Dream Journal

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Felix spent his afternoons taking long walks by the seaside. He was so accustomed that he became familiar with how the coast erodes. It was impossible to observe if you just sat there; routine is how you’re led to the discovery. Felix noted how his steps were made to retreat further and further up the shore, nearer and nearer the cliff face. He begrudged it. The gradual slowing of his walks. He hated the idea that one day it would be gone forever, that one day all he’d have to remind him of it is the view of the sea from the clifftop. He walked slowly deliberately. There existed this idea that if he halted his movements time would stop too. Evidence against this marched with the sun’s cycle, and as it dipped its head below the crest of the sea, he had been forced to look out, and to acknowledge the climbing ocean. Swelling to the beat of the tide and rushing forward to meet him.

The deep blue, as he has been told, is filled with monsters. They begin as specters seen rising out of the blue, then become colossal shadows beneath the rafts, and finally, they end as teeth. Those stories forbade him from venturing out more so than any warning could. He was terrified of the deep blue. It seemed to him though, that everyone wades out to sea eventually. Off to brace some unknown fate. To tackle monsters, to brave storms, to champion death itself. It was not something he ever considered for himself. ‘The island is enough’ he would tell himself. But his friends knew better. They told him that the coast would disappear, and that the water would rise. It would go higher and higher, and the monsters would come with it, until they devoured the highest cliffs, and the island, and he, would disappear. Those friends were gone now, along with everyone else.

They disappeared. Onto the next frontier. There were nights he would dream of them and where they were. Safe in the belly of beasts. Gone and abandoned to a fate he couldn’t fathom.

How?

He would wake up in cold sweats and ask himself.

How could they do it?

The roar of waves was his only answer. Black as night but void of stars was how he imagined it to be. He would sometimes get the hope that homes could be made in the belly of beasts. That maybe his intrepid friends still existed in some capacity. But there was no electricity in these bellies. Nothing to make torches of. No sun to dry clothes. No food to eat. Empty, cold and black, the harsh hand of reality would manhandle him from these hopes. He would find himself again, staring out to sea, forlorn for what he lost, and afraid of how he may get it back.

How may I get it back?

He would brave the question. He would think of rafts and of the shadows under them of the beasts with no concept of humanity. Under the raft and then towering over it like a God. If only.

There came the day, when an inch of ocean began to beat against the cliff. He stood forlorn, and afraid. Hope dared not speak. The specter of beasts dotted the horizon.

Sinclair’s life was spun like a spider’s web. Fragile gossamer that could be so easily torn apart, whether through accident or ill intent. Some of the paths he took didn’t make much sense at the time, and there was seldom any part of his life after 12 that he was sure of himself. It was only now, when the final touches of his web were being put into place that everything seemed to make sense. He wondered if it was some senseless sentiment he was trying to comfort himself with as his life was coming to a close, or if he really was finally sure about himself, and who he was and all he had been. It was doubts like these that plagued him. When the first nibble of the winter’s cold descended on him, he felt death stalking its shadow. He figured he wasn’t going to survive this one, though he had expected so of the last.

Memories would sink into him from time to time like the jaws of a wild animal, biting down and tearing deep, spilling red thoughts of bitterness from the wound. It was hard. As he was going into his forties, he figured that he was still too sensitive for his age. Most of the adults he knew had ‘grown up’ by then it seemed. They were secure about themselves, and they didn’t regret things quite as much. Though, maybe they were faking it. He was sure that some kids must’ve thought of him as devoid of these teenage idiosyncrasies. All of his philosophical musings about life had left him living alone and widowed, his children scattered like seeds in the wind, never to come back to the tree that made them. That was alright, he supposed. He had wanted that kind of freedom as a child after all. Though, children were a joy he never quite expected before he had them. It was a new experience, the first fresh splash of paint on his then dulled life. And the coat had lasted a while too, but then they grew up, and he felt like everything he had put into the past 25 years had suddenly left. It was sad, and maybe he was a bitter old man, but he wished that they would remember him more often. They would get old too, and though he hated wishing badly on his own children he knew that they’d come to feel how he felt, but then it’d be too late to accept their apology.

He’d forgive them anyway he thought. That was a lot of what he was. A forgiving person. Many of the tiny threads that made his life were tinted black with that act of forgiveness. His second girlfriend cheating on him for example, was something he forgave regretfully. She was drunk he had thought then, and he kept up being in a relationship with her, convincing himself every night that she was the one, until they broke up 3 months later, when she had cheated on him again. It took him months to get over it, and even more time to realize what a fool he had been. That trend would follow a lot of his life. Nearly half of his spider’s web was tinged with black. He used to be amazed that he hadn’t become a bitter person by it but then he realized that he had. A lot of revelations hit him throughout his life, most of them he would’ve gotten a lot quicker if someone pointed it out, or so he thought anyway.

He sighed deeply. His room was musky, so he opened a window and let the cold in, or the heat out rather, which was another thing he learned in his life. Most of his childhood was scarce now. Sometime around his twenties he started to really romanticize that part of his life. He came to miss the sweet innocence of it, the last time everything felt okay. Now he thought that in those days he was just being dramatic and that things have, and always will be, both okay and not-okay. That’s just how it was, and he accepted that. It was only when he felt like dying that this kind of bitterness would take him. He wasn’t suicidal, he just really wanted to get it over with. Onto the next frontier, if there was one. Nonexistence was something he never thought about now. In his youth, he would’ve called himself an atheist, and put on a brave face, saying that it was oblivion after you die. Now the proximity of the void he once taunted frightened him so fiercely he’d find himself crying whenever the fear took him. He had too much pride to go back on his word, so he settled on agnostic.

He wondered a lot about the life he lived, and whether he’d be sent to hell or not. Again, when he was younger considering something like that was silly, but with his age he had to consider it as a serious possibility. Hell was still preferred to oblivion. He was so tired now too. He felt sometimes as if he would just stop moving on the mornings, if he’d just remain in bed and lie there, that he would die. And he wanted so badly to some mornings. But his spirit would always pull him to get up.

‘Not yet,’ he’d think, and he’d wonder why he thought that. He knew why, but for Sinclair it was just too hard to admit. He died a long time ago, his will at least. The dreams he had, those little things that the spider called Fate didn’t deem worthy to fit into his web. He missed them, and still wanted them. When he had kids he thought that he’d give it to them, but he couldn’t burden them like that. His dreams would have to die along with him. It was funny to think that there was a time in his life when he wanted to change the world. He supposed that he did, he added to the population, changed a couple statistics, but that was a shallow comfort. Life was not what he wanted it to be. It would seem that in the end, all he would end up having was his spirit.

A lot of times throughout his life, he would ask himself, ‘what am I willing to sacrifice?’ The answer would mostly turn out blank, though some days when he felt particularly motivated he would think things like happiness, or free time, or family. These were fruitless ambitions though, and led him nowhere. His life came and went. In the brief flash he was given as it buzzed pass him, he saw the prospects of a happier home, a more fulfilling career, and even grander things, like becoming so influential that he came to inspire people to be the best that they could be, and in so doing, change the world for the better. He got this glimpse, and before he could reach out it was gone. Life had left him with nothing but his hopes and dreams, all things that were meaningful once, but were shallow now.

So ends our story of Sinclair. Alone in his house he would brew his despair, and eventually pass away. His dreams however, do not die with him. It was a mistake he made, maybe from his own ego, to think that he was alone in his ambition. His dream was one shared by many others, and among those people there are the ones who know they aren’t alone, and that they have to do it, if not for themselves then for the ones that tried and failed. This is a group effort, and if so much as one person succeeds then it’ll all be worth it.

I could live with that.

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There is a line I tell myself: ‘meaning is where you look for it’. It really is one of those gimmicky, pseudo-philosophical things that are meant to give the illusion of depth, but I use it as a form of introspection. I’ll derive whatever meaning I want to derive, and focusing on this idea went a long way in helping me understand myself and why I do things. It is a given that no one is perfect, and it’s harsh but true that the world really isn’t all pretty. There are some truths about myself that I hate to admit, and maybe I wouldn’t to anyone else but I can at least admit them to myself. Feelings of disgust are almost always mingled in with bitterness, and a sense of desire. It brings me back to the idea of most homophobic people being unknowingly gay. It’s easy to begrudge someone who has something we’d want, even if it’s the simple ability to express themselves. There is a small exception for cockroaches I guess. I wouldn’t want to be a cockroach, nor do I begrudge anything I cockroach has. Maybe, I would be jealous of a cockroach’s speed, though I wouldn’t accept super speed if it meant that I also had to eat shit and crawl close to the ground. A human sized cockroach, assuming that we measure a cockroach’s speed relative to its body length, would be stupidly overpowered though.

Anyway, meaning is where you look for it and pseudo-philosophy is fine and dandy.

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I could write shitposts all bloody night if I wanted.

All of these go towards me finding my inner writer’s voice...

It hit me then, when I was walking home with my mom after spending the day over by a friend. It was a kind of euphoria, and I came to recognize it as forthcoming with every intensely happy feeling I have. It would feel as if I were standing on the moon and looking down on the Earth, as if I were beholding something beautiful, familiar, and far away. I wouldn’t call it a bad feeling, but it does reel me back in. I’d stop seeing only the happy things, and I’d remember where I stand, here on this Earth. The street would unfold around me with stars overhead, and I’d hear my mother’s footsteps echoing my own. With the feeling still in my heart, I’d watch and wonder at the people that passed, and wonder what their lives were like, and if they ever had a similar feeling. It was too easy for me to get carried away in happy things. Emotions swell and rage like an ocean, be they happiness, sadness, anger, or bitterness, and for all of them I needed my anchor. It was only ever in the happy feelings that I’d get caught up in. It felt like if I let myself go, I could forget any reasons I’d have for ever being sad, and I wouldn’t be myself if I forgot. I needed the bitter with the sweet, and too much happy was intoxicating. If the sweet became sickly, it’d be painful to swallow.

So I’ll accept my happiness as fleeting, and enjoy its stay but never mourn its passing. It wouldn’t do very good to let myself sink into an ocean that was going to dry up.

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It’s ya boy Pea Space Cock here, back at it again with some more Slammin’ Slam Poetry. 

Have you ever gone on a run?

It’s always more than I expect it to be. Cardio was what I was thinking when I started, but in time it turned into something else. It’s where I clear my head, littering these unfinished thoughts in my jog through the park. Some of them I see get whisked away by a breeze, resigning themselves to be just a memory of a time I was upset. I only hope that no one else picked them up.

There’s another thing too. Somewhere along my jog, whether it was my first time or my hundreth, I would start lagging. My legs would burn and my throat would run dry. I would think, ‘this is it, time to pack up and go home’. But, almost always, I’d power through with my exercise, and make it all the way to the end of my trail. It was in these moments where my breath burned against the cold evening air, that I’d feel my legs resolve to pump harder. Sometimes I’d even burst into a sprint.

I came to accept this as a kind of analogy for living. When the going gets tough, the tough gets going in a sense.

Although, when I apply this to my own life I’d look behind me and see that I haven’t taken one step away from the closed door of my apartment.

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