nightmare

that which resists persists - sometimes it persists anyway, but writing won't hurt, and i need a longer waking buffer before i dare close my eyes again

one of those dreams, where i wake up and stay up for fear of slipping back, insanely long bleedover, spooked with gnosis that if just the hint of that paradigm came back for an instant, i would scream - i hardly ever have nightmares anymore and my mood's been better than usual lately - so there's an imperative to sort this out, where did it come from?

it was all familiar things, mostly short term as in yesterday, or very very long term - my mom, mike, steve the studio guy's dog, and the hume - all safe, comfortable things - and all reflecting blank pitiless hostility, all empty vessels for accusatory dread - i had to think, who in my life has ever made me feel so shamed and dreadful? no one except myself - the only way to interpret the dream is that it was my subconscious distilled to pure self-loathing, complete lack of confidence, hopelessness, and despair - in the dream i never questioned why these people, mike, my mother, my employers, were so totally contemptuous of me in my desperate appeal for understanding - i felt i'd slipped into a state of psychosis and was unable to deal with life

what sent my dream into the dark woods was a conversation with a mockup of contra in front of a washing machine at the edge of a suburban patch of forest - it recapitulated an actual conversation we'd had about death last week - in that waking conversation, i'd reassured him that in my view (or maybe just hope), our inevitable deaths are "just" the death of ego - and there is conscious continuity in a sense that should assuage any fear - when the ego is gone what is left? everything else, thus, consciousness joins consciousness - but in the dream, re-iterating what has become easy axiomatic dogma, resulted in a cold mutual countenance, because we saw through it - we both felt it was semantic trickery, not giving the ego its due, "death of ego" being a more profound thing than i'd allowed - and the idea of conscious continuity without ego was nonsensical - but we each said nothing for fear of making it true

then the hume called and i realized with shock it was 3:30 AM and i was late for work - i start work at 3:30 PM, not AM now, so even though it was the hotel calling, it was obviously recalling my last job, when i worked graveyard and often postponed arrival until ridiculous hours like that... the hume has always treated me well, but in the dream i was terrified of fucking up - wandered downtown to get to work, feeling more and more psychotic, less and less confident i could work, this sickening building pressure - finally i made a decision to skip work and wander the streets trying to find a niche as an unapologetic madman, but this only intensified the shame - somehow wound up at my parents' house, needing comfort - knocked on my mom's door - she vividly looked, sounded, and felt like who she was supposed to be, but from her entry into the dream, till the time i woke up, she had a merciless scowling contempt for me, expressed telepathically, scolding me for being a psychotic fuckup - mike and the friendly dog i petted in the recording studio yesterday showed up later, both exhibiting that same attitude, voices in my head - all the good associations in my life, my only hopes to offset the fuckup feeling, the last refuge being the harshest expose to the reality of the void - i could not deny what they were saying: that i was a failure, unable to help myself, and what's more, no one could or should help me, my free ride was over - it was the full flowering of my disease, the culmination of my life - all joy and innocence had been spent, this was the end game, and it was all my fault, i'd waited too long to learn a coping strategy like everyone else - it was not fear of any imminent action but something far worse, philosophical, encompassing everything - trapped, but the nightmare statue wasn't being chased by anything visible or tangible, the monster was the ground beneath me

so where did this come from? i noticed a vague piss smell upon waking - a very tiny leak - i haven't wet the bed in decades, so my theory is that the content of the dream was triggered by the smell - it could have brought me back to childhood, when my conception of my mom was more severe, matriarchal, a goddess who could destroy my world or save it with a look - it reminded me what a horror show childhood really is, and how we forget what the stakes are, before we've constructed our reality - and how flimsy that reality is, outside the comfort zone - how powerful dreams are, simulated schizophrenia depersonalizing like deconstruction, stripping the psyche to its elements - i guess that realization is why i wrote this

the freakiest thing about the nightmare: i woke up and decided to lie down again - i was back to sleep in a minute or two and it picked up without missing a beat - i was walking down a winding road at night with lakeside/gyro overtones, with mike, and the feeling kicked in again, re-contextualizing everything, i suddenly knew it was returning and there was no escape - the "psychosis" was actually the dawning perception of my true self and by extension all of existence, but i felt it as a tangible tug on my cerebral cortex, an unwitting obsession, a telepathic exchange with mike, who quickly averted his eyes and abandoned me because he knew where i was going, shared in the nausea, couldn't help me and wouldn't if he could - a horror so pure as to eliminate any possibility of sympathy, leaving only disgust and dread

march light is filling up this creek street room i've secured for myself through musical connections and financial transactions, i think i can live with this strange self again for now - i hope so anyway - i'd forgotten how cruel the subconscious can be but i'm fucking tired, i'll risk sleep again, what else can i do?