Not again!

Oh no, not again! I woke up from what can be considered another nightmare with my pulse skyrocketing but this time, I have a piece of evidence linking both experiences to each other - the almonds.

Both dreams were similar in construct, in that the story, while nothing dramatic, was incredibly vivid and it plodded along like a well-made TV soap and right before the commercial break, the plot took a wrong turn into hell!

This time, no more documentaries. Instead, it was some trivial drama focused on a few key characters. Like I said, nothing substantial but the dream was unusually consistent. There was actually a progression of the story, with teen drama themes like avoiding people we disliked, calling up friends to meet up, and so on.

Then, I remember, as I was walking home along a street at night, out of thin air, the plot decided to go mental! A squad car violently swerved in front of me, with two uniformed cops jumping out and pushing me to the ground. I felt one of them frisking my legs and puling out a gun! They handcuffed me roughly and dragged my sorry ass back to their car. It was terrifying! One of them began telling me the huge fine imposed on carrying unlicensed firearms and then I knew it was a setup.

I began pleading with them, waxing lyrical in the national language. At one point, I began appealing to their sense of righteousness, lamenting the sad state of public image of the local law enforcement. At this point, they got mad, or pretended to be! They made like they were going to call up reinforcements and both of them jumped into the car and took off. So did I. Then I woke up.

I lay there for some time, my body in full physiological reaction of a panic attack. But with understanding of what I was going through, I savoured, actually savoured the experience instead. My head spinning, my chest tight, my breathing laboured, but I managed to convince my brain there was no immediate danger. I talked down my limbic region from shooting more crazy signals.

And I frantically tried to replay every scene and image before they permanently evaporated from my short-term memory banks.

Okay, to be fair, there were other similarities between last night's nightmare and today's episode. For one, I slept really late, on account of not being sleepy. And I was hungry. So I decided to chew on a box of almonds (the almonds, not the box) and watch a movie. All of a sudden I'd suddenly get sleepy and drop off to bed. That's it. As close to original laboratory conditions as I could make it. Hmm...no stress. No repressed negativity. The funny thing is, I mentioned the almonds as sort of a joke, but now, it's the most conspicuous element of an investigative lead. Do almonds trigger nightmares? Care to find out?

Dreams 2

Oh, I just woke up with my heart racing! Could it be, in any way, due to the fact that not one minute ago, on the other side of existence, I was running my lungs out for dear life from three men trying to kill me?

My God, what did it mean? They were trying to catch me because I found their secret factory making prosthetics out of real human beings.

Okay, it started off like this. I was watching a Discovery channel feature about tigers that captured different sorts of animals and dragging them away. Next thing I knew, I was following these kidnapper (?) tigers back to a house in the woods! Oh, they be no cute furry 3-Bears-and-Goldilocks type of animals. They were real tigers. Up to the point where they shooed me away and locked the front door of their cottage!

So I started an investigation. Oh yeah, they were making prosthetic parts out of these poor creatures. I could not imagine what a tiger would want with a prosthetic monkey limb. I mean, in my dream, that was the dilemma!

And then, neatly enough, next door was a house with humans doing the same business, but kidnapping other humans. So I strolled around their office. Creeping and crawling, you know, doing my investigating bit.

At one point, I was caught in the open under the stairs with nowhere to run as a group of them descended. So I pretended to be a worker there, scrubbing the floor beneath the stairs. They walked on right by! How clever of me. I raced upstairs to a security-coded door. Just then it opened and this typical office guy walked out. I pretended I was just about to go inside. I said "Hold it, thanks". Well this schmuck closed the door and told me I can't go in without a code.

Well, I walked away and suddenly, he called me. I turned around saw the schmuck with one mean looking no-nonsense type and another scrawny guy, walking towards me with accusatory looks.

Well, what of it? I bolted. Out the yard, onto the tree-lined road. I ran and ran. I looked back and saw the schmuck and scrawny guy right behind me while the mean one was falling behind. So I ran some more. And then I woke up.

It surely wasn't those almonds I chewed just before I slept. Was it?

My dreams...

Being in love is like...

... a motorbike ride on a tropical island, along meandering roads through the countryside.
...the sun filtering through coconut tree fronds dotting the landscape, the salty sea breeze tousling our hair.
...her outstretched hands like a Spitfire, laughing; a happy smile plastered on my face.
...the feeling of exhilaration, our hearts soaring, our spirits free.
...my arms wrapped around her at the top of the hill, looking to the horizon.

How long ago did you last glimpse the horizon? Although, literally, as long as land meets sky gives you one, there's nothing quite like the majesty of the vast heavens stretching to infinity until it meets the sea.

Seeing the horizon stirs up emotions in me. No wonder people once thought the earth was flat and that a ship would sail right off into space. In school I learnt that on the horizon, you can see the mast of a ship rising above the horizon as it sailed towards you.

What lies yonder? What wonders to behold? You can almost see the passage of time as it flows towards the great beyond.

Time ... what a bewildering concept. How it stands still in moments like these. How it continues and exists, as surely as the clouds drifting by.

Standing there, holding her, feeling my heart beat against hers, seeing the endless sea and the sky...this is what being in love is like.


Ah, what I'd give to be in love again.

Updated

I should blog more, I think. Practise focussing my thoughts, excercise my literary inclinations, but most of all, to purge all rotten nonsense from my mind in a harmless outlet. Because I think, for me, blogging is an outlet.

I'm not much of a diarist, as you can see. I turn to blogging in low moments of my life, lashing out wildly, or expressing my deep despair in poetry and such. Thus, if I lapse in blogging, it's really a good thing. Really. If there's no "in" there's no "out"let, eh?

Okay, so I am trying to proffer an explanation. I owe Alynna a meme. I'm glad these things don't come with expiry dates. I owe..lessee....who else what? Hmm...nothing more.

My life now is pretty much ...what's that difficult word again...oh yes, .."blah". But "blah" is good. "Blah" means things have settled back into the routine pre-breakup, pre-breakdown days. Life is happening again.

Why, just that day, I met a sexy tight little package. Hooo. Okay, I probably shouldn't refer to women that way, but I never meant it in a derogatory manner. Just that day I was watching a movie and it made me think about my attitude towards women, especially when I'm in a relationship with them. It's not what you may think, I love women. But right now, I can't remember that movie. Damn!

I also had a wonderful dream the other day. I seem to be having a lot of such dreams of late. I don't mean wonderful as in awesome, but as in "full of wonder". I felt like Adam in Wonderland. I mean, dreams are surreal anyway but you never realize it at the time of dreaming, right, only when you recall it. But in my dreams, I was somewhat conscious that the universe I was in was very surreal and defies explanation. I was going about with childlike awe and curiosity. My dreams are a chunk of symbology and Freudian material, I tell ya.

Hmm...so many stories to tell. What shall one do?

In need of healing...

Lamb of God,
You take away the sins of the world,
Have mercy on me

Lamb of God,
You take away the sins of the world,
Grant me peace.

About nothing

We like to romanticize the past, filtering out the bad memories and keeping close to our hearts only the good times. Things somehow always seemed better before.

This is detrimental when you're trying to move on from a broken heart. Just when I thought I was over her, certain things trigger the memories - walking hand in hand to the shops, eating dinner in hotel rooms, being close to each other on holiday. I was happy - neurotically happy.

But I force myself to also remember the bad memories. Because that is the only way I can move on. You know, the many little things that irked me, but it was too insignificant at that time so I just let them slide. How she'd stare at others. The things she'll say. Her vulgarity. How easy she is.

"What did you mean by that?" "Why did you do that?" "Why did you say that?" "What are you trying to prove?"

Nothing. It's nothing. So I left it at that. Time to pull out all those "nothings" filed away in some dusty corner of my brain. And think objectively. Would it have worked out?

Maybe. Would I have been happy? Honestly, I think it'd have been a long shot. Too many "nothings" can't simply disappear. There will be an accounting one day.

To be fair, I have an equal, if not more, share of faults, but now's not the time to review them. They're more for me to learn and grow so I don't screw up next time.

You would think dredging up sour memories would make me bitter, but it's more to counterbalance the romanticized memories, so I end up feeling...neutral. And this helps me think without the interference of emotions.

I don't want to be neurotically happy. I don't want to need someone else. But is there such a thing as pure unselfish love? Or am I just putting love on a pedestal?

New Robin

Ahh..me lads, t'is the hour arriveth at last. I lie before thee, slain, and with naught but a moment to breathe my last words.

Grant me this, my final wish, that wherever I point my cursor, there shall you bury me. And throw in the mouse too so that none shall ever point again.

The Waiting Game

Have you ever tried using Bit Torrent to download some obscure movie?

...like...watching...paint...dry...

Measuring adhesiveness

I used a glue with purportedly high-tensile-strength on my running shoes but the sole still came off, so I enquired at the shop about a fourteensile or possibly fifteensile-strength glue, to which the sales clerk stared at me as if I was an idiot for not knowing what sile-strength glue to use for running shoe soles!

Baking quandrary

If "piece" means "gun" as in "that's a nice piece you're packing", "some" means "sex" as in "I had some last night", and "cake" means "cocaine" as in "He got busted for dealing cake", then the phrase "some piece of cake" makes totally no sense at all!

Born to be wild

Every once in a while, I like to experience an adrenaline rush by living dangerously, so today, I showered with the bathroom door... UNLOCKED!

Spring cleaning my Brain

After putting it off for months, I finally quit my job and am now your Basic Unemployed Man, but somehow I get an uneasy feeling there's a more sinister meaning to that.

What does a man who's used to 50-hour work weeks do with all the time in the world now? He observes the most inane details and attempts to unravel life's mysteries. Or, at least, I do.

Okay, here's one. Do the guys who draw up those word verification codes try to input hidden clues in them? For example, if you get ucSpmf, does it just mean ucSpmf, or does it mean "you crazy spamming motherfuckers"? I take a sip of hot coffee and ponder on that with a quizzical frown.

Suppose also, just suppose that, were I to collect all codes and crunch them in the anagrammator, I wonder, would I or would I not regret the time wasted on such an idiotic endeavour?

Thankfully, I abandoned the side quest and stuck to my original mission. And the mission is? Well, if my mind were a house, the mission is to renovate the kitchen, redecorate all the rooms, and give the whole thing a new coat of paint.

And start working again by August. Now, if I weren't particularly prone to obsessing over details, such as why didn't the bathroom tiles last as advertised, this would've been a less painful excercise.

Speaking of excercise, that other night, past 12, I took a walk to the 24-hour stalls instead of customarily driving there. I wanted to walk because I was dangerously close to losing my mind to utter despair, which you may have noticed from my recent posts, and I needed some air.

As I was walking beneath this overbearing tree cast in shadows along a darkened street, I thought I heard twigs snapping, and a few leaves fell around me. Under normal circumstances, I would have made like lightning and bolted. Because I am reminded of a story my friend recounted many years ago, about the same tree, when he saw two red glowing eyes staring at him.

But in my current state of mind, I don't believe life could've thrown anything more at me to make me feel worse than I did. So I stopped and looked up into the darkness of the tree silhouetted against the night sky, raised up my hands and whispered fiercely, "Come on! That all you got, pazza? Come on then!"

But, of course, nothing came. Story of my undramatic life. I think about what I did and feel slightly worried, not about the chance that some evil being might've leaped out, but about the fact that I was actually inviting that. Says a lot about my condition.

So I hope you'll forgive my mercurial moods and fickle feelings, but house cleaning is a stressful time. Still, as messy as it is, I know it's built on solid ground.

What has Zenedine (Zi)dane??

Earlier today I had a stark vision of France's living legend holding aloft the coveted trophy, but what happened at extra time is God's way of telling me what he thinks of my clairvoyance.