I spent half of yesterday feeling filthy after waking from an especially brutal and bizarre dream.

It started off on a high note: L. and I decided to get back together, a signal I should have seen that this dream was going to morph into a nightmare. She was actually happy and smiling about our decision, not frowning and skeptical like she usually was around me in reality.

We entered a hotel where a bunch of people were milling around by a swimming pool. A bright white object that no one could quite distinguish or identify fell from the sky and landed in the swimming pool. I saw it as a brightish snake-shaped thing but others described it as an oval. Whatever it was no one could see it after it landed the swimming pool, where it seemed to match the color and texture of the water.

I suggested people back off, saying it could be space debris infected with bacteria or contagions unknown to humans. No one paid my suggestions any mind, so L. and I went into the hotel, where she promptly disappeared.

Suddenly Hitler became present. He was not there in person but in spirit and authority. The hotel became a concentration camp. Most people were tied up, lying on the floor writhing, bound with rope at the hands and ankles but not gagged. Someone from the pool area, under the influence of whatever that thing was that landed in the pool,  handed me a gun and told me that if I did not shoot somebody then I would be shot and thrown into the pool and drowned.

I was bound and writhing on the floor like everyone but somehow I was able to handle the gun. Following instructions I aimed the gun at the nearest person. Unable to decide where to shoot him without killing him I aimed at the bottoms of his feet. He begged me not to do that but I did. After shooting him he screamed at me as much in anger as in pain, saying I had ruined his life and he would never be able to walk again.

I woke up to the noise of that man’s howling, feeling filthy for even letting thoughts like this enter my mind. Usually I can explain where dreams come from as garbage of the day but this was unusual and even frightening for its evil details. I can sort of see where L. might enter my mind (I walked past her house last week) but nothing else from this dream seems to have come from anywhere in my reality. I have been watching Get Out, which is billed as a horror film, but so far it has not really been what I think of as characteristic of that genre. I don’t think seeing that film contributed to dreaming of such an ugly scene.

The dream reminded me of why I don’t read Stephen King or horror stories. Evil thoughts, however obvious their fictional status, still have a way of impacting your day and your perspective on reality.

I woke up today thinking I must be sleep sprawling more than usual, since I seem to be waking up this week in parts of the bed and in contortions I don’t remember ever arriving at. I’ve thought of this before but never gone through with it: video recording myself sleeping, or at least making audio. That part of my life to me is like the ocean, unexplored and unknown.

I actually did a sleep study, might have been 4 years ago now. It was a waste of time. I am not a Marine. I can’t just fall asleep on command. My mind is always racing and, when sober, I hear music in the interactions of noise made by white-noise makers such as box fans and air filters. If only the sleep study environment was that serene. I could not possibly fall asleep in that place. On top of having what felt like hundreds of tubes and sensors affixed to my person the technicians who worked there were noisy as hell, which was (needless to say) kind of surprising for a sleep center. Their cell phones beeped and squawked all through the night, one of them got into a lengthy argument with someone over the phone, doors slammed… There was also music coming from an adjacent building.

Best of all, when I could not get to sleep, the technician came in and yelled at me, saying in substance “GO THE FUCK TO SLEEP”.

I think I went to that place twice, maybe even three times. The tests were a ludicrous failure but for all that I was instructed to get a fully-insurance-covered CPAP machine, a device I never got used to and eventually gave away.

Sleep has been epic of late, I think on account of all the writing I’ve been doing the intellectual focus of doing what I’ve been doing with those kiosks. My brain is my biggest muscle, so USING IT exhausts me more than almost anything else, though I have also been doing extra walking.

None of that today, I don’t think. Walking, that is. It’s a rain day.

…

I listened back to some walk-and-talk I did back in July, in which I told the not-quite-sordid story of the shockingly beautiful woman I pursued after seeing her around Doughboy Plaza in Woodside. My intentions were genuine but nothing ever came of it, as could be said for most of my efforts at making myself interesting to women. This was an episode where I tried to figure out who she was without doing anything so fundamental as interacting with her. I had romantic-to-me notions of setting something up on the Internet so that she would find me and she would make contact.

For instance I thought I might post-date a payphone number and location on the payphone site and say that her phone number was once that of a payphone. Then I’d call her through some VOIP-obfuscated means with a synthesized voice informing her that her phone number is posted out on the Internet. She would look it up online, find my page, contact me to request that I remove her phone number from my site, and through this little bit of trickery we enter into a conversation and fall in love. Right?

Probably not. In this case I never even got her number but even if I had I am certain I lack the cojones to go through with something like that. But it makes for interesting material for a short story. Assume I know a thing or two about her, like where she works or went to school. Imagine, better yet, that we have something in common on a fundamental basis such as school or work. If/when she contacted me to request I take her phone number off my site I would do so, then ask “Wait, aren’t you so-and-so who conducts health and well-being seminars in midtown?” I could

Positivity and motivational seminars like that were something I thought the Woodside beauty did for a living but I was wrong. I never figured out who she was or anything about her except her street address. Armed with that shred of information I used public records to find the woman who had formerly lived at her address. That woman, who had an elaborate presence on the Internet, actually bore enough of a resemblance to the woman I was after to make me think I had found the right person. I had not.

Logistics and intrigue aside it seems like a somewhat smarmy and weird way to potentially enter into a relationship. Or is it? Some women might find it romantic and adorable, others would find it creepy and manipulative. If such a relationship as this went anywhere I would not be able to keep it a secret from her that I had basically set a trap, using the tools of the predator to make her come to me without evidence of me pursuing her. That’s how predators work. The notion of sickos going after their prey with gifts and gawky seductions is not without example but what real predators do is make themselves available through friends and family connections, letting their target enter into their lives in a seemingly normal way. A friend of mine who is a public defender and who was assigned to represent sex offenders explained all this to me, describing in sometimes sickening detail the way child molesters get kids to come to them without setting off suspicion. That approach feels a little bit like what I am describing with my imagined pursuit of the Woodside bombshell, though I maintain that my intentions would be genuine and legitimate, possibly even romantic, since it’s not like I’m going after something illegal. Knowingly posting her phone number to my site and claiming it is or once was assigned to a payphone might be a problem, though. But then no one would have to know.

The noise level on the recording is annoying as hell to me, though, and if I want to use that story I might have to tell it over again. I guess I expect too much of wind screens on microphones but I cannot seem to find one that does a bleeping thing to mute or lessen noise caused by wind hitting the device. Maybe it would not bother others like it does me. I was editing out long silences until realizing I could fill that space with my piano music, basically padding the piece to make it last a full hour. If Joe Frank could do it why can’t I?

The silences are not really silent, of course. There is ambient sound from the environment around me, which is meant to be an important part of the sound experience. But too much of that could get tedious to some, especially those not wearing headphones and who would not get the 3D/binaural effect.

It is raining but I’m going out anyway.