One of those days where time seems like an enemy, reflecting on what i meant to do, what I'm trying to do, and what I have never done but always wanted to... an oddly self absorbed day, i have those, i would wonder about the person that didn't, even our best attempts at rid ourselves of ego and all the baggage that goes with it you never quite manage to completely eradicate those fleeting moments where all you can think about is yourself.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the night i came squirting out from between my mothers thighs (terrible image that; pain, horror, blood, like a badly directed gore film. what a way to begin by cause someone else so much pain) It was raining so I'm told and the sun came out at the same time I did, but this pleasant sounding imagery doesn't fit anywhere in the real world it is a mothers fantasy, to make an act of mundane reproductive violence something extraordinary and hopeful.......It's been raining ever since...



I've been fortunate i've lost no limbs, I've never truly starved, I've never been to prison or murdered, or developed a terminal disease. I was loved, i had 2 guardians watching over me, i did well in school, i was a misfit, but i was queen of the misfits and always had a generous helping of friends. born in a country with one of the lowest population densities on earth there was always plenty of lebensraum....... my life was pretty perfect by all accounts, except for those imperfections of which i can not speak. a child in a squalid slum in some godforsaken shithole could only dream of what i had; and i always knew that, felt that, yet for some reason, one i may never know. there was always a darkness inside...

nightmares endless nightmares I don't remember ever having a night without them. the first one i recall was when i was 2. bob dylans "to ramona" was playing, my mother looked in the mirror her eyes slid out of their sockets and water pooled in the empty hollows,  her lips were cracked and clear fluid and blood leaked from them, she couldn't see or speak. i just sat there paralyzed in the grass watching her through the window as she gasped for breath and fell on the floor. the water from her eye sockets pooled at the base of the toilet. Every time after the dream when my mother played that song i would start screaming and crying, how awful i felt, how could i imagine such a thing? like i was killing her, as illogical as that seems....

who would have thought a bob dylan would inspire my first childhood memory.

I hate bob dylan BTW...

I was always the child who had something on their mind, what was it? too many things, never stopped thinking, never stopped fearing.

The battle for a soul. My father was buddhist, my extended family were equaly divided between jehovah witnesses and christians. when i was with my father we would venture to the woods talk philosophy, meditation, when i was with my mom and her parents it was kingdom halls and assemblies. the christians wanted me too, although i avoided church save one born again experience.. Hell, nirvana, 144 thousand, i was truly confused, and the nightmares got more interesting..... apparently at one point i used to tell my mom i was talking to god, wonder what he said? i certainly would be interested to know. some kids had imaginary friends, well i did too just mine was god. and the stupid bastard didn't even stop the nightmares.....

Enter the bomb
and war
and all the bloody things that monkeys do to each other whenever there are other monkeys around.

Vietnam was only on TV for a couple of years during my life but i remember napalm and pictures of burnt bodies.

I was 6 it was a dark stormy night in the little cabin we called home, my mother let me stay up late and watch a movie on TV, I don't remember the name of it. that was the night i discovered the atom in all its glory and terror. I only remember one scene a woman walking with flesh hanging off her arms, blind and moaning (perhaps where my early love of zombie films was fostered) every night from then until i was 13 i would go to sleep straining my ears to hear if there were air raid sirens or the silent whistle of missiles reaching for the ground. the mind of a child doesn't rationalize if this really is going to happen, just that it can.

by 8 i was obsessed with war. I acquired a subscription to soldier of fortune and would cut out articles about special forces operations in el Salvador, Nicaragua, i read every book i could find on Vietnam. I copied the map of vietnam and marked every major battle down with figures of civilian and military casualties. the book Nam and one soldiers story of a village they went into.... they shot a 12 year old girl running from the rice fields, another soldier began to rape her badly injured body.  his description of how each man took their turn until they were eventually raping her wounds...... fortunately for her, she died....... i will never forget that story, welcome the barbarian monkey's. I now knew human beings were ever bit as awful as i had felt we were from the day I had my very first nightmare....

the nightmares were mostly about war dead now. when i was 10 i dreamt I was a young man, i shot myself in the head. the lights went out, it was quiet, my head ached a little. i know how a head wound feels. in the real world. when i was 3 i was pushed out a window, 2 stories head first onto a concrete landing and then bounced down a flight of stairs on my head. the lights went out, it was dark and cold and i could hear myself screaming, only i wasn't screaming apparently. cracked skull, swelling brain, seizures for a few years but all is fine now (or is it)

The bomb didn't go away. I still lay awake at night wondering if i would wake up, or if i'd be woken up.

nightmare number 7000 or so:

I wake up, the morning is warm the sun kissing my feet through the window. everything goes bright like looking in a lamp, and then dark. so many spots in my vision. I call out for my parents, they don't answer. I get up and go to the window and there in the driveway they lie, clothing charred. i realize i am hot, skin burning i run to the bath and begin pouring water on my searing flesh, then I think "there will be a blast wave" and run out the door. as i am running down the street i am joined by a large scottish sheep dog, i am watching him as we run together, his flesh is being peeled off from the snout on down, he is screaming but still running. everything is pain and my own hands arms and face are now just bits of burnt muscle and bone. the dream just goes on as i slowly dissolved, cats, dogs, children, everything around is dying without skin, sounds relatively silly but i can still feel the pain, never felt pain like that before or since.  just a dream.....just a dream


I'm a young boy walking down a road a man shouts at me, i don't understand what he is saying, my little sister and mother are yelling and motioning at me. i start to run, the man shouts. i see my mother fall and my sister scream, her face is splattered red,  then she falls too. my back is burning i can see flames lapping at my knees from the back of my legs. i am crying but the pain and burning wont stop. i fall down and as i burn i look in the dead eyes of my mother and whisper why.

I'm in my room, it is a dark night, i hear a thud, i peek out my door and see blood trickling down the hallway. i'm afraid, a man appears laughing his cold blue eyes looking at me, i run into my room, he follows. my head hurts, and it is black again, he is laughing i can feel a weird numb snapping on my skin, i can see a little but it is blurred, my flesh is being cut i can tell, razor blades cutting again and again it takes me all night to die.

It was my first babysitting job, i was 13. when the babies finally stop screaming and i can try and sleep, every time i close my eyes the room is filled with blood. bloody hand prints on the wall the chairs are splattered, the whole night i watch a family die again and again, every time i sleep the same murder begins. that was my last babysitting job for years.

etc etc etc

I've died  thousands of times, thousands of ways almost every night in my youth, the nightmares still come but they are quieter now, dying is rather boring, I only get excited when i'm in a bus going over a cliff or some other predeath extreme sport like adrenalin rush. the bus full of people killing each other as it went over the cliff was rather exciting..

Someone might be reading this and by now thinking "wow she's fucked up', and when i sleep it is true there is some seriously fucked up shit in there, but somehow or other i have lead a rather unspectacular life awake, and at least as far as i can tell am reasonably well adjusted, abhor violence can't even gut a fish without feeling somewhat nauseated if i think about what i'm doing.... why i've had nightmares all my life, i have never solved that puzzle... but I even like sleep now and dislike it when i can't remember my nightmares. i only remember a couple or so a week now.


a couple of nights ago: I was picking lumps of fur from my dead cat up with my dead mother. kept finding bodies of other cats i have loved and lost under the furniture. the tumor on saffies mouth was so large she couldn't meow, just wet mucusy noises. my mother kept saying i needed to save her fur because i wouldn't remember her if i didn't. at the end of the dream when i had enough fur i also had clumps of human hair in my hands, my cats and mother lay decaying on the floor.

tuesday: i was on a ferry it in the strait of juan de fuca, i was below deck when the ferry struck something, i couldn't get out, a school bus full of children was filling with water in front of me, all the little pudgy blue hands were scraping at the windows. i was trying to open the windows as my lungs filled with water (which hurts allot, i've almost drown in the real world a few times and it is not a nice way to go) my head was bumping on the steel girders of the car deck as everything went black.

last sunday: there is a dove and hawk in a cage on my porch, i am wondering if it is a good idea to keep them together. the sky is a strange purple colour and there is a weird dull roar i am distracted, when i look over the hawk has killed the dove. little bloody grey feathers litter the bottom of the cage the hawk looks proud of the meal in his talons. everything is bright then black when i open my eyes my body is so numb and cold, i wonder if that is my arm several feet away on the walkway.



My nightmares did have the benefit of helping liberate me from that religious quagmire. one night a very wise man told me it was all bushshit and that human beings had no idea what the universe was about. the meaning of life was.... nothing.... no meaning... then he killed me. perfect way to go really, love that one. he was such a gentle looking man yet so full of violence, because he could be. I was 12 and have been an atheist ever since.


So heres to 41 years of death and dying, and the funny thing is the real world is even more full of death than my dreams, at least at night it is all imaginary, the real horror starts when i wake up and read the news.....