Crazy McFatfuck Has Nightmares

Every night, with rare exception, finds me fitfully roaming through nightmare after nightmare. No drug will stop them, nor will an enjoyable evening or happy telephone conversation just before I go to sleep. They are consistent only in their power to disturb me, and always leave me feeling much abused and cruelly manipulated by morning. In a fashion similar to an excellent novel or film, which can provide a transendent emotional experience that adds up to a whole lot more than a series of images or words. But not quite like that, as the emotional currency that we use against ourselves can be more evocative than the works of all but a few truly gifted artists. The language of a nightmare draws upon a rich lexicon that is made up of more than thoughts of people and things meant to create an emotional response. That would be bad enough, and sometimes, for whatever reason, the power of a dream ends there. But sometimes, a dream (or more often a nightmare), cheats and uses emotion itself to create a response that is unearned. One may only remember a collection of random events of little or no importance; walking to the store, getting on a trolley car, or enjoying coffee with a friend. If it were a play or novel, we would be waiting for something to happen. But the mind is a stage where you (all of you) is both the performing artist and the audience. You are relating something to yourself, and it that's what I mean by efficiency. Perhaps a better word would be elegance.

In that sense, every dream and every nightmare is sentimental. It is an unearned appeal to emotion. But the emotional power is found to an astounding degree, regardless. That's why you can never explain the dream or nightmare to other people. It's usually embarrassing to try to do so. For example, the things that happened to me in my nightmare last night made me wince upon remembing. I awoke covered in a cold sweat and with a terrific headache. From there, I sought only to escape myself via some distraction, via the television or even stroking the cat. One way or another, I had to get the fuck away from me. Pills help. But if I tried to tell you about it (which I wouldn't), you would laugh at the seemingly random imagery and get really uncomfortable as I earnestly tried to related something unrelatable. Your dreams are produced, composed, written, choreographed, acted and performed by and for you.

Intuitively, one would assume that crazy people have stanger dreams and more horrifying nightmares. I'm not so sure, and I think that I'm inclined to believe that because I doubt other people are as fucked up as me. And to some degree, that may be true. The sane people I know tell me about dreams where they are knitting an enormous sweater while Dane Cook plays darts with Ned Flanders in the background, or some such shit. I ache for that kind of enjoyable simplicity. I suspect that my stupidity and mental instability leads to indecipherable iconography and random imagery, coupled with very disturbing feelings. More intelligent and stable people perhaps have more ordered dreams, with less spillover from one part of the brain to another. They may find themselves having sex with a set of bagpipes in the back seat of '57 Chevy, and wake up feeling violated, but it is still vaguely coherent.

As for me, I don't know what the fuck happened last night. Anxiety was in the background, guilt was absolutely dripping from everywhere, the images were horrifying and complex but they could be related and still have power. One part that I can remember will go with me to my grave, but most of it is thankfully gone. But I still feel like a used rubber, flung from a speeding car (perhaps a '57 Chevy), smeared and stuck to the windshield of a tractor trailor. And this happens five nights a week. I kick my own ass beneath the sheets. As for the other two nights I don't sleep at all. Yeah, I know, woe is me. But it does suck.