Dreams

Though it might be an odd choice, my favourite book by Jack Kerouac is his Book of Dreams. I love the idea of taking stream of consciousness writing to that kind of ultimate extreme. Not only is it the flowing text of thought, it's thought about the most uncontrolled thoughts we have.

I've dabbled in writing down my own dreams, for my own interest, for therapy appointments, for the hope that others might be interested in the sick shit that happens in my head all night.

In all of this, there are some recurring themes: hotels, elevators, fire. I've consulted dream dictionaries -- everything from the hippie to the Freudian -- and often it seems that my dreams have no deep meaning to them, or have meanings that conflict with themselves.

So here are the bits I remember from last night:

• Going to drop off a writing assignment at my old office, walking to corner of 7th and 23rd, seeing big ad for french fry place, craving fries and hot dogs for dinner, seeing building closed, with tape blocking second entrance, which had big staircase into building. Walking under tape, scraping face, bypassing line of people waiting to get newspapers, going into warehouse room, where JT looking very old was sat on a table supervising. Went to elevator bank and waited for JT. Realised I had dog shit on the hem of my jeans, tried scraping off with shoe. JT finally gets in and doors stay open for long, we all laugh. Elevator begins to move, we have small talk. Dream ends.
• Walking to some sort of garden centre store, then on bus. See MB on a bike, recall conversation that she had just bought one, pass bike store where new bikes are all matte black painted, and used ones are battered but colourful. Get into store to buy a xmas gift for an office party, secret santa recipient is somebody who is dying and leaving, but I also know that I'm going to quit when I'm next in the office. Feel awkward about buying anything. MB comes into store to buy a book -- trashy mass market novel, which I find weird. She asks what I'm looking for, I don't want to tell her, so say a claw thing, and make gesture with hand. She makes comment about don't cats come with those still. Fluffy grey cat starts walking around in garden display I'm looking at. Rain starts and people come running in. NR is there, looking haggard. We discuss lack of sleep and he says he's been up all night because his twins are in the hospital. I feel uncomfortable because I didn't know he had twins, thought it was just a daughter. He tells of misdiagnosis... of local doctor not thinking anything of the boy's red teeth. On first visit to Dr. H, though, they did belly scans and found that both kids had some sort of heart and stomach problem. Thought it had been cured, but last night they started bleeding and having aneurysms or some sort of attack. He spent all night in the hospital and told me how sweaty he had been there, and how he had to remember to sleep on his side of the bed when he was under the covers there, and not try to sleep on top of the covers on his wife's side. NR wanders off, and I look at tacky frog lawn ornaments. Dream ends.

So those are the two I remember from last night. They usually trickle back into my brain as the day goes on, so maybe I'll add more later.

Identity

I'm not going to get into why I've been pondering identity over the past few days. Those involved in any of it are probably already having a snide laugh, thinking that they've inspired me, or fooled me, or god knows what else.

Everyone has multiple identities, and that's a simple fact. The whole best foot forward, meeting the parents, interview, wearing the dry clean only clothes version of you is a pretty different identity than the version where you're sitting on the couch, wearing the same underwear for three days, watching trashy tv, in the middle of what starts to look like an odd concentration camp for alcohol.

Yeah, deep down it's the same person. Sure. Not arguing there. But there are different parts to any person. Picture it how you want... devil on one shoulder, angel on the other. Id, ego, and superego. Whatever. Point is, everyone knows that there are these component parts that make us up, but nobody likes to think that they might have to deal with anyone else's parts.

Some people who know me will only know one aspect, and that's how I want to keep it. Maybe they know my political work, or my writing, or my health problems, or my sick sense of humour, or my work pimping art, or something else. Maybe they knew me when I was 17, maybe when I was 25. All of those bits come together to form who I am now, but it's only natural to protect yourself against anyone knowing everything.

If somebody else knew everything about me, that might just mean that I'd have to accept all those parts of me. I'd have to get to know myself.

So I don't want you to know everything about me (yet here I am writing all sorts of crap that's stumbling around in my head), but I get a bit offended when you don't tell me everything about you (see previous post about wanting to know you more than you know yourself, etc.). Guess what... we all do it.

I've come to the conclusion that I'm happier with people who openly hide themselves. Don't want me to know who you are? Fine. But don't make a game out of it. You can keep your secrets, and I'll keep mine. We can interact with those secrets tucked under our arms, hoisted in hobo sacks over our shoulders. The parts that we're happy to have public can be friends for what they have in common, not for what's dangling in that tatty hankie at the end of that stick.

So I'm ok with this. Now I just need to convince everyone else to be, too. I find that if you don't prod and pick the scabs of conversations, people tell you the most unexpected things. For most of my friends, the defining moments of confession and conversation came when the pretenses were dropped and that little glimmer of humanity came through. Maybe it dropped out of a hole in the hankie.

We all have things we want to keep hidden, and we all lie to each other and ourselves. There's no point in wasting time worrying about what lies might be out there.

Almost time...

When I started this thing, this little bit of internet turf, I had this idea that I would write every day until I turned 30. Well, with months-long gaps, I guess that didn't work out.

I've got one month and 23 days now, and I'm not exactly sure how to play them. Do I fuck off the world and have self-destructive fun? Do I get my head down and plow through all the work in front of me? Do I start learning Japanese? Do I plan a party?

I honestly don't know. I'm veering away from self-destructive fun, despite flirting with it over the past month or so. And I really don't want to spend all this time, when we actually have nice weather, tied to a computer, toiling away.

So I think it's going to be a Japanese phrasebook, too. Learning a language isn't a strong point for my brain, and there's no way I'm going to speak Japanese beyond the five days I'm there.

I guess that leaves me with the party thing. Great. How do I wrangle friends who are either imaginary or don't give a fuck about me into coming to Weston for a day and then getting absolutely shitfaced with me in Bristol for a night? Always a problem.

I've never had a really good birthday. With it being in the middle of summer, it always seemed to coincide with people going on forms of family vacations. I had sleepovers where nobody slept over. I had afternoon parties where people came late and/or left early. I had fancy dinners that ended in people going out with others and/or arguments. I had one where I moped around mourning the death of my dog, who had needed to be put down the day before.

Most birthdays have been depressing as fuck for me, and amazingly it's a different reason each year. There have actually only been a few where I was upset about my age, and I'm now actually looking forward to 30. I'm kind of sick of being in my 20s. They haven't been good to me, so fuck them. I'm going to embrace being a mature lady of 30.

Maybe that's overstating it.

I'm going to be happy to be in my 30s, so I can lord my maturity over those who are not in their 30s or above.

So... How best to mark this occassion? So far the idea I've come up with is a barbecue and paint jam in Weston, then unabashed drunkenness in Bristol. Of course, it'll have to be either before or after I actually turn 30, since that day I'll be sat on Mount Fuji listening to music.

I'm open to suggestions of idea refinement and dates. And I really, really hope people show up. Otherwise, I might as well stay 29.