I dream of the sea, green noisy, coming in furiously, pounding the shore with a force that could knock a grown man onto the ground and pull him under.
I dream of a love so strong that the one in love dies of a heart attack, but is blissful at the last possible second of life. I dream of the craziness of a nuthouse turned loose on the empty streets to vandalize the dreary storefronts.
My dreams are nightmares in the shapes of children’s building blocks gone horribly wrong. I find myself in a maze of my own making, only I forgot to make myself a way out. I scream, but no one can hear, because I am not awake. The alarm resounds with buzzer like clarity, a dream within a dream, a labyrinth of eternity on a small scale. The scream turns inside out to show a display of a red interior that transforms into the interior of an ancient car that is on the edge of a precipice just like in the movies.
One move, and over we go to a glorious technicolor death down below.
And then I wake, and I scream, because it isn’t a dream, but a distorted reality, grinning at me from all angles in mock triumph. I am insane, I decide one day after witnessing the death of thousands before my very eyes. Or maybe, I never woke up, only thought I did, and am now tumbling down an earthen rabbit hole that is also a bottomless pit leading to a black hole where not even a beam of light can escape. An alarm sounds, do I hear it? Am I awake now?
I fear I am, and experience the total whiteness of nothingness, where every object is a foreign one, and I am floating to a remote island with seas of intense blue, but there are sharks waiting for me, to make me into a fine meal. At least there will be an end to it, the madness I mean, the crazy multi colored flashiness of existence.
Is that what I want? An end to it? To be thrown away like the core of an apple? Awh, but the seed hits the ground, and one day grows to be an apple tree. Is there never an end to it then? If there is a beginning, there must be an end, that is symmetry.
Two perfect halves waiting to be reunited on the beaches of bliss and ignorance. Hands touch, and collide, and the fragments shatter like broken glass in a cheap hotel, going every which way, and in a hurry like a bus without brakes. Slow down, we don’t want to die after all, only too scared to really live, but even more afraid to die.
So that’s it. Life. I must be dreaming because no life is as ridiculous and nonsensical as this one. Or is it my ego, in the foolishness of thinking that I am unique? No, I am unique, and so it the man in the trench coat on the park bench over there, you know, the one reading the newspaper so intently, brow furrowed with concern and worry. He’s looking at the NASDAQ,or could it be the comics?
He’s gone, but there is an old lady with a poodle approaching. She sniffs the air suspiciously. What is it that she smells? The urine of a homeless man who slept on the park bench all night, with the stars as his own personal tableau? Or is it the city trashcan filled with half eaten fast food that apparently was not fast enough.
The lady with the poodle is gone now, and so is the bench and the trashcan. Where am I now? In bed, with the sheets pulled up tight around my chin which I hate. I hate being constricted. I feel so helpless. Like I am going insane. Going, as if it is a destination, a plot point, a physical locale one can visit, and then leave.
My eyes examine the ceiling and I know I am awake. I can count the tiny dots on each panel. It is the type of ceiling one finds in an institution, or a school. Only I am in a sterile bed, made of a mattress and metal, counting the dots. A hospital, my mind tells me. I am in the hospital.
What for? I ask myself, but no one answers. What was I expecting? Another personality? One named Susan with one and a half kids, and a beagle with a pink collar? Or an old lady named Gertrude with a fat cat on her lap, mewing. Whatever, there is no one here but me, and I can’t think straight.
I slowly lift my arm to touch my temple, and it feels funny. Soft like rotten fruit that’s been in the fridge way too long. I am all tied down, as if I tried to get out of bed earlier. Maybe I did, I can’t remember. I recall pain, white hot pain, on the beach, and then nothing. Who am I? What beach?
I am blank, nothing, nada. But I am alive, and awake and here in a hospital with a window overlooking a large parking lot.
The Infamous Jennisfora Strikes Again...or something like that 