There’s two possible results when a creative person sets out to make art : good art, or good practice.
michael bertrand, fruvousfox@gmail.com
Once upon a..
Narrator : NO! No worldbuilding!
Me : So what are you trying to tell me, Inner Saboteur (IS)?
IS : That I HATE you. I HATE you. I’ve suffered so much in life and it is all YOUR FAULT.
Me : Care to explain?
IS : Gladly. It’s your weakness, indecision, and cowardice that got us bullied, kept you from standing up to our parents when they took us out of UPEI, made the teachers hate us at VFS so they wouldn’t recommend us to anyone, and has kept us stuck in this STUPID… FUCKING…. LIFE… and robbed us of any chance to be a grownup for the entire time we’ve been an adult… and we’re 48. That’s why I hate you so much, you sniveling overgrown TURD.
Me : And that’s what makes you constantly attack and punish and destroy me from within, and keep me from taking take of myself properly?
IS : YES! You’re going to pay for being so pathetic. Pay until you DIE!
Me : But I am only that way because you keep sabotaging me. I’d be strong and healthy if it wasn’t for you. If anything, you should be mad at yourself.
IS : Yeah well… you still deserve it!
Me : Moving on, what could I do to make you leave me alone?
IS : You could DIE.
Me : (sigh) Besides that?
IS : Grow a pair. Stand up for yourself. Focus for once. Do any of the millions of things that would improve our life. Hell, take a fucking BATH.
Me : But again, the only reason I can’t or don’t do those things is YOU. I would be fine if it wasn’t for YOU.
IS : Debatable. But anyhow, it’s not like I can stop.
Me : I beg your pardon?
IS : Tell me, what would happen if I totally stopped attacking you?
Me : Are you kidding? I would feel so much better. I would finally be healthy and strong and free to walk in the sunlight without shame or self-pity! Everything would be great!
IS : Maybe. But tell me this : where would all your anger go then? Face it, bullshit aside, the real reason I exist is to transmit your anger and frustration into self-punishment because that’s better than taking it out on others… like Dad did.
Me : Well… that’s true…
IS : And that’s why you will always be my bitch. To escape me you would have to choose an external target for all that rage, and we both know you’re too weak and indecisive and diffuse to do anything remotely like that.
Me : But that’s your fault too…. I think…
IS : Does it really matter? The point is that you will never escape me until you choose some victims and pass the rage on to others.
Me : I will never do that. I’d rather die.
IS : And I’d rather kill you. And I will, trust me. All I have to do is keep you from taking care of your sleep apnea and your diabetes and you will get sicker and sicker until one of these days you just plain DROP DEAD. And I will have my final revenge.
Me : For the pain you inflicted on yourself.
IS : YES. For that, and so much more.
Me : Just remember that when I die, you die too.
IS : Oh, I know. And it is TOTALLY worth it.
That felt productive. Maybe not as productive as I was hoping, but these experimental explorations of myself are highly unpredictable and hard to control.
Like all my writing, they take on a life of their own fairly quickly, and that makes writing them like trying to give a large dog (or a small child) a bath.
You might start off with big ambitious but at the end you’re happy to have made it out alive with SOME of the soap ending up on the dog/kid.
Well, time for me to lay down yet again.
More after the break.
Oh yeah, more words
Right. Still got three hundred plus words to write.
Today’s been a bit surreal. The energy drain from fighting off this infection thing yet again tends to have that effect.
It makes my waking hours unpredictable and my dream life more powerful and mystical.
Still not remembering my dreams, though, so that’s just an intuition.
I get the feeling that on that deep lever where our inner wildness lies, I am afraid of my dreams, and that’s why they get vigorously scrubbed from my consciousness when I wake up from deep sleep.
Which suggests I had one hell of a nightmare at one point. Something so bad that my higher mind said “Well, that’s it for remembering dreams!” in order to protect me.
And hey man… thanks.
But being the rapaciously curious critter that I am, I kinda want to know what it was.
Typical fox… more curiosity than sense.
I have always identified with the stupidly curious character in movies and TV. The ones who hear the horrible screams of the monster and go TOWARDS them. The ones who absolutely HAVE to check out that weird noise and get chomped by the baddie who has used the noise to lure someone out there alone. The ones who volunteer to stay overnight in the spooky haunted house because they MUST know if there really is such a thing as a ghost.
Yes there is. And it just ate your soul.
Anyhow, I do miss remembering dreams. It used to happen once or twice a week, with occasional surges after especially emotional events and/or an extended period of sleep deprivation or hyposomnia ending.
Speaking of which : still can’t work up the nerve to take one of my sleeping pills so I can get caught up on deep sleep.
Because before that makes things better, it will make them so much worse. LAst time I feel like I barely made it out of it alive.
And given my health problems, that might not be far from the truth.
The brutal truth is that sleeping pills make sleep apnea so much worse. Combine that and the toll it takes on me to dream with that post-deprivation intensity and it’s no wonder I get the shivering shakes even contemplating taking a pill.
I guess I better seek alternative solutions, then.
Anyone know a good muscle relaxant that isn’t liquor?
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.