Another sleepy day tormented by loud construction, so today, we are letting the stream of consciousness flow freely over the round rolling pebbles of the blogosphere until they complete their journey to the ocean of overworked metaphors.

In other words, we’re just blogging away today with no plan other than “hey, here’s some words and some Internet things”.

I had planned something a little more rugged and durable and meaningful, but lack the mental wherewithal to so much as write an outline for something like that, let alone pulling it off with anything like the mental coherence deserving of such an important and noble subject as whatever the hell it was.

To be honest, I have forgotten. It’s in my notes somewhere. Probably.

As usual when the sleep gets thicker, the dreams get weirder. In the latest round, as usual, I was just trying to get home. As usual, I was wandering around a highly fictionalized version of my home town of Summerside, Prince Edward Island. I say fictionalized because although in my mind it definitely is Summerside, it is usually almost nothing like the actual Summerside where I grew up.

Also, in my dreams, I seem to live with my mother. That probably speaks volumes about something or other to someone.

Anyhow, so as usual, I am trying to get home and hence trying to get back from wherever I went and in this case, I know I live on Central Street, and I decide to take a shortcut through an unfamiliar neighborhood in order to get there.

This neighborhood starts off quite nice, but ends in a sudden cul-de-sac and I decide to cut through what should be just a few yards to get to Central Street.

Other people seem to be doing the same, and there’s a few little footpaths that suggest that this is accepted behaviour. So off I go.

But of course, my dreams are always about trying to get home, and taking what should be a simple shortcut, and then getting completely lost. It is my mind’s way of forcing me to explore despite my tendency to cling to the tried and true and safe. I am always calmer when heading home then when heading out, so it’s a good time for my brain to introduce complications into the dream.

Otherwise, well I would just go back home when things got weird.

So I head off into back yard land, and it’s very nice at first, but things start getting increasingly rough. At first, the homes just start looking kind of run down and old. Fine, that’s just what it’s like in parts of my home town.

But then it starts looking increasingly like a junkyard, and people start pulling out guns when I walk into their territory and I have to really turn on the whole innocent bumbling harmless fellow act in order to not get shot, and somewhere near the end, I think I may have accidentally sparked a gang war.

So, not really like my home town at all. Thank goodness it was only a dream, otherwise I would be responsible for a lot of deaths.

And all the time, all I wanted to know was how to get to Central Street and get back home. I told one frightening fellow “…and I certainly will never come back here to bother you people again!” and he rather interestingly said something like “Oh, don’t sell yourself short, I am sure you will be back some time. ”

Hmmm. Not sure what that means, but it’s got me thinking. Maybe this rough and brutal neighborhood between the streets represents The Real World to me somehow, the one I have never been a part of in my life and which I both aspire to and fear.

Or maybe I am just fucked up in the head. You never know.

Also, I know I had one of my gigantic catharsis dreams where I end up passionately defending myself and/or explaining myself to someone, or everyone, or some combination thereof. A sort of Justify Your Existence scene, screaming your right to live into the void.

Considering how much time I have spent thinking I don’t deserve to live, and not all of that in the distant past, I am encouraged that I fight for myself in these dreams, even though I never remember them in much detail after.

And you know, catharsis is healthy. Let it out, people, or it will kill you.

That’s it for me, folks. Funny how I always end up just talking about my dreams in these things. Comes from being such a dreamer, I guess.

But I’m not the only one.

I have had it. They have had plenty of time to mend their ways, and they have not only ignored all the chances I have given them to avoid the heavy hammer of justice, they have increased their attacks on my person and thus have given me no choice but to deliver swift, brutal, damning justice on their benighted heads by the most soul-wrackingly punitive measure available to me.

I’m going to bitch about them on a blog that literally mulitples of people read.

May whatever God will have such miserable wretches in his flock take undeserved mercy on their shriveled, malignant souls.

Who am I talking about? Hmmm….. I got so into my purple prose that I forgot.

Oh right! The people working destruction and construction next door to the apartment complex in which I dwell like an urban hermit.

I am a fairly mellow guy, all considered. I am not the type to get bent out of shape about a little neighborhood ruckus. I am no NIMBY, going off like a sack of wet fireworks every time anything, however slight, deviates from the increasingly taut and strident vision of The Perfect Suburbia I Deserve God Dammit should happen to occur. I grew up in a busy residential neighborhood with people mowing lawns, kids playing in big groups, people doing a little carpentry in the back yard, and the usual hubbub of modern urban life does not phase me a bit.

And I know the world can’t very well bend itself around the convenience of us day sleepers. It’s a nine to five world and it’s going to stay that way for a long time. My own unstuck-in-time existence might run to a far more baroque and syncopated beat, but I can hardly get mad at everyone doing what everyone is doing. If you catch my drift.

But god dammit, this is getting freaking ridiculous.

I mean, for one thing, these assholes have been at it for two weeks now. It started with a single day of truly horrifying loud crunching sounds separated by high pitched squealing, like an angry giant beaver was ripping apart sequoias in a maple syrup fueled rage in a box canyon. This was the demolition process of one of the nearby homes.

“Wow, that was nasty. ” I thought. “But life goes on, and stuff’s gotta get done, and some of that stuff is just plain gonna be loud. At least it’s over now. ”

Oh, such innocence. I tremble with rage to think of how that dear sweet man of long ago’s naive faith has been violated!

Next day, the noises kept going. Now it was different, though. The loud horrifying crunches were replaced by extremely loud metallic rattling sounds at random moments. The high pitched demonic squealing remained, however, because honestly, when you have a hit like that, you just run with it.

Also, now a liberal dollop of other sounds was mixed in, such as loud crashing sounds as of someone dumping a load of ore processing castoffs and broken guitar necks into a quarry, or the sudden alarming high intensity vibrating sound of some piece of heavy machinery that I assume rapes Smurfs or something, and just for fun, bursts of swearing in Cantonese.

Well, I think it’s swearing. Honestly, anything said in Cantonese sounds like swearing to me. They could be shouting love poetry at each other, I wouldn’t know.

And the thing is, these noises have been going on for two freaking weeks.

And the god damned noises never change. It’s always the same collection of psychological warfare tools. This suggests to me that these people are in absolutely no hurry to get their work done and cease their audio assault on my peaceful slice of suburban quietude.

I have even found myself entertaining wild fantasies that they are actually using the noise to attempt to extort a bribe from us nerve-wracked residents.

“No offers yet? OK, let’s start using the machine that sounds like oil drums half-full of metal wind chimes rolling around in the drum of a cement mixer!”

You know you are on your last half a nerve when stuff like that starts seeming plausible.

Of course, there’s nothing I can do about it. They do their work during regular business hours, when most people are at work, and so I can’t make a noise complaint. All I can do is endure, try to keep all my straws and marbles, and bitch about it on the Internet.

Thank you, Internet. I feel a little better now.