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CircusMask
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Country: United States
State: New York
Metro: Albany
Interests: Literature, music, geography, photography, book repair, and masks.
Expertise: Social sciences.
Occupation: Graduate Student
Message: message me
Member Since:
1/27/2004
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| Dreaming through the veil.
Slept very poorly last night, thanks to a very hungry 18 lb. cat who decided that 4:45 AM is the perfect time to sit on my bladder and knead my belly and purr. And also to get some food (because she knows, apparently, that I'm a light sleeper, unlike B, and if she keeps bothering me long enough -- either by being sweet or by being naughty -- I'll eventually get up and give her something to eat so she'll leave me alone).
This was day three, by the way, of waking up from strange/bad dreams. I don't really remember what happened in the dreams the last couple of nights, though I vaguely recall architecture. (I've never understood that; usually the most memorable elements of a dream for me are where it takes place -- not just architectural style, but the experiential feel of the place and the space.) The one from this morning, though, I remember quite well, so I will retell it here:
I am part of a news crew that has gone overseas, maybe to a remote location in Asia, to track down a band of secretive, semi-criminal technologists. They've been hiding out in an abandoned warehouse, the track of the sliding metal door overgrown with weeds. They're young, none of them older than their early twenties, all pale, black-clad, strange eyes (a bit of FreakAngels here?). One of them is particularly notorious: someone called Connor, who, it turns out, is a short butch woman with short black hair, white pancake makeup, and henna-like designs in black on one cheek. She's furious that we've found her out. It is midday but they were sound asleep (they'd stayed up to watch Jeopardy, which is on absurdly late in the night). When we turn our cameras on them, Connor hides her face in a big black bag and the young man with her stands up to protect her. Somehow a fight breaks out between Connor and a different young man. She's holding her own though he's bigger. She reaches up to bring her open hand down hard against the back of his head, to knock him down --
-- and I wake myself up as my hand comes down hard on B's shoulder, scaring the shit out of both of us.
In other news, I don't feel like being in school this week. I was on top of everything starting last Friday, and kept up a good pace, and then took Tuesday and yesterday off in terms of reading and writing, and now my motivation is half asleep.
It occurs to me that I haven't done any serious fun reading (i.e., reading a novel in less than a month) in over a year. I don't like this. I miss reading. I miss literature.
The comic is going well. It's official: I have an artist. Issue six is roughly together, but I'm unhappy with a number of scenes, so I'm working those out as I type and edit.
And that is all.
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| Midnight at Allen and Atherton.
The light changed from red to green as I approached. I watched its reflection in the blackness, noticed the ambulance ahead of me. It was going straight through, onto our street. I wondered idly if maybe it was going to our place. Maybe we had died somewhere. Maybe this was how we were going to find out: we would follow the ambulance as it turned into our driveway, and the EMTs would get out and walk slowly up the stairs, and we would be inside, cold, gone.
Or worse yet, maybe I've been dead alone for years, and this has all been a dream, something I constructed to pass the time, to feel less lonely. I will follow the ambulance and they'll be going into someone else's home, but in a moment that only Haruki Murakami could pull off, I'd suddenly realize that it's all been a great fiction. All the walls will dissolve and I will awaken somewhere else: a grassy field, a dingy motel room, the bottom of a well. A cat will greet me, or a security guard, and I will have to explain myself, but whoever it is will already know. There will be no exit, no path, no purpose -- just a confusion sinking like a smooth stone tossed into a still, deep pond. I will realize that we are all alone together in some way, that there are no rules, that we simply exist in time and space, that we interact without any grand connection. That we are random.
I slowed as I neared the driveway, put my turn signal on. The ambulance drove onward.
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| Issue 5? Complete draft is done.
Going to go do laundry and grade papers now.
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| A short note.
Thanks for the comments on last entry. They really got me thinking about this whole situation -- I've had to stop and ask myself if I want to just learn how to live with PTSD (which is more or less what I've been doing all these years in some way or another) and how it affects other areas of my life, or if I want to try to really process what happened. I think she thinks that processing what happened will help reduce the symptoms and help me correct some of the psychosocial developmental stuff that was thrown off by what happened. I haven't totally made a decision yet, but I'm seeing her tomorrow, so we'll see how things go.
But what I really wanted to write about today is something completely unrelated: This morning I met with an artist. He's read the first issue of the comic, and he likes it. And I like his artwork. So, long and short of it: I have an artist (and he knows a potential letterer), and so far, we're on the same page about things. So wish us luck and a steady production rhythm, and maybe over the next couple of months we'll have a complete first issue to send off.
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| Choice.
I have a choice to make.
Over the last several months I've made a conscious effort not to use this space to talk about personal/psychological shit (beyond the anniversary post) just as a matter of principle. But I need to suspend that for a moment, because I need to make a choice.
I saw my therapist today and we talked about trauma and reprocessing of traumatic memories and all that good stuff. And it occurred to me that my time with her (and really over the last ten years) has been about survival, not starting over. It's been about learning to cope with something the validity (as a traumatic event) of which I question. It hasn't been about coming to terms with it and letting it go.
And it occurred to me that I don't know if I can let it go, if I'm even capable of doing that. What would that mean? What would my life be like? Would the things I don't like change? Would I suddenly stop doubting myself? Would I be stronger? Would I lose my edge? Would I trust people more? Would I be able to concentrate and be productive? Would it make things easier or harder for my path through school?
It would mean a change in treatment. I know that much. She'd refer me to someone else for EMDR. I don't know how I feel about that -- EMDR didn't do much for me in the past, and starting over with a new practitioner is not something I like doing, especially now that I have someone I trust and have built a good working relationship with. But...the thought of taking control over that part of my life is tempting...
The thing is, I'm afraid. What if it fails? What if it's not really trauma? What if I make the decision that I want things to be better, but it's not possible for it to happen? Not that things would change -- it would be status quo, I guess. But still, the thought of wanting something that important and finding out that it's just not possible for me makes me uneasy to say the least.
So there you have it. I have a choice to make, and I'm not sure where to start. I'll go back to blogging about shadows and crows and keyholes (and werewolves) now.
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