tired.

At first I cursed the world for being geared towards people who regularly ingest caffeine. As far as I know, it's the only drug that not only is accepted world-wide as harmless, but also has entire societies based on it's consumption. Then it occured to me that back in the day, even before the invention of coffee (or it's widespread availability), farmers used to get up with the sunrise and stay awake all day doing hard labour...this was because they went to sleep when the sun set. 'Huh' I thought, 'What a concept! If I worked in the mornings and didn't want to pass out at exactly 2pm every afternoon, I would have to go to bed earlier...which means that I wouldn't be awake from, let's say, 10pm to 2am, like I normally am. So, not only would I be wasting my time in the mornings, but I would be wasting my time at night too...sleep and work, although similar, are therefore NOT interchangable.'

After a couple of tense moments, I got home, greeted the dog, checked my email and a couple of websites, and went for a nap. MAN, I love naps. I had the best nap ever. I dreamt things that I don't remember now but I quiet enjoyed at the time. Nap dreams are often fun, because they are just like more trippy thinking, they aren't actually dreams. They are, as I imagine, what thinking on drugs is like....the weirdest things completely blow your mind, and you feel like you have stumbled onto brilliance, even though you realize later that it was all ridiculous...or sometimes it's like little movies of thoughts.

The best part about my nap was that I woke up at the perfect point in the sleep-cycle. I woke up feeling like I had slept for 8 hours, when really it had just been one. Plus, since the sun set at 4:48 today, it was dark when I woke up and I was all cozy under my Avatar Blanket.

I'm not sure what the point of all this is. Maybe I just wanted to tell someone about my day. Or maybe it was to illustrate that I really need to find a profession where I don't actually feel like I'm wasting my time on this planet. (The whole notion is quite ridiculous anyway, since I know for a fact that when I don't have work, all I do is sit around all day and waste my life on the internet - or sleeping. Plus, working pays for my trips! and that's all that really matters - Trips and Friends! Trippy Friends! Tripping Friends? Friendly Trips!).

To complete my day, I went to band practice with Mum. It was fun. Then I played games with Gabe. It was also fun. Then I watched Jon Stewart. He was funny. Then I watched facebook videos of Gabe, Frank, and Eric jamming in Gabe's living room last summer. It made me ...umm...Gabe'sHomesick.

I also talked to Max a little today. As usually, he is awesome.

And that is my ENTIRE DAY. Next I'm going to go to sleep. Tomorrow I will start working at 1pm, because I'll be sleeping all morning.

Change of plans: Next I will play games with Gabe for a half-an-hour THEN I will go to sleep. This is why I don't work mornings.

Current Mood: awake

I had a guy with midnight hair stretched out with his head resting on me. I sat bent over him, running my fingers through his hair as he chatted with another person in the room. The darkest hair I had ever seen, and woven through it in small lines was every colour of the rainbow, not in the dull colour of hair dye, but in bright brilliant colour. I ran my fingers through his hair and listened to his voice rumble against me. 'This is heaven' I thought, as I took in his beauty.

He informed me in disappointment that we would be late for the show, and he had to go ahead. I could travel with his friends. We jumped in the expensive car that did not actually belong to any one of us, as the dream previous had established, and left for the show. I joked with his friends. Outside the hall to the concert, we laughed as I ate a slice of apple one of his friends gave me. They went in to get seats and I said I would be right behind them. I looked down the corridor for something I could focus on.

There was the taste of apple on my tongue. There was a digital clock that told me the time was twenty past three. There was the dim light of the corridor. There was my right hand on my chest, where his head had been. I knew the alarm would sound any minute and ruin the dream. I had to shut it off without waking. I had to somehow move without gaining full consciousness. I kept my right hand where it was and focused on the digital clock, and moved my left out from under the blankets, which were not present in the hallway. I felt the edge of my desk beside me. I felt the clock-radio, and was relieved when I found the second switch from the right. I clicked it up. The hallway flicked. The digital clock at the end of the hall told me it was three ten. Time counted down here and that seemed normal to me.

I made my way into the concert hall, and found an empty seat in the middle. He would be the lead singer, I realized, and thought it amusing that I would conjure myself a cliche. But I didn't love him because he was the lead singer, or just because his hair was midnight black with all the colours woven through, and he had laid against me while I ran my fingers through his hair.

I still had the taste of apple on my tongue, the feel of his hair through my fingers, when the auditorium lights dimmed and stage lights came up, and the band was silhouetted on stage. The music started and it was some sort of heavy punk rock, the words unintelligible, yelled into the mic, I had a brief thought of 'I don't even particularly like this music,' but I wanted so desperately for the spotlight to come on, so I could see his face.

But the auditorium shattered around me, when to my left REM began to sing:

"But that was just a dream,
That was just a dream..."

I hit snooze in a burst of frustration, and tried to return to the concert, focus on the taste of apple on my tongue, the stage lights as I had last seen them...but it was useless. It was already three o'clock and I had been waking up every nine minutes since noon. It was only after I had gotten out of bed that I realized how appropriate it was that I should be woken with those exact lines from that exact band.

The buzzing of the damn fly woke me up. It had been stuck between the curtain and the window for days, buzzing incessantly in mid-mornings. I opened my eyes with a small moan to find Gabe kneeling by my legs, staring at the curtain like a cat ready to pounce.

"That fly is really annoying" he greeted. I smiled, made a noise of agreement, and closed my eyes again.

I love dreams like this, I thought. My dreams of Gabe have always very accurately reflected our friendship and for the past two years they have been filled with a (non-sexual) intimacy that remains impossible for me to describe to anyone. I had a flash of concern over my state of undress, but then realized that I was adequately covered by the blankets and Gabe was fully clothed and didn't seem at all disturbed by the situation. I realized Gabe even had his hat on, and wondered how long that trend in my dreams would continue. I haven't seen him wear that hat for almost three years, yet it makes a reappearance in every dream as though it were an extension of his body. I drifted off to sleep again, only to be disturbed by the soft noise of Gabe's fist hitting the window through the curtain and the buzzing of the fly.

Opening my eyes, I saw him with his arm stretched out over me, his fist still pressed against the curtain and window. I gave him a look of concern.

"I can get it" he replied, without being asked. "I thought I had it that time."

"Don't break my window" I said. Gabe responded by scowling at me in that special way that tells me I'm treating him like an idiot. Its effectiveness was not diminished by being a dream. I immediately felt horrible.

"Sorry" I muttered. I thought it best to close my eyes and go back to sleep before I said something else insulting. The idea of sleep was short-lived after a soft thud and a renewal of buzzing. Gabe was in the process of withdrawing his hand from the curtain, a small look of frustration crossing his face.

"Just leave it," I told him, "let's go back to sleep, eh?" I tried to reach for his arm to pull him away from the window, but he was sitting just out of my reach.

"You go back to sleep" he whispered apologetically, "though I don't know how you can with this fly in the window."

I sighed and closed my eyes again. A second later the buzzing woke me up once again. I looked to confirm that Gabe was still kneeling by my legs looking at the curtain. A fleeting thought informed me that one is technically not supposed to 'wake-up' to a dream.

"You better kill it," I commanded, "that fly is driving me crazy."

Gabe nodded as he bit back laughter.

Current Mood: loved

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I dreamt that we traveled back and forth, across the country, between my place and yours, on highways with overpasses. We always seemed to travel in the dead of night. At first someone else was driving, but they fell asleep at the wheel. I pulled their hair while you stepped on the brake, and we pulled over and unlatched the van from the trailer hitch, climbed in and continued driving ourselves, leaving the other to their own devices. We stopped at a museum that had narrow mining passageways with a constant flow of water. It made the rocks slippery, and we slid through on our backs, laughing. We got back on the road, but when we got tired we stopped at my cottage for a rest. I slept on the couch and you slept on cushions on the floor. We watched the season premier of Avatar and the seventh Harry Potter movie on an old Sony tri-colour TV. We joked long into the night even though we had to rest up for the trip ahead. We knew that it would still be dark when we woke, that the night was never-ending, but neither of us questioned or spoke of it. You laughed as I slept and I slept well.

I like sleeping, man, it's great. Really, one of the only things I'm good at. I like how Gabe believes in things that aren't logical, but not religion. For instance, Gabe fully believes that I can predict the future with my dreams as well as gain insight into the present. I like the conversation Gabe and I had the other day:

"Last night I dreamt that you and I had this huge house, but we slept on the floor"

Looking thoughtful for a second, Gabe replied,

"Hm, why not."

No matter how you wish to interpret the dream, really, no other response from him would have made sense.

I have to figure out how to afford to stay in Montreal and not starve to death. I wish sometimes that I got a kick out of valued trades, that for some reason I always had a passion for electrical equipment and knew everything there was to know about circuits and whatnot, and then I could be a tech and get paid big bucks for doing something I would be doing anyway.

It'd be cool if I could get some part-time job filing papers in a basement. Something that doesn't require my brain too much, something that doesn't require me talking to people.

I like being left alone just as much as I like company. Mind you, I get pretty bored these days waiting for Gabe to wake up, and then I get pretty bored sometimes hanging out with him...and really, life in general is pretty boring unless I'm traveling or watching a good movie or documentary...or sleeping, man, I love sleeping.

Other things I like include in no particular order:

1. When it rains in the summer or early fall
2. Thunderstorms
3. Kittens
4. Bows - as in archery.
5. Javelins
6. Stories with vague endings...are you happy? are you sad? If you can't tell, it's a good ending.
7. Funny people
8. History as told by Eddie Izzard
9. The way Gabe includes me in everything. If he gets juice to have with dinner, he'll get me a glass without asking or having to be asked. The way he expects the same from me, but doesn't seem to get offended if I forget about him.
10. I like all my friends a lot. They are excellent people.
11. Axes
12. Beds
13. Traveling
14. Fall colours
15. People who tell me they love me so many times that I suddenly find, to my surprise, that I believe them.
16. Textbooks
17. Music
18. The sound of leaves in the wind
19. Water
20. Getting money for nothing and the chicks for free.

Current Mood: pensive

I had a dream last night about all my siblings; specifially, I dreamt about the things that make them different from me: the things about them I don't understand. Those aspects of them that I can't relate to were all they consisted of in my dream. I spent the whole day with them, and by the end of the dream I was really drained and tired. I told them so, and announced that I was heading home.

I took off walking down the road, hopping up on the curb and walking it like a tightrope for fun. I was maybe a block away when I realised that I had no idea where I was going.

"Oh," I thought, "and this is what makes me different from them." I just kept walking.

I'm tired and I'm tired of everything. I didn't sleep well last night. I remember waking up several times and looking at the way the shadows and light looked on the ceiling. I remember I liked the way the leaves looked out the window. Without my glasses that tree could have been any height. For a while I pretended I was sleeping in a toadstool house in an enchanted forest. It didn't occur to me to think of a reason to be in an enchanted forest. I think somethings don't need reasons. Not everyone can save a princess or defeat evil or get lost down a rabbit hole - there are some who must just end up in an enchanted forest for no reason whatsoever and whilst there fail to get into any fantastical madcap adventures.

Tomorrow I'm going to sleep in forever. I'm going to sleep in until divine providence wakes me up.

I've always loved the word "disenfranchised." I've tried to use it in my everyday speech every once in a while, but quietly so that people usually miss it. The truth is I never actually bothered to look up what it meant. I finally did the other day. I'm actually disappointed. I've been reading that word, and using that word, in my studies for almost 5 years now, and it doesn't actually mean what I thought it meant.

Part of me wishes that I had never looked it up, and part of me is glad that I may have just avoided some potential embarrassment. However, there is another another part of me that firmly believes that language is only what we make it. I say that disenfranchised should be able to have a separate special meaning just for me and people like me. A weird meaning that lies somewhere between "disaffected" and "disenchanted," and doesn't have much of anything to do with being "deprived of the rights of citizenship."

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Hell's Half Acre

I think it's 'cause we're so awesome

Entries tagged with dreaming

Go to Hull!

Just a Dream

A Mid-Morning Dream

In the World of Dreams

Things I like

Home in the Unknown

disenfranchised