Dreams of literary heaven

Last night I dreamed I was on holiday with two friends, and we'd stopped at a small hotel to stay overnight.

We went upstairs and found one room was on the first floor, and one room was on the second floor (there were 8 rooms total in the place, four on each floor). We'd decided the couple would stay on the first floor room as it was larger, and I would stay on the top floor. All of us were checking out the first floor room, when we saw there was a small balcony with a tiny spa bath on it outside (only room for two). My friends decided to have a spa, so I wandered back in and saw a largish bookcase spanning the wall of one corner. I walked closer out of curiosity, and was stopped dead in my tracks.

It was the most amazing book collection I had ever seen. All my favourite type of children's and teenagers fantasy books, beautifully bound and covered (some in gold and silver binding, many bound in the style of the first, second, and third edition Famous Five book collection I have), most of which I hadn't yet read!! It took my breath away, and I was rooted to the spot in disbelief, and also despair, because I knew we were only staying one night so I didn't have time to read the books, and I  couldn't take them with me. I had only one book on me at the time, so I figured I could only take one book in good conscience and leave behind my book in return (which I hadn't read yet, but when confronted with this miracle, it hardly seemed to matter).

I started at the top left hand corner, and went from book to book. Amazingly, they were perfectly alphabetized. I couldn't believe the owners of the hotel had put so much effort into a book collection within a guest room. I pulled each book out in turn, and read blurbs about pirates, adventures, boarding school mysteries, unknown worlds, amazing denizens, and strong willed protagonists of varying personalities. How could I possibly choose? Yet the process of going through the books was such an enjoyment in itself. I wished desperately that I could have several weeks holiday staying in this one hotel, in this very hotel room, alone, so I could peruse and read the books at my leisure from start to finish. But it was not to be. With both joy and longing I was so embroiled in literary heaven that at first I didn't notice anything amiss. Then, just as I was nearing the "S" section (it wasn't a huge collection, but it was a highly specialized and top standard one), I realized my friends were arguing in the background.

I felt I should leave, but I couldn't. To leave without completing going through this collection and never again have a chance to peruse it! The idea was devastating, heartbreaking, but at the same time I knew my friends wouldn't understand. To them it would be a dusty misused bookcase of old children's books in the corner, and nothing to spare a second glace at.

The argument was intensifying so I hurried (although I was so focused in on the books I couldn't make out the words being said). Still in the 'S' section I came to two especially interesting looking books - one bound in shining gold, and the other in silver (about pirate ships, family drama, and an unusually written protagonist - puts one in mind of Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders series). I decided to choose those two and leave.

Unfortunately things had come to a head. One of my friends came up to speak tome, and as I turned I saw they had been packing. They had broken up and didn't now know what to do or where they would both go (we could no longer all travel together). I offered to have one of them stay overnight with me in my room. I felt a great grief upon leaving the books behind me, although I knew I should feel more saddened about the ending of the relationship.


I woke with a start and realized it was 6:45am. I wanted so desperately to hold onto the memory of that wonderful bookcase, that dream of heaven, that I decided to write it all out somewhere - and that somewhere became my blog, since I can write whatever I want here - ha! So often my dreams and so vivid and intense, more so than my daily life. I often wish I could write them into novels themselves, but I know the minute details will slip away from me too quickly for this to ever be made possible. I feel this is such a loss of inspiration, but I don't know how to remedy matters. The longest dream story I have ever managed to write was several pages, and even then it was more of a plot outline than a descriptive piece of writing.

Morbid Amusements

So I calculated that by Australian time, Rapture should have occurred at 8am this morning.

I sat with my muesli, milk, and pear (for the want of yoghurt, my usual single piece of finely chopped crystallized ginger, and fresh (I refuse to eat old chewy ones) prunes - a sad state of affairs) and contemplated what the immediate future would hold if Rapture actually were to occur. I figured that if the earthquakes occurred across America - as the a-few-screws-loose-in-the-head fanatics seemed to claim, then it's entirely possible tidal waves would subsequently swamp Australia (my geography is a little hazy *cough*understatement of the year*cough* so please don't quote me on that one).

Being in the flat, I had good reason to hope the raging waters of death would pass below us, and hopefully within 10 minutes of 8am (as dad and I would be departing for All Saints at 8:10am). If this were to be the case, the flat would then effectively become an island surrounded by chaos. Although short on refrigerated food, dry food stuffs would be plentiful, and I'm certain starving people wouldn't object to eating cold watery flour and similar variants. Plus mum can make almost anything taste good, and dad has never objected in the past to eating stuff out of cans several years past their due by date.

I didn't have time to think this out much further, as 8am arrived, and of course nothing more exciting happened than me brushing my teeth in the bathroom (although it is to be admitted the various cracks and marks in the bathroom ceiling make for an interesting collage to look at while considering the possibility of a large chunk of ceiling falling on ones head resulting in instant death).

Death seemed to be a common thread of thought today, as I again considered the possibilities and consequences of passing away unexpectedly, and young. Perhaps I have a morbid turn of mind, but the concept fascinates me. When would go through my head, what actions would I undertake, if I knew I had only limited time to live?

While going for an evening walk and recovering from a nasty collapse in mental functioning I considered the possibility of myself having a fatal tumour in my brain and being told I had 3 years to live. This being a highly unlikely occurrence, did not stop my imagination from charging onwards (assisted by depressing music) to consider what then my life would become. I would likely be highly accepting of the fact, considering, as I feel I have led an interesting, varied, and fulfilled life, but would then endeavour to complete those most important tasks left unfinished. First and foremost, I would make certain all my original music to date was properly recorded and compiled into a presentable CD - which people could then purchase and listen to if they wished. This being done, I would endeavour to travel overseas as best my health allowed me, and expand my visual and memory horizons. I often have this strange conception that when one dies, the "afterlife" consists of that person living solely within the visual memory landscape of the life they have lived. If this were to be the case, it would be within my best interests to expand my visual landscape as much as humanly possible in the time remaining to me, though of course if by lucky chance I survived the tumour the increase in richness of memory could only assist me in my future career as a fantasy novelist.

The next, and final, port of call would be to write a novel detailing my thoughts and journey towards acceptance. In this novel hopefully I would come across as a sage and wise creature - a person to be admired - and not the silly twat I have a tendency to be now. The novel would be entitled "Alive", and would display a photograph of me on the front cover with my hair cropped short (as I would certainly have finally gotten around to getting my hair cut with the added incentive of impending death to motivate me) and with my eyes piercing into the readers soul - so I could still seem alive beyond my own passing within the photo. A little over-dramatic and tacky, perhaps, but take into account my current self is a "silly twat" but my future self, being sage and wise, would probably design the book in a much more tasteful fashion.

My funeral, of course, would be held at All Saints, and every choir member would have a solo (I'm not sure how this could be wrangled, but for my sake it would have to be done). I considered also imagining everyone learning and singing the entire Requiem (Mozart's) for my funeral, but then thought that would be too cruel, so I would settle for my favourite hymn - Sweet Sacrament Divine - instead.


The finality of the funeral drawing to its heart wrenching close, my imagination moved on to fragmented dramatics to occupy me for the rest of the walk, and after I arrived home I determined to distract myself from the feverish and anxiety driven state of mind I tend to settle into every night from around 6pm onwards by briefly skimming facebook, and writing this blog entry.

Unfortunately I'm still waiting for "the awkward moment when Rapture didn't happen" notification to pop up on facebook newsfeed so I can click the "like" button.

Chocolate + symptom enhancement = bad combination

This entry shall be in segments.

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A waterfall of chocolate, running blind, burning mind, jumbled time.

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I have been researching hyperlexia. I have good reason to believe I may have had it as a child. However, I need some more fact verification from my parents to be sure. My suspicious are such partly because Primary school memories.

I don't remember ever having to learn how to read - I think it came naturally to me. I'm not sure when I first started to read (whether it was earlier, later, or at the normal time), but I remember graduating almost straight away from picture books to moderately thick novels. I have a clear memory of sitting alone in the corner in Grade 1 skim reading 1950's editions of the Famous Five books (quite large - larger than modern versions, and written in old style English) while other children sat with the teacher reading 3 sentence a page picture books word by word with the teacher helping them. From when I first entered school onwards I was so advanced in reading I was always left to my own devices to read whatever I liked while other children followed the syllabus.

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My mind has been in a rut these last few weeks. I feel all my AS and ADHD symptoms more keenly - my sensory issues, my obsessive thought looping, and my inability to stay on task or stay focused. I seem to constantly jump from one thing to another, never completing even the simplest things, and in a state of constant frustration. The sensory problems I have been experiencing have made it difficult for me to be in public places, or function well enough in shopping centers to actually get any shopping done (which is a real problem as winter is fast approaching and I only have one long sleeved top).

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Thoughts stray, patterns break and change, eyes sore, I am a tiresome bore.

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Why do the smaller questions run rampant, while the bigger questions remain unanswered?

An Empty Flat

So today I’ve had plenty of time to think. I lay on the couch, draped in my brilliant blue silk doona from Vietnam, and stared aimlessly out the living room window at the periwinkle blue sky, which had a smattering of white clouds.

Enough over-embellishment. My thoughts, as they were, were mostly depressing with the occasional moment of epiphany to make them worthwhile. During this time I feel like I drift in an in-between world; the world in-between all other “living” worlds (the worlds other people are involved in). My world is a place of suspension, of stagnation and introspection.  Mostly I am crippled by my own uncontrollable anxiety that seems to rise and fall within me like waves breaking upon a once dry shore.

While I am living within this suspension world, there’s little I can do to better myself or other people. Even introspection and philosophizing after a time grows stale. The achievement beast within myself roars unsated, starving for what I can no longer provide. I wonder whether it would be better if I let the beast die off, slowly and painfully, so it could steer the rudder of my life no more.

Sometimes I wonder if this is a test. Perhaps this fall was meant to happen, to teach me everything I need to know that I haven’t yet learned about what it means to be alive. Thoughts like this can drive you mad, looping and looping inside your head, until you question every facet of conscious thought and moral value that makes you you.

Sometimes I wonder if I should just stop thinking.

Chill.

Lie on the couch.

Watch a few movies.

Eat chocolate chip icecream.

Catch some zzz’s.

But no, that isn’t me. I really want to live, the way I lived before. Or maybe not exactly the way I lived before. I feel that life wasn’t sustainable, and in the end ironically enough it lead me here. To the exact antithesis of what that life was driving towards.

So. I need new direction. New thoughts. New outlook. Perhaps I do not want to escape this suspension world to re-enter my old “living” one. Perhaps it is time to step sideways, and enter a new universe. Perhaps it is time to open my mind fully to the immense possibility the alternative has to offer me.  Perhaps it is time to take the plunge, and re-emerge newly born into the unknown.

What will I take with me? CAN I take anything with me?

Will I leave everything behind…

Kindergarten - a memory.

I am currently writing and cataloging memories of my childhood for potentially creating an autobiography, and also for my own enjoyment. This is one of the first I documented.

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I don’t remember my first day of kindergarten. In fact, my earliest memory of kindergarten spans back to the second or third day, I believe. Back then I didn’t know I was different, but I found out pretty quickly.

The thing I remember most of all was the light. The trapezium, hexagonal, pentagonal shafts of sunlight falling between the rich fermenting green of the vast brooding trees above me.

As a child, my tiny footsteps would have gone almost unnoticed in that living, majestic place. I barely remember the shades and textures of the dirt beneath my feet due to the overwhelmingly lush textures of greenery and sunlight above me. It was some time before my vision blurred and refocussed and I saw the other children playing in two clearly divisive groups, boys and girls, on opposite ends of the playground.

The girls played with alien-like long limbed barbie dolls, dipping them in and out of a shallow, water-filled clam shell. Something about the pale limbs of the dolls and the breaking and flowing of the water appealed to me immensely, so I gathered up my courage and approached the other girls.

They didn’t seem to be facing me, or paying any attention to me at all. I stood for quite a while, expectantly, but they went on with their chatter and their game as though I didn’t exist. I had a vague feeling of unease and wrongness – but I spoke up anyway.

“Can I play?”

“No.”

With that, they went back to their game. So abruptly and decisively dismissed, I wasn’t sure what to do. I dithered at the fringes of their group, and tried again.

“Can I play?”

“No. Go away.”

Again, it was like I didn’t exist. They spoke and held their dolls and I was so clearly outside their circle, their vision, and their consciousness it was like there was an indestructible glass wall between us.

I thought I had better ‘go away’ like they instructed me to, so away I went. The kindergarten playground was designed as a large square with a central oval circled by a meandering concrete footpath. The corners of the square were grassed and ringed with trees, and the oval had a small climbing gym with a tanbark base. With the boys in one corner of the yard, and the girls in the other, I wandered away from the edge of the yard towards the deserted playground in the centre. There I lost myself in the world of the swing, the metal bars, the levels and stairs and slide. Safe but alone. In between two worlds where I was not wanted.

Masks

So I donned the mask. A whirl of colours, sounds, people, noise. The noise blasting into my eardrums, deafening. I talked until I was talked out, then I retreated into the toilets and locked myself in a cubicle. I sat there, safely enclosed within four walls, and stared at the time on my iphone as the minutes slowly ticked past. One minute, two minutes, three. How long could I get away with waiting here until my absence was noticed? When I deemed I had waited for as long as I dared, I reluctantly left the cubicle and re-emerged into the melee.

I felt people’s eyes on my face and back as I walked as nonchalantly as I could back into the gossiping crowd. Too long. I had waited too long and people had noticed. But nobody commented. I assume social niceties forbid making remarks about extended restroom breaks.

The mask was firmly in place (for those uninitiated, it’s most commonly referred to as a ‘social mask’), and I was putting on a great show, but inside things were rapidly deteriorating.  As I talked animatedly at the dinner table, turning my head rapidly from person to person and keeping my expression lively, smiling, and bright, I felt my visual surroundings beginning to blur a little as the edges of sound overlapped like tiny waves lapping gently at an inlet shore.

The conversations were moving faster now, and I could no longer keep track of what was being said. The individual words and their meaning were lost amid the roar of noise and music surrounding me. I kept the appropriate pattern of expressions in place (my most successful social mask – an elaborate construction of years of social lessons learned the hard way and careful observation) but I retreated from the fray and took up the role of interested listener.

The next part is confused. I remember talking to my parents and them telling me to go outside for a break.  I remember the sudden release of inner constraints. I remember sitting on a couch in the foyer staring blankly at the wall opposite while a group of ladies with a baby in a pram kept glancing curiously across at me. The rest is irrelevant.

Later that night, I was back – with a vengeance. I hadn’t intended to dance; keeping it calm and lingering on the border being my game plan, but events and my own outgoing social mask conspired against me and soon I was up on the dance floor rocking it with the best of them, doing things I didn’t think were possible for me to be doing with the knowledge I held inside of me.

Incompatibility. What was I drawing on now, when there were no reserves left? I didn’t want to know, but at the same time I knew that I had done this many times in the past, and perhaps today I was finally paying a price stacked too high against me. A precarious tower of cards finally crumbling and crashing to the ground.

While I was dancing I was blazing on the outside, but inside I felt nothing, like the numbness of an anesthetised wound. Like in the high point of a fever, where your cheeks are burning and your eyes are overbright.

I did my part, I played my role. But I paid for it the next day, and I’m still paying the insurmountable debt of three years of parties and social events, three years of intense social masking, three years of the sort of raging popularity and social highs I craved so desperately as an alienated child, three years of a life that could not be sustained. The price? My life as I knew it. The scales are equalled and balance is restored to a universe I never belonged in anyway.