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I'll be picking up your petals in another few hours
And today is one of those mornings when I do not want to write anything, because either there's nothing in here or it's nothing that should be shared. I thought last week's cold had passed off, but it's congealed into a sinus infection; a far less prevalent occurrence in my life than they used to be, but it's still the single worst thing that can happen to my health without involving hospitalization or any other major change of states. I couldn't sleep last night; I couldn't work on anything, either. Eventually, I passed out and had shallow, fever-sharp, suffocating nightmares of a revenge tragedy of a composer against the bureaucrat who had been responsible for destroying his career, which sounds like my subconscious was still exorcising Collaborators, only with less humor. It was a play I was watching: it opened with a freak accident that claimed the lives of five people and then rewound to show you how carefully he set three of his students up as bait and cut the fourth out of his life, because she would have understood. The night before the blast goes off, one of the bait is reading a sudden delivery of mail that's been hung up in the toils of the post office, she's told; it looks like old unpaid bills, but she realizes the handwriting in each case is the same. It's the fourth student, trying to warn her in terms that won't either panic their addressee or provoke a terrorist scare if some censor reads them. She leaves most of them unread, uncertain whether this is some unsavory practical joke or a sign of real derangement from the shabby, contrary loner she remembers from earlier in the year, before the woman dropped out of classes or was asked to leave the conservatory or nobody really knows, except she hasn't been seen in months; besides, the concert is tomorrow, the composer's pulled so many strings they didn't know he still had to get her and the others onto the program with all sorts of important people in the audience, she can't afford to throw her chance away on the word of someone she never really knew or trusted in the first place . . . I cared very little about the two young men, but she was collateral damage that hurt: she screws up her resolve to play the rules of the political game, and they kill her. And the composer may, in a high-handed way, have been trying to protect the fourth student, the one he felt a rapport with, the one who figured him out, but he's left her with no place, no mentor, adrift in the system; she'll be even more disaffected than he, without even anyone to kill for it. The stage is full of boards and bodies (or at least their fragments) in the time-honored tableau of the genre, and she's playing on her violin the never-completed piece she brought to him at the beginning of the play, which he praised and then disengaged from, tending to his revenge instead.
It doesn't sound like much, but I woke and the sticky sense of being enmeshed in the dream wouldn't clear, the nauseous, useless dread and time running out in all directions, no catharsis. I did some hours of work and there's still a little of it at the back of my head, as phrases that frightened me as a small child used to stay with me, repeating like a spindle, hooking themselves in deeper. In my current state, I can't even use it for a story. This is not something I need.
It doesn't sound like much, but I woke and the sticky sense of being enmeshed in the dream wouldn't clear, the nauseous, useless dread and time running out in all directions, no catharsis. I did some hours of work and there's still a little of it at the back of my head, as phrases that frightened me as a small child used to stay with me, repeating like a spindle, hooking themselves in deeper. In my current state, I can't even use it for a story. This is not something I need.
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Thank you.
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she screws up her resolve to play the rules of the political game, and they kill her.
--this sounds like something we should all be careful of.
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Thank you. I'm sorry.
--this sounds like something we should all be careful of.
The awfulness is that it was not an object lesson—the price of selling out—though I could conjecture that the composer might have felt that way; that he wrote her off as fair game if she was willing to buy into the system, disposable. She trusts him, because he's the one who can't get funding anymore for so much as a kazoo and he's still encouraging her into this field, as if his best revenge is to have students who succeed where he was prevented. It's not. I don't know what she would have done if left to herself. Lived, probably.
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I don't know what to say! Get better soon, I guess, but saying that implies that it's in your control, which it isn't, so...
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Bastard. Just because you're vulnerable then.
Like a palantir opens up for you when you're ill.
That would be the worst clairvoyance ever.
Get better soon, I guess, but saying that implies that it's in your control, which it isn't, so...
Thanks. Well, I am trying.
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I have only ever had two dreams that can compete with how awful that sounds, and in one of them I saw the devil. I am so sorry.
*hugs*
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Agh.
. . . I'm really sorry about that.
*hugs*
Thank you.
*hugs*
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Do you use a neti pot? They are horrible but they really help speaking of help why can't I shut up about neti pots.
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No, I don't use a neti pot. Yes, I rinse my nose daily. (I don't find it horrible; it's been routine since 2004, which means it's just another annoying effort of maintainance.) My history with my sinuses is complex, nearly lifelong, and without sounding like I'm shutting you down, because you may have had no way of knowing, generally I ask for medical advice when I want it and otherwise I do not find it helpful to receive suggestions from my friendlist that I may already have implemented or tried and discarded. It's like people trying to give me sleep remedies, because they've always found lavender helpful or have I just tried closing the blinds? I have been dealing with these issues for years and it is only tiring to feel as though other people assume I've never tried to make them go away.
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I know this feeling. Dreams that come not from horn or ivory gates but something membranous, too much of the body. Gates of Ivory, Horn, and Bad Goo.
I hope it clears for you swiftly.
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If you think it would help.
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. . . It's worth a try.
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I hope sleep finds you soon, and brings relief from sinus pain with it.
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I need a baku!
Is there any literature on how to attract the things?
I hope sleep finds you soon, and brings relief from sinus pain with it.
Thank you.
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If I still had that plushie (which I faithfully believed was a real dream warrior creature) you could have him anytime. I've never heard anyone talk about the baku since, but, in retrospect, of course you'd know about it.
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Thank you.
If Peter Shaffer writes a play about Gesualdo, I'm calling you and an exorcist.
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Thank you. It kind of was.
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I'm sorry the painful dream has stuck with you, and I wish it will go away swiftly. Your summary is chilling perfect, and I could believe it a real play, somewhere. I can almost see the character in the final scene, and her face the face of a violinist and sometime conservatory student I've never forgot, nor entirely got my heart back from.
Sorry, that's like to be enough of that, or rather too much. Your words have such power, and I'm sorry this sickness would seem last night to have taken hold of some portion of that power and used it to hurt you.
I've little trust in the strength of my prayers, but I will pray. It's long since I had any magic left in me, but whatever I might have, or once have had, I'll sign over to you for the duration.
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Thank you.
I suppose if I wrote plays I could turn it into one, but I don't think this would be a healthy reason to start.
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Unfortunately, I think you're right. It could be a very good play, an intense and a gripping one, but I suspect it would not be good for you to write it, at least not now.
Thank you.
As always, you're welcome, and very welcome, and welcome again.
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I find your dreams fascinating. Your detailed recall of same probably has much to do with your taking time to transcribe them.
So sorry to hear about the health problems. I won't burden you with remedies. May you take comfort in whatever personal rituals you resort to in times of sickness.
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I don't, at least not in the sense I think you mean. I wrote this post after I'd been awake for several hours. I've never actually tried recording my dreams first thing in the morning; I'm usually making tea. It might be an interesting experiment sometime when it was imagery I actually wanted to retain.
So sorry to hear about the health problems. I won't burden you with remedies. May you take comfort in whatever personal rituals you resort to in times of sickness.
Thank you.
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For having been awake several hours, your recall of details and situations is impressive. The act of keeping a dream journal is spiritual - and one that can yield surprising results. I did it for a while ... and came uncomfortably close to the liminal side of life. But friends of mine are lucid dreamers, so honi soit qui mal y pense.
(As for comfort, I was going to suggest a teddy bear. A T.S. Eliot-shaped teddy bear. And a pair of powder blue Doctor Denton's ...)
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I hope you've exorcised it, by whatever means.
I hope you feel better.
Nine
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I don't think it's been exorcised, but at least it no longer feels like something wrapped and ankle-tangling around me. It was one of the more upsetting dreams I can remember recently, and that includes the entire genre where people I know either die or hate me or both.
Thank you.
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Thanks.
*hugs*