Your home more a cage than a shelter
Machines replacing repetition, science dissolving in bliss
Mystery and archaic sensation
The end of night and day
I think that says it all
An Affair at the Soiree - Tuxedomoon
I've traditionally marked the end of Koyaanisqatsi as January 1, 2005 when I came back "home" to Florida and accepted Ric's offer to stay with him. But there have been many times since, present included, where I think I may have been a bit too hasty, or, too narrow in my definition of Koyaanisqatsi. Here I am, looking down the barrel at what will, in just a few months now, be the tenth anniversary of that "momentous" date. And I can't help but wonder...am I really out of it?
I just woke up from another toss-and-turn "night" of in-and-out sleep. My back's been aching me and it seems I just can't find the right position anymore. Newly-added weight, I suppose, or worse-than-usual posture sitting at the computer(s) (home and "work"). The near-constant low-level tinnitus reminds me I'm months outta whack with the quantity and quality of sleep hours. The pattern's all off too, sometimes I sleep in the morning into afternoon and other-times afternoon into night. Occasionally, more and more actually, on my off days I tend to drift into a "normal" sleep pattern, like the rest of humanity...all at night. This makes it even more difficult to get "back on track" during the work "days."
As I woke up just a while ago, around 9:15 pm, just before the alarm, I remember my dream.
I was in yet-another location dream, this time though, it was as if it were a deliberately suggestive set decor like in avant-garde theater where the staging is purposely played down in an overt attempt to stress that the audience should focus on the acting instead of the set dressing.
I'm in a bed, trying to fall asleep. I see a cute guy sitting on a bench across the street from me. There's no wall to my room, I am just a few feet away from him on the street. Then I notice another cute guy sitting next to him. I blink coyly, pretending to go back to sleep and then, suddenly, they're off...walking down the street to the bottom of a hill. There I spot two older ladies trying to fix a broken shutter on their house. They laugh and chat as they go about their task.
I get up and try to arrange things in my room, tidying up items on a shelf unit and putting a plastic-wrapped bunch of wilted limp celery stalks onto a storage table near the "door." A guy I recognize, not in RL but in this dream or sequence of dreams just before it, is in my room. (By now I'm beginning to become aware I'm dreaming. Not fully lucid, but a dawning awareness of my real consciousness as I'm observing the goings on.) I make eye-contact and tip my head in acknowledgement ever so slightly. As I do this, my real consciousness thinks that I don't do this in RL, which is true. I tend to avoid eye-contact as a general rule.)
He walks over to the (my) shelf unit and reaches onto a shelf for something. As he retrieves it (what it is eludes me) he "accidentally" knocks over a decorative glass and it falls to the floor, shattering. I'm distraught over this and his lack of any kind of apology since (in the dream world) I love this glass and it was special to me (it doesn't exist in RL).
He nonchalantly walks away and I get up to clean up the mess. I look down and I see I'm attempting to sweep up shards of broken glass and I have nothing on my feet. Fearing I would cut myself, and also feeling dejected about trying to keep "my" room clean and tidy in the first place, I just go back to bed saying "Fuck it!"
I fall asleep (in my dream) and start to dream (in my dream...yeah, how fucking "Inception" is this!) and in this dream within a dream, I am in a white-tiled bathroom and I'm feeling a strong urge to pee. I see a little boy standing in the corner, pull out my penis and piss all over him. As I'm deluging him, the boy just stands there, a blank expression on his innocent-looking face which is getting hosed by my piss stream. I think to myself "This is so wrong!" (Which "I' am I talking about? My dream-pissing-self, my dream-sleeping-self or my real-life-sleeping-self...I don't know.) I can't help it though and I continue to drain my bladder all over this kid until I'm done. Then my pissing dream breaks and I am awake again, in the 1st level dream, back in the strange room with no walls.
Now I'm much more conscious of my dream state and I'm starting to think RL thoughts and they're influencing events in the dream, so next, as I'm trying to go back to sleep in the bed in the weird room, I hear voices, music and smells of people and their food around and near me. I wake feeling frustrated (still in the dream) and a phone rings.
I excitedly look for a clock, fearing I may be late for work. Not finding one, I pick up the phone and it's my old Motorola KRZR and it's just as sticky, dusty and dead as it currently is in real life. I put it down and reach for the "correct" phone which is an odd morph of an old 1980's Western Electric handset, a 1990's cordless, a 2000's clamshell and a 2010's touchscreen smartphone. It's ringing in a dialtone-style I've never heard before, like it was coming from inside my head (maybe a 2020's style phone?). It feels weird. I then hear (through the phone itself) a cacophony of voices like an old style party line. Everyone's talking over everyone else, no one dialogue is discernible. It gets louder and louder until it's so loud I can't take it anymore and I hang up the phone.
Then I wake up. For real this time.
I guess.