On Nostalgia in the Midst of Collapse.

We live in a culture of nostalgia. With remakes, prequels, sequels, with soft and hard reboots, we’re drowning in an endless sea of regurgitation.

On a level, I know it’s about corporations capitalizing on former successes, not wanting to take the risk involved in investing in things that offer originality and consequently a high degree of uncertainty with respect to profit.

On another level, though, I can’t shake that image in my mind of a species — or perhaps just a civilization — now on its death bed, looking out over the course of its life and trying to relive the golden moments of its history, doing it’s best to comfort itself as it stubbornly ignores its ever-accelerating decline.

Fridges, Pets, & Scrotums (12/5-6/21 Dreams).

12/5/21

I think I first saw the fridge in a cluttered, well-lit basement or garage, where it was being stored, as I had been planning on moving out. I had decided to stay, however, so some guy who was with me was going to help me take it back into the kitchen.

Then, abruptly, I’m in the kitchen, staring at the fridge. Is this my fridge, though? Its colored dark orange with silver handles and looks like it came straight out of the 70s. To boot, the doors opened the wrong way, but it didn’t seem as if we had put it upside down or anything. Opening it, I saw that it was packed with stuff, including some things — grapejuice I remember specifically — that I knew I wouldn’t drink. I imagined I’d just leave it there forever, ignoring it, and the stuff would just go to waste, which I found to be a shame.

12/6/21

In one dream scene, I had a pet. If it has a definite identity, I can’t quite remember — it may have been a rabbit or a squirrel, but whatever it was, it was some small, fuzzy creature about the size of my hand. I had tried to take care of it and keep up with it, but I had suddenly realized that I’d forgotten all about it and felt tremendously guilty, horribly irresponsible. Searching for the critter, I quickly find it hiding in a pile of my laundry after accidentally stepping on it, though it seemed to be okay.

This is a recurring theme in my dreams, this scenario of having a pet and then forgetting I have it, having forgotten to take care of it, and then feeling incredible painic, guilt, and self-loathing once I remember it, so I’m quite familiar with the potential meanings:

– Not living up to my responsibilities.
– Failing in an important area of my life.
– Neglecting some aspect of myself symbolized by the particular animal in question.
– Neglecting creative passions.

The animal in this case was of an ambiguous nature, however, and while I did forget about it, I also remembered having put forth more effort in nurturing it and being responsible prior to having forgotten it, too. So hopefully that signifies some improvement.

It probably deals with my feeble attempts to slow down my drinking (which, I mean, is an improvement), my desire to get assessed for ADHD despite having done nothing as of yet to meet that end, and having finally done some of my laundry the previous evening after having put it off for too long.

In the other dream scene, I may be in a bar, perhaps some stadium, and I see a large, Styrofoam cup with huge chunks of ice inside left unattended. Much as I do at work when cleaning the breakroom, I proceed to dump it and throw it away in the trash. As I’m in the midst of doing so, I hear a guy saying, “Stop,” so I stand up and throw it in the trash. When I stand up, there are two guys standing there. Both look like those stereotypical buff, over-aggressive high school jocks constantly seeking situations in which they can assert their masculinity and show what a tough guy they are. The skinner, taller one keeps back a little, but the shorter, bald, and more buff guy gets in my face.

“Can’t you fucking hear?”

“Yeah, but I was in the middle of something.”

In response, he grabs one end of my nutsack through my pants and pinches hard, twisting a little. Trying to play it cool, mostly because any movement or struggle will most certainly exacerbate the situation, I start making sarcastic comments, implying he’s coming onto me. He says nothing, just keeps on pinching and twisting harder and harder and it really begins to hurt.

I think of punching him. I really, really want to punch him, but my arms won’t cooperate, my fists won’t wad up, I don’t have the confidence or know-how to fight. I’m not sure I even know how to throw a punch and I’m too afraid to try.

The testicular pain forces me into waking up at about ten o’clock in the morning, a full hour and a half before my alarm is set to go off. And I went to bed early. So that kind of pissed me off. My balls didn’t really hurt, either, though there was that residual sense of pain, like when you get punched, pinned down, stabbed, or shot in a dream and that phantom sensation lingers after you awaken. In other words, I don’t think it was an actual, physical sensation that then got incorporated into the dream, but rather vice versa.

I wondered what the message behind this dream could be, though, and what I immediately thought was:

“You can’t reason with some people. You can’t talk your way out of some situations. You need to learn to fight, to get physical. To take care of yourself. To defend yourself. To grow some balls.”

And given my balls, or at the very least my scrotum, played a rather painful role in the dream, I have to imagine it had some meaning. There are other possibilities as to its meaning, of course — fertility, sex drive — but power, confidence, courage, the ability to defend oneself, it makes the most sense in this context, methinks.

Catharsis (Ashamed to be Human).

There are days you’re ashamed to be human and whatever hope you had for your species has worn down to a fucking thread.

The girl working the back drive-thru window tells you how her mother kicked her out of the house, so now she has to live with her abusive father — the one who beat her so badly a short time ago she could hardly get herself out of bed — and work as much as she can so she can hopefully get emancipated.

Oh, and she’s been raped by her brother and her father’s friend.

Oh, and the nineteen-year-old manager that just got fired, last time she worked here he forced a kiss on her and tried to convince her to get into a relationship with him.

A hellscape of a life and she’s only fifteen.

The mother of the aforementioned manager spoke to you outside earlier, telling you how the whole meeting went between her, her husband — also a manager — and the higher-ups, and how when they informed her they were firing their son because of the shouting match he got in with another manager her husband walked out only to beg for the job back later in the day, and how they probably only let him come back because we’re perpetually shortstaffed and if he left, the assistant manager wouldn’t be able to go on vacation.

And then the girl in front drive-thru half-jokingly asks if you and the girl in back drive-thru were talking about her, as evidently they got into it the other day, and once you sincerely tell her no, she tells you how her meth-head mother is going back to court this week.

You don’t bother looking at the news, don’t bother contemplating issues like climate change and the ongoing pandemic and the growing political divide or the crackdown on the freedom of expression, because there’s enough just in front of you that makes you want to go hide under a rock for the remainder of your days and divorce yourself from the human species.

So you make a latte, hide in your car for your thirty-minute break, try to read your book but just end up ranting through your thumb into the word processor app on your dollar store cell phone about all this shit as you chain-smoke your cigarettes, hoping for some sense of catharsis.

Not a Love Story.

Once upon a time, I knew this awesome girl I’ll call Mia.

I met her through this guy, Don, who was a recovering drug addict trying to stay clear of the old crowd he used to hang out with. I can’t remember how the hell I met him, but we hung out a few times, and on at least one of those occasions he urged me to come with him to Eat N’ Park, this all-night restaraunt, where there was this incredible girl I had to meet. Apparently she was a waitress there.

It was still light out and the place wasn’t too busy, so we quickly found a booth in the smoking section. Soon this girl popped out of nowhere and approached our table. She was as rail-thin as I was at the time, with big, dark, beautiful eyes, and dark, straight brown hair that went passed her shoulders. There was this adorable yet somehow delightfully sinister look nearly always splashed across her expressive face.

Sexy as fuck.

We got along rather well, and though Don seemingly disappeared off the face of the planet shortly thereafter, Mia became a friend I would know for years.

I was living with my parents at the time and couldn’t smoke in the house, so after work — during the periods where I had a job, anyway — I would often go up to the place, where I could read, write in my notebook and people-watch, all while chain-smoking and living off free refills of coffee. I got to know a group of regulars up there who the servers had affectionately named The Herd, and my groups of friends would often frequent the place with me — a group that the father of one of our friends, who’s house we often hung out at and crashed at, had affectionally referred to as The Hoard. Seeing the two collide and mingle was a curious thing.

These were interesting times and I got to meet a wide variety of intriguing, complex characters I often still find myself thinking about. And it all came to pass because a guy I had known for only a short while had introduced me to that lovely girl.

Mia and I hung out a few times, went to the bars with some friends of hers, hung out at her apartment. I remember her telling me that she liked me when I was drunk, for, as she put it, “you’re more aggressive.” I almost got laid that one night we went to the bars — perhaps not only with her, either, but a friend of hers, too; a girl who’s name I can’t even remember that she’d fooled around with before — but I had gotten too drunk and ended up violently vomiting into the toilet all night.

Another opportunity in my life that I fucked up. So it fucking goes.

In any case, as time went by, I moved to a college town, and we eventually lost contact. Years later, a mutual friend of ours got a hold of me out of the blue, eager to play matchmaker. It seemed that Mia had broken up with her live-in boyfriend of many years. I don’t recall if I learned the reason for the breakup, but I knew Mia well enough to know her promiscuous tendencies, as that had been an issue in her relationship with her other boyfriend of many years.

He gave me her number and urged me to call her, which I did shortly thereafter. She was clearly in a bad state, she clearly had been crying, it was obvious as hell she was depressed, and my heart truly went out to her. Though I can’t recall the specifics of the conversation, at the heart of it she wanted to get into a relationship with me, and she kept describing how she feared dying alone.

Didn’t I, she asked? Didn’t I fear living alone, dying alone? Didn’t I want someone to grow old with? Didn’t I want love in my life? Didn’t I ever get lonely?

Sure I get lonely. I’m not sure what I said to her, exactly, but I certainly do. Sometimes that loneliness hits me in a seemingly shallow, strictly sexual way. Sometimes there is an agonizing depth to the lonliness, where I seek true and lasting connection with and trust in a woman with whom I can share a deep and special commitment.

And I do believe in love, but its not what I sense the majority call love. What the majority call love, in my eyes, seems, in reality, to be nothing more than a hormonally-induced form of temporary insanity. Its not love, its a natural high. The so-called Perfect Drug. The chemical cocktail that makes you perceive the partner you’re in so-called love with through rose-colored glasses depletes after roughly two years, if I remember correctly, which in the wake leaves many in a state disturbingly akin to the state one finds oneself in after sobering up after a night of heavy drinking.

What were you thinking? What have you done? How did you get here, in this fucked-up circumstance? Never again, never again, you tell yourself.

Until next time, of course.

You even get withdrawal symptoms from a break-up, sometimes triggering seeming psychosis, but good luck finding a 12-step program for getting yourself off and over this shit. The only available path is becoming a romantic recluse or seeking that same old high through a different dealer.

Mia? She saw me as a potential candidate. A prospective dealer. And yes, in a way, that constituted one hell of a compliment. I was attracted to the girl inside and out, no question, and I always had been, despite her lack of commitment in relationships.

What was clear to me, however, was that she just felt the Need for someone to stand beside her, to be with her, to fill the void she felt. She felt the Need for someone to play the role, to step into the silhouette-shaped hole that her former boyfriend had left in her heart. With apologies to Shel Silverstein, she felt the Need for someone to be her Missing Piece.

Someone. Not me, specifically.

There is a huge distinction, in my mind, between Need and Want. Need is slavery. And I don’t mean “slavery” in a kinky, bondage, sub and dom, bottom and top, know-your-safeword, playfully dark kind of way. No, Need is something vital, or which you feel is vital, to your corporeal or psychological survival. Its the drive to satisfy Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Its something you can’t live without, something instinctive, something compulsory.

Want, to my mind, has more meaning attached to it, and therein resides something I might call true love. You aren’t a slave, you don’t need this, you are free from it, you could live without it and you know it — yet despite all that, you Want it.

You aren’t dependent, you’re independent. You don’t feel the Need for someone to play the role of your Missing Piece, you Want a specific individual to be a companion on your life’s journey.

I sure as fuck don’t want someone who feels the Need for somebody, anybody to fill their void. If anything, I Want someone who Wants me — me, specifically — by their side.

So I turned her down. And she cried. And I felt horrible. I haven’t heard from her since. And I miss her, I have thought of her often over the years, and I realize I’ll probably never see, hear from, or even hear of her again, and that kills me inside, but not for a fucking second do I think I made the wrong choice.

A Kelly Dream & The Shirt (11/3/21 Dream).

In the dream, we’re in some crowded stadium, it seems, sitting beside the bleachers, which we’re separated from by a fence or something. In the crowd, some guy, apparently horrifically drunk, is making a scene when Kelly, the store manager at work, appears from the crowd of people and begins dealing with him in a fearless manner. We’re a short distance away, but she seems to look right towards us, so I wave, but get no response. I then feel the kind of embarrassment I typically feel when that happens.

Upon awakening and remembering the dream scene, I’m rather curious, as this is the second dream she’s featured in as of late.

When I arrive at work, I find that Kelly is there. Though I can’t be certain when, exactly, it came to my attention, shortly after clocking in I realized that she was wearing The Shirt.

That’s when shit got a little awkward.

I respect Kelly as both a boss and an individual, at least from what little I’ve discerned with respect to her personality and personal life. She’s strong with respect to character, as was expertly displayed on a video taken at our fast food joint that went viral. In dealing with an insane customer who stepped behind counter, screamed at her, even ripped her mask off her face, she remained calm and controlled.

She possesses physical strength as well, however. Steve has her on SnapChat, and he’s shown me several photos and videos she’s sent out, one of which depicted her expertly wailing her fists onto the skin of a punching bag.

She’s cross-eyed and has Crones Disease, as well as a host of other medical problems, and despite frequent sick-days in which she’s essentially incapacitated, she managed to climb up the ladder to become store manager. She’s bought a house and despite her salary struggles with her bills, but she’s been making it so far.

She has also endured a lot of pain in her life. To start with, she is a lesbian with a trans boyfriend for whom she apparently feels great love — and this despite the fact that he has frequently been verbally and physically abusive towards her. She has gone out of her way to make it work, and consistently, and so far as I know that struggle is ongoing. I will never say such a relationship is healthy, but it clearly requires a lot of willpower on her part to not only endure that emotional and physical pain but to see beyond it and strive to soar to that beyond on the wings of hope, patience, and enormous effort.

And she’s hot.

I can ignore the fact that she’s so fucking attractive most of the time, however. Until she takes off her work shirt in the summer right as her shift ends and sports her tank top, top half of her figure revealing itself, sleeves of tattoos exposed. Or until she wears that fucking shirt.

The Shirt.

Jet-black, button-down, smooth-looking, hugging her figure perfectly, almost like yoga pants for the wonderful world above the equator. Revealing yet concealing her breasts, her waist. Its painfully hot, and the effort I invest in averting my eyes whenever she wears it is almost exhausting despite the surge of energy summoned when my eyes inevitably rebel.

At one point I feared I looked at her too long and from then on tried to keep my distance from her. I’m certainly not put to make the woman uncomfortable.

I really, really need to get laid.

A Wasteland of Damaged Children.

Outside, I was sweeping the lot when a woman and a young girl exited the door.

“Its cold outside,” says the little girl. She was right, too.

“Shut up and get in the car,” barks back the woman at high volume. “This all turned into a shitshow because you don’t know how to be respectful in public.”

While there was clearly more to the story, I was astounded by the woman’s hypocrisy and her utter lack of self-awareness. I mean, barking at a kid like that in public doesn’t qualify as respectful in my book, at the very least, and this bitch had clearly been alive much longer than the child she was scolding for allegedly doing the same damn thing.

It made me think about the kids I work with — older kids, of course, anywhere from fifteen to seventeen — and how so many of them have parents that perhaps became parents too young or just should have never had been parents at all.

I’ve heard the hoops some couples have to jump through, the qualifications they have to meet in order to adopt a child — and yet any two idiots who can hardly take care of themselves, let alone another living being, can engage in some genital-mashing and produce one all by themselves, no qualifications necessary so long as the biological equipment is in working order.

There’s something incredibly fucked up about that, methinks.

Both Emory and Bonnie have a horrific home situation, making them the second young couple I’ve known in recent years that make me profoundly happy that they found and hang on to one another. They currently live with Emory’s mother, who certainly doesn’t sound like she’ll be getting the mother of the year award, but it sounds infinitely better than Bonnie’s home situation.

Her mother’s an addict, and her father had enough of it recently, left her, and moved out of state. Bonnie still speaks with them both, and seems to have a decent relationship with her father, but her mother constantly makes her feel like shit, belittles her, and never shows the slightest pride in her daughter’s accomplishments.

More than once a call or text from her has sent Bonnie bawling at work — where the girl honestly amazes me. There’s a little buildup, but the waterworks come on pretty quickly, full-scale, blubbering, ugly crying that breaks your heart, but then she’s done. She’s fine. Good to go. It blows my mind how quickly she bounces back. She doesn’t hold on to her emotions as I do, but rather lets them flow through her, lets herself feel them, and then they’re out of her system.

I could learn from this, for sure. She needs to teach me that trick.

No thanks to either of their parents, they’re preparing to go to college and find an apartment. It’ll honestly be a relief to me once they’re on their own, too. They’re both very grounded, both remarkably level-headed and mature. They should do fine once they’re freed from the shackles of being minors.

Then there’s Lydia.

She was one of those quiet, introverted people who seemed reluctant to speak when she first started working with us, and I always feel it my duty to get such people to open up a bit, maybe laugh, at least give them one person to have a verbal exchange with. I found I truly like the girl.

She’s pretty, petite and athletic, and from the very beginning she seemed to be one those people who are goth at heart, even if they didn’t always wear the external trappings. I like those people. A lot. They kind of feel like home to me, and this sense I had of her dark nature only grew as I got to know her.

I learned that she’d had two abusive boyfriends in the past, though her current one seems to be treating her well. Later I would learn that he started off as her drug dealer, then became a fuck buddy, and ultimately what they had evolved into a relationship. I liked that process. Aside from the drug dealer part of it, I have also been through that process. Ages ago, my ex-girlfriend Kate and I started off as fuck buddies and it seamlessly blossomed into the most intense relationship in my life, albeit a short-lived one. I sort of prefer that natural process to the more traditional one.

When she was about ten, her house burnt down and while the family made it out okay, she had some pets who died. Shortly thereafter, she lost her father, then her uncle. Understandably, she suffers from anxiety and depression, but also likely has bipolar disorder, which rather surprised me. I also learned that she’s attempted suicide twice — almost three times, counting the day before she revealed this to me — and that she’s a cutter as well.

Whatever inspired her recent descent and suicide attempt, it in turn inspired her mother to present her with three choices: she could sleep on her mother’s bedroom floor, sleep over with her friend, or stay at a mental institution, where she’d be on suicide watch. She couldn’t be alone, however. She elected to stay with her friend.

The day she had told me about her suicide attempts, she had also gotten on new medication, which was making her feel nauseous, so they let her go home a little early. Her friend — a tall, slender girl — came up to the building riding a skateboard to pick her up.

After I thought they had both left, Lydia came up to me by the sink, where I had been doing dishes, asking me if I had a knife she could borrow. I jokingly asked her who she was going to stab, and she said no one, not yet, so I handed her my box cutter. Evidently her and her friend hadn’t even gotten out of the parking lot when a guy pulled in, passed by them, slammed the car in reverse, drove over the curb, and proceeded to hit on her.

Creepy guys are constantly trying to pick her up, usually through the drive-thru window, where she typically spends her shift.

She told him to just drive away. He said some bitter words and went on his merry way. As for the box cutter, she just wanted to have some means of defense if necessary on her and her friend’s walk home.

After she went back outside, my concern over the fact that I had just handed a girl who cuts herself a box cutter began to weigh heavily on me — that and the fact that my pathetic box cutter wouldn’t provide sufficient protection if indeed they did come across a creeper. So I went out the back door, where I saw Lydia and her friend talking to Diana, another girl I work with, and her mother.

Good, she was still here.

I went into my truck, grabbed my tire iron and handed it to her without saying anything and walked away.

I would never want to be a pretty girl, especially in a cesspool of a town like this.

For that matter, I wouldn’t want to be a kid in today’s world. There are too many parents that shouldn’t be parents, the schools seem more like a prison than anything else, and the planet they’re being left behind is going to be an epic shitstorm thanks to the climate change caused by generations of ignorance.

Hairless (11/11/21 Dream).

In the dream, I had gotten drunk and for some reason elected not only to shave my head, but shave my beard and eyebrows off as well. No stubble, either; it was a smooth shave all around.

I went to work like this, and though one person said they noticed something different about me, I don’t recall anyone else even referencing it. At some point, however, I remember seeing my face from an external vantage point as I was talking with someone and being utterly disgusted with how I looked. Pale, plastic, sickly.

When I finally woke up from the dream, I lifted my face up off the pillow and felt my eyebrows and beard.

“Thank god,” I said to myself before falling back asleep.

Twilight Zone of Politeness.

I don’t need a basket, I tell myself. I certainly don’t need a cart.

No more than ten minutes later, I’m walking my way to the register with two armfulls of my food for the week. My mind is elsewhere, like usual: wandering, daydreaming, contemplating. On my way, a large woman, her own arms far more loaded with things, lets me pass, which was quite nice of her. It doesn’t hit me until I’m before the register, the lady from behind the counter approaching, the large woman with more things than me in her arms right behind me: this seems kind of unfair, and it makes me feel like kind of a dick.

I turn behind me and say, “Actually, you can go ahead of me if you’d like.”

Instantly it feels awkward, and I’m not at first certain why.

“I’m fine,” she says. “Really.”

When she says it, its in a tone I might expect if I had been pushing her to go in front of me for five minutes as she kept telling me it was okay for me to go first. She feels angry, or at least I feel she feels that way. She makes me feel like my offer was somehow an insult to her.

It instantly reminded me of a brief moment that occurred when I stopped by Circle K on way home from work last week. One of the women who works there was approaching the door just as I was, but I got there just slightly before her, and so on instinct I held the door open for her. As I did so, she proceeded to walk through, but not before giving me this loaded look — again, the underlying tone seemed to be anger, as if I had somehow insulted her.

It seems as though I’m slipping into the twilight zone of good manners.

Look, I know some people don’t like to be helped, as it communicates to them not only that you perceive them as incapable of doing things on their own but that you perceive yourself as so much more capable than they are. They see you being polite as a form of pity, as a means of feeding your ego as you diminish them. And I get it.

Reading Nietzsche helped me get it, actually.

Its like this guy who used to be a regular at work. He rode a motorized wheelchair and always wore a helmet, which would allow himself to use his head to help him open doors and accomplish other, similar feats. When I held open the door for him he was polite about it and always thanked me, but it was clear that he felt insulted.

He wanted to be as independent and self-sufficient as possible, and I respect that. I unintentionally got in the way of that, but I always did this. For people in wheelchairs, crutches, or with strollers, I’ll go a distance to open the door for them, but if anyone is right behind me or approaching the same door I am, I’ll either hold it open for them and let them go first or hold open the door behind me. It could be anybody. Its not out of pity.

In any case, these last two encounters felt remarkably different. Something else was going on here. I know many might accuse me of looking too deeply into this, and I considered that, but I honestly don’t think that’s the case.

Has what was once considered polite turned into insulting behavior? Did I miss a meeting?

The Guardian of Souls Strikes Again.

Maybe a week ago, I walk into work, go to the restroom, and when I come back out, the managers are laughing their asses off. Clearly I missed something.

Evidently the customer who got kicked out of the store a year or two ago, the one who proclaimed to Dustin that he was the Guardian of Souls, the one who looks like the caveman off the Geico commercials and who I absolutely loathe and delighted in kicking out, had come inside, ordered food, and sat down in one of the booths. The managers were talking amongst themselves about how lucky he was that I wasn’t here, and apparently once I walked inside and turned to go to the bathroom he looked at one of the managers, looked back at the bathroom, quickly threw away his trash and then bolted out the door like his loincloth was on fire.

“I’ve never seen someone move so fast in my life,” one of the managers later told me.

I detest that guy to such an extreme degree its actually rather absurd. Yes, I know he has mental issues, nothing could be clearer to me, but as I believe that one guy from Saturday Night Live put it, “Being crazy is no excuse to be an asshole.”

For the last week, he’s been hanging outside the building, and if he sees me outside smoking, he turns the opposite direction. If I see him inside at the counter and he’s already in the process of having his order taken, he adverts his eyes and hangs his head, dreadlocks of unwashed hair hanging obscuring his face, evidently in hopes that I don’t recognize him.

For awhile, he began coming in mornings, ordering food and behaving himself, so the store manager said I shouldn’t kick him out anymore. That got to me. In every other case I’ve hated kicking people out; kicking out this bag of shit actually brought some joy to my life.

Today, one of the managers tell me, the other manager tells me, coworkers inform me, that he’s in the building — all of them within the space of about two minutes. Everyone seemed eager for me to kick this piece of shit out. I went up to the shift manager, Steve, and asked him if I even had the authority to kick him out anymore. He confirmed. Recently, unbeknownst to me, the morning manager had kicked him out for doing something — standing on the table, from what I understand. So he was officially banned from the store yet again.

I saw him out in the dining room, sitting so his back faced me, and that’s when I saw he had ordered food. Frustrated, I walked away. The human potato, who was working register, had taken his order, apparently not informed that he should deny him. I was sure to clear that up.

As soon as caveman was done with his food, he promptly left. Inevitably, he’ll be back.

And now I’ll be ready. The war was officially back on and I’m ready to kick him out of the store and back into the Stone Age. No more Oogabooga bullshit.

This Yabbadabba dipshit is going down.

A Haunting, Evening Stroll.

10/22/21

It took me forever today to stop watching YouTube videos, get up off my ass, and do some grocery shopping, but I finally got motivated around seven thirty. Rather than drive the truck the short distance, I decided to walk there and enjoy the cool, evening air, which I supposed I needed.

Taking a right out the parking lot of my apartment complex, I walked down the sidewalk, passed by some houses, then the cemetery. As I was approaching the short tunnel beneath the bridge, I looked across the street at a house that had put up some pretty cool Halloween decorations, but I kept getting distracted by an elderly, roundish fellow headed in my direction on the sidewalk, carrying grocery bags. At first I thought maybe he was having an aggressive talk with someone on the phone, but as I came closer, it became apparent this was not the case. He was holding a conversation with someone who wasn’t there — or some disembodied being I couldn’t see, for all I fucking know, but it didn’t seem to me that he was merely talking aloud to himself. As I got within a foot or two of him, he finally seemed to notice me, or so I thought he did, and I greeted him with a warm smile, a nod of the head, and a “how you doing?” He said, “oh!” as he stepped aside, returned my smile, nodded, and said, “thank you.”

‘Twas a little strange, but given the town I work in and the strange people that inhabit it, I am well-adapted to such encounters at this point.

So I proceeded to enter the short, dark tunnel, and as I do so I hear something buzzing, like electricity. I continue to walk my way through it and suddenly, out of nowhere, as I’m about two-thirds the way through, my adrenile surges, my anxiety heightens, and I get the overwhelming, terrifying feeling that someone is right behind me. I actually turn around and look over my shoulder just as I exit the tunnel, but no one is there. Until I cross the street, however, that sense that someone is tailing me still lingers nonetheless.

I get my groceries and then begin the walk back, entering the tunnel yet again just as a train begins to go over the bridge above. All is well until, yet again, I’m about two thirds the way through, when the same thing happens. Adrenaline surges. Anxiety breaks through the ceiling. Someone is behind me, following me, and the sense is remarkably intense. I don’t remember if I bothered looking behind me as I did on the first occasion, but the feeling of being followed remained with me for most of the way home this time.

I know of the hypothesis that electromagnetic fields (EMF) and infrasound may explain many ghost sightings, as being sensitive to such fields can cause, for instance, the sense that one is being watched. Perhaps the electric buzzing I heard on my first walk through the tunnel — and likely also on my way back, though I didn’t notice it over the sound of the train plowing by on the bridge above me — may suggest one or the other was the true culprit here. After all, I am reasonably convinced that I constitute what is known as a Hypersensitive Person (HSP), as I’m hypersensitive in nearly every conceivable respect, so perhaps EMF hypersensitivity is just one more aspect of that.

Fucked if I know.

And maybe the two dreams as of late that I’ve had regarding dead people, the most recent of which was this morning, provided a context that led me to interpret the sensations I had when walking through the tunnel in just the way that I did. Not to mention that its Halloween season.

Even so, I find it curious that on both occasions the sensation came on abruptly and amazingly strong only when I was about two-thirds the way through the tunnel, yet it wasn’t in the same area within the tunnel, but rather at equal distance from opposite ends. I find it hard to believe that the source of the EMF would be moving, particularly in that specific fashion.

And then there was that roundish, elderly fellow arguing with someone that wasn’t there — or someone I couldn’t see — just as he was walking towards me from the direction of the tunnel. Did he experience it, too, perhaps more profoundly than I, and was he seeing and talking to an entity I only felt, however profoundly? Or was he even more sensitive to EMF or infrasound than I was, and so his experience was more multifaceted and intense than my own?