I can't sleep, so rather than read a book or pursue a less polite method of inducing sleep (hope I don't have to spell that out for you), I have decided to inflict bloggery upon you, my faithful, ever-watchful minions.
Let us speak of dreams. Rather, let me speak of dreams while you read attentively and loyally.
My dreams have of late revolved around two or three recurring themes. The first of these, or at least the first which springs to mind, is that of hope.
Don't worry, I'm not going to get too mushy.
If you've been keeping up with my recent return to the Book of Odsox (and if you haven't, don't worry, I forgive you - I am constantly aware of how tedious these rambling diatribes can be) then you should be aware that I have, against all odds, been chosen as the consort of a beautiful woman. This has resulted in my more, shall we say gentle?, emotions blearily opening their eyes and then suffering a stuttering form of cardiac arrest as they suddenly realise that not only was that old story about something called "hope" in fact true, it left out some vital information; it changes your entire existence at a fundamental level.
Anyway, this newfound hope has been encroaching on my slumbering mind in ways which are alternately shallow and heartwarming.
Over the past three months or so I have found money in my dreams. Never the overly dramatic "big score" kind, mark you, but amounts which cause a tremor in my dreamscape as the groggy logical side of my brain gets a jolt that pushes me closer to wakefulness. Things like finding a £20 note on the floor, or going to a cash machine (gosh, my dreams sound exciting, don't they?) and discovering that someone has left their money in the slot, almost £150, and there is no-one around to see me take it with a massive guilt-free grin. I'm not sure what this is a metaphor for - if it is a metaphor at all, of course. That is to say, I am already well aware that I need money. It's annoying how it keeps cropping up in my dreams though.
The other form this dream of hope tends to take is that of a specific woman - I'm not trying to be mushy here, I'm being honest. In the occasional bad dream there are these flashes of her, sort of like looking at the dream through a zoetrope, that instantly change what should be a saddening or horrible experience ino just another manageable fantasy tinged with foggy pink bliss. I catch sight of her in my peripheral vision, just the briefest glimpse, and it sends a pleasant sort of thrumming through whicever dreamscape I'm in at the time. Usually this also leads to my overcoming (however temporarily) any obstacles I might be facing.
Now, the second recurring theme is one I am happy to mention, simply because it strikes me as absurd and everyone should be able to find humour in absurdity.
In my flying dreams, which occured only rarely for a while but are now making a comeback, like Yu-Gi-Oh! cards or sushi, I do not simply soar aloft of my own volition of with wings of any kind; I have a jetpack. Not a swish Iron Man jetpack either, no, an old-school James Bond number with joystick controls and temperamental thrusters that need extremely cautious gunning lest my portly body be smashed into the ground and rendered into nothing more than a sort of chunky red paste full of gritty white bits and glimmering shards of my once-marvellous flying machine.
The jetpack is a wonderful toy and I constantly find my dream self hurtling through cityscapes and towering forests of lurching trees that shake their branches in frustration as I roar through their midst without a care beyond finding somewhere relatively clear for me to try some daring aerobatics - which, incidentally, I have never found the courage to attempt. The cityscapes are a far more forgiving environment, save for the occasional Thing that I suddenly realise has snuck up from nowhere and is now tearing a path through the urban jungles as it pursues my stuttering, jinking flight path in a series of disturbingly predatory leaps and dives. Just to reassure you, I have yet to be caught by one of the Things, though once I did gun the wrong thruster and end up flying straight back at one of the horrible shadowy bastards. I am genuinely ashamed to say that I have never actually seen one of the Things up close, always squeezing my eyes tight shut and miraculously avoiding doom somehow.
The jetpack is an incredibly good bit of fun on the occasions when I get to really muck about with it, sending me rocketing skyward for an unparallelled view of my dream cities and panoramic forests, and the lurch in my stomach when the speedy descent begins is something I've learned to savour.
Enough of that though.
The final theme which has been in my dreams for years uncounted is one that truly plagues my sleeping mind: Pure, merciless, physical pain.
Not so unusual, I think, even for someone in my position, whose track record for serious injury really isn't that remarkable. Sure I've suffered plenty of head injuries, broken a couple of bones, still have a piece of graphite in my foot and earned my share of cycling-related scars, but there are people out there missing limbs, for fuck's sake. My dreams should not involve these levels of bodily harm, surely? Unless it's the old Catholic guilt ramping up again.
There's this particular one which has happened several times, and it never ceases to send my dream-self into a spiral of pain-induced insanity. You may have heard it before, actually.
All I can see is my left hand. There are leather buckles strapping down my forearm, holding it rigidly in place, and several extremely tight circles of what look like fishing wire wrapped around the top segments of my fingers, which are protruding over the edge of some kind of metal table. I can't move my hand. When I try, all I get is a vague tremble in response. I can feel the dread rising when, out of nowhere, a sledgehammer slams down and snaps all four of my fingers at once, right where they join my palm, and the pain is almost indescribable. It's a lightning bolt of agony that flashes up my arm and into my suddenly shattered mind - I can feel the rest of my body writhing and roaring, I can feel my right fist repeatedly slamming into whatever surface I've been secured to, but nothing distracts from the burning, ruinous pain coming from my fingers.
That's nice, isn't it?
There are other pain-dreams that haunt me. The one where I feel a kind of pushing pain in my teeth, then go into the mirror, is a good one. On closer inspection I can see my teeth moving in my gums, and as I raise my hands to probe gingerly at them, there's a horrible crunching sensation and the two parts of my jaw suddenly snap against each other, tearing away from my skull in a spray of splintered bone and hot blood. I would note that rather than simply blacking out here, I reel away from the mirror clutching pathetically at my ruined face in terror and sheer agony, only to collapse onto a gritty, grey surface that scrapes at the remnants of my face and all over my skin while I give a kind of gurgling howl, unable in any way to stop the pain.
Anyway, I think I've written enough for now.
Thanks for stopping by.
Love, Odsox.