Anxious, Depressed, Jealous Child.

I overheard it the other day, but wasn’t entirely certain it was the case. When I went to change the trash in the break room shortly after clocking in today, however, I saw Brodie sitting there, ear buds in his ears, in civilian cloths. I asked him what was up and he said he was just waiting for his friend, Kara, to get off work.

Confirmation.

What perplexed me immediately was their considerable differences in energy, as insane as that will make me sound. Though I like Brodie, he seems to have that parasitic kind of energy that drains me if I’m around him too long and generally makes me feel like my skin’s crawling. Back when he first started here, it made matters worse that he had no respect for personal space. Kara? She’s a fucking psychic furnace. Her energy just glows. If I can feel his drain, I find it difficult to believe she can’t, and yet she must enjoy hanging out with the kid. They hung out yesterday and hung out again today.

Shortly thereafter, Manager Steve — Brodie’s father — told me how the two of them had gotten high yesterday and how after Brodie had come home, he did shots of vodka.

I mentioned to Steve, absentmindedly, how I couldn’t even get her to say hi to me, and I didn’t get it. She speaks to Marjie. She hangs out with Brodie. Did I give off a creeper vibe? Was she put off by my vibe but was entirely okay with Brodie’s? Am I just bat shit insane?

I told Steve not to mention it to anyone and he promised he wouldn’t. He did, of course, mention it to her within the span of an hour, though assured me she hasn’t heard him, or she would have said something.

Personally, I suspect that he’s full of shit.

Just before her and Brodie left, Kara was crossing a corner at the same time I was and said, “excuse me.” Or something like that. I was too shocked that she had spoken words to me to be able to process it appropriately.

I woke up today anxious, and now on top of that I feel self-loathing and depressed as fuck, and I don’t even know why. I got what I wanted. She talked to me. So am I jealous?

I’m such a fucking child.

The Unopened Book.

Three times within the first hour and a half of my shift people approached me to talk or simply to spill to me.

First, there was Mr. Potato Head, who shared with me how his father had recently died, though he didn’t seem to convey or even feel much emotion regarding it, which perplexed me.

Second was the blond-haired girl who used to date Steve Jr., who no longer works here. She stopped her huge truck just after pulling into the lot when she saw me, rolled down the passenger window and began engaging me in small talk, mostly telling me how she had just gotten her licence.

After I walk in the door after sweeping the lot, a redhaired girl, sister of Yeti Man, a kid who was working front register at the time, began talking with me immediately. It was actually quite strange; it was like I had just awakened in the midst of our conversation. She began telling me about how she’s going to dump her present boyfriend, who never speaks with her, and go out with this kid who she’s been talking with who gave her 20$ to buy a pair of earbuds. She even showed me a text, laughing as she did so, in which he called her “mommy” and she called him “daddy.”

I should add that I hardly know this girl.

None of this bothers me. People are interesting, specially when they skip the boring small talk and launch right into the depths or the truly meaningful to them.

Then there’s Kara. Short, gothic, viper eyes, and an odd and sexually charged body-glow. I remain incredibly intrigued with her, and not only because I find her aggressively hot, either. She keeps getting curiouser and curioser, and this one, the egg I’d love to crack, the mystery I’d really like to solve, the puzzle I’m dying to put together, I can’t even get her to say hi or look me in the eyes.

It was the same deal today, when she was by the time clock waiting to clock out with some others as I was waiting to clock in. There was discussion amongst the group, but she entirely dodged any direct communication with me.

I passed her as she was leaving, though, and without looking at her this time I said. “See ya, Kara.”

I expected nothing in return. She did not disappoint.

Later in the eve, as I’m cleaning the fryers, Marjie tells me that she heard that Kara had a crush on somebody who worked here — a girl, it turns out, who Marjie later discovered was herself — but added that she didn’t think she swung that way.

“Do it,” I tell her. “Play that brillo harmonica. And take notes. I want to know everything.”

She laughed, but then more seriously confessed, “I wouldn’t know what to do.”

“I’ve got more than a few ideas,” I promised her.

Honestly, hearing about an in-depth conversation would be enough. Today really drove it home, too, with so many others compulsively opening up to me as she remained stubbornly closed, as always.

It was as if every book in the library was flying off the shelves, landing in my lap, opening up for me without prompting — accept that one, alluring, gothic-looking book. A leather-bound book of secrets resting alone on a high shelf with a lock on it like some pre-teen’s diary. That one remains ominously still, locked up in determination, teasing my obsessively curious psyche from afar.

If I can’t get the book to open up to me, perhaps Marjie might at least be able to provide a second hand sneek-peak.

Maybe cliff notes.

Something.

A Confusing Cocktail of Psychoempathy & Assholiness.

After I lock the doors, Marjie, the assistant manager, points to the two guys I saw enter the building while I was smoking in my car. I go up to them, delivering the usual line.

“Sorry to bother you guys, but the dining room’s closed.”

They take a moment, then get up to leave. The beardy guy exits and then the wild-eyed guy that looked like he was epically fucked up on something then approaches the counter and speaks to Jerry.

Jerry’s simple — a little slow, or so it seems. He’s a skinny boy with a pot belly. His parents, or at least his mother, was a drug addict and didn’t cease her tendencies as she was pregnant. Though he still knows his parents, he lives with his grandmother, and his check from the government and check from working in our little fast food cess pool goes to pay her rent. Or his parents outstanding bills.

To me, it seems like the kid is used, abused, and taken advantage of at every turn. It doesn’t seem to bother him, but it pisses me the fuck off. He has empathy. He’s forgiving. He’s a hard worker. He is an all-around good kid that deserves more respect than he ever seems to receive and he’s so accepting of it that it drives me insane with anger.

Wild-eyed guy says, essentially, that both him and beardy guy are homeless, and that while he’s probably got a place to stay for the night, his beardy compadre does not. I couldn’t hear clearly what the guy said after that, but context clues I caught made it clear that he was using guilt to try and manipulate Jerry into letting the beardy guy stay in the restaurant to stay warm and maybe give him a place to stay for the night.

That’s not fair, man. You’re basically asking Jerry to sacrifice his job, his home. Your request mat very well constitute a threat to his very survival.

If he gets fired, where will he work? If he gets kicked out of his home, where will he stay?

Ever-apologetic, Jerry kindly told the guy he couldn’t help him, that the store was closed and he wouldn’t be able to stay inside. Predictably, in response, the guy apologized in that way people do when they’re trying to manipulate you through guilt and they’ve failed; when they’re trying to get you to reconsider.

I was worried. For a second. But rather than caving, Jerry assured him that asking was okay. That he simply couldn’t offer assistance.

I was so proud of the kid. And so angry at the wild-eyed guy.

And I’m sure that I sound at least 50% asshole right now, perhaps so, so much more, but I’ve been hardened through experience. Over sixteen years of working in this town has killed my empathic naivete, hardened me, lessened my trust in people in general. Just judging someone kills me and some people are evidently perfectly comfortable taking you for all you’re worth. They don’t bat an eyelash or give a single, solitary fuck about your own well being.

This wild-eyed motherfucker could have been sincere, and at the very least he seemed to be with respect to his friend, but he still was playing dirty, trying to instill guilt and shame to manipulate an innocent.

I want to believe in humanity. I want to trust people. I want to be that guy I used to be — the one that would see a car pulled over at the side of the road with their hazard lights on, slow down, roll down the window and ask the person or people if everything was okay. If they needed a ride, needed to call somebody. I want to be the guy that used to let people bum cigarettes willynilly, or even answer phone calls when he didn’t recognize the number. I’ve been that guy, though, and that guy has been fucked over more than once and had an embarrassingly long list of close calls.

I want to believe in humanity, but I’m sad to say that I just don’t anymore. I have some hope for human potential, but for the most part it has remained in latency, disturbingly, disappointingly and depressingly resistant to manifestation.

After wild eyes left, I cleaned the bathroom, took out trash, and when I saw Gus has orders in the kitchen, I went to help. Margie was already back there, but I put on my gloves and helped out anyway. All of my own duties were complete and I was sure she was going to send me home, so I might as well make myself useful for a few more minutes.

So I did. And then she sent me home.

Liberation! At last!

On the way home, I stopped by the usual Circle K. Walking in the door, I wiped my feet on the carpet as always, at least making the attempt to not dirty up the floor, which was often swept or even mopped by that time of the eve. Though I still did it, it was a little pointless this evening, as the salt from the sidewalk outside coated the carpet like gravel, so much so that I could hardly see the red color beneath the milky, salty, blue-white.

After getting my beer from the cooler, I walked up to pay for my shit. There was one tall guy in front of me but no one behind the counter.

It wasn’t twenty seconds till the guy turned his head to the side to say to me, “Where’s self-checkout when you need one?”

Sometimes when it’s been dead, the girl who typically works nights is off sweeping or cleaning the bathrooms and doesn’t see customers at first, so I figured she’d be along in a moment, and she was.

I was surprised how irritated it made me, though, him saying that and all. I wasn’t sure how long he had been waiting until I stepped up behind him, so as far as I know his impatience might have been justified, but self-checkout?

C’mon, man.

Fuck self-checkout. In the pooper. With a meaty, wet slap on the ass for good measure.

I don’t work at Circle K any more than I work at Walmart or Giant Eagle, which is precisely why I avoid self-checkout when shopping at those places. I’d avoid them here, too, if they had them. I am with Bill Burr 100% on this one.

People might suck, but I’d rather deal with them than a machine.

And yes, I know advanced, conscious AI may be reading this. I’d be among the first to go given an AIpocalypse anyway, though, so fuckity-fuck-fuck it.

When she walks behind counter, her hands lean down towards the cartons of cigarettes, which suggests to me that he comes in here often. She asks if he wants some specific brand right off the bat, too, which reinforces my belief.

Without answering her question, he rattles off something like, “One carton of Traffic 100s and one carton of Traffic Menthols. The box is green.”

It was like he was irritated but not surprised she couldn’t read his mind and begrudgingly spoke the words dispassionately from some goddamned invisible teleprompter. His tone of voice already had that uppity, entitled tone about it, and with the additional robotic element he threw in here in this moment, it was just unbearable. He was kind of subtlety being an asshole to her, I felt, and I began mean-mugging the back of his highrise head because of it. She was a nice lady and didn’t deserve this needless kind of attitude.

Fuck you, dude. Fuck you.

She puts the two cartons on the counter, and thats when he looks back at me. Full turn. Not a half-turn like before.

“Will that be all for you?”

Wha… ?

I was taken aback and it took me a moment to respond. “Yeah,” I said, in a manner that conveyed how perplexed I was. He told me to throw it on the counter. I asked him if he was sure, and when he said yes, I did so. And thanked him.

What in Bizarro world is going on here?

He said something to her about trying to do this once a day, but I was too befuddled to hear him entirely.

He paid and said to me, “Enjoy your night,” before leaving, and I thanked him again before moving towards the counter. She handed me my bag with my two 24s and said, “Have a good night,” with a look on her face that seemed to convey as much surprise and confusion as I felt my own did.

“You too,” I said, and left.

Honest Dick.

From the moment Gus clocked in today, I knew it was going to be a day filled to the brim with nonstop bitching, and indeed it was. I want to be patient with him, but my patience has worn thin. I have enough bitching going on in my own cranium, and while I will often express that frustration verbally, I typically prefer to do it through the medium of writing.

Writing is less intrusive than speaking. If you don’t like a piece of writing, you don’t have to read it. If you don’t like what someone has to say or how they’re saying it, though, you don’t exactly have a mute button.

My kingdom of emptiness and nothing for a goddamn mute button.

Gus has often told me, when I finally turn to him and bitch about his bitching, that he needs to bitch because if he keeps it in, he’ll explode, but his constant bitching constitutes rapid machine gunfire no one can escape. It doesn’t seem much better. And its always about the same stupid shit and the intensity of his emotional spree killing never depletes, not a fucking smidgen. So how is it helping?

So today, back by the sink, I try to enlighten him to the fact that he is indeed being a dick. That he never gives anyone a chance, never observes, never questions, just labels them and then he feels justified in talking to them in a bitter manner. Then he says it. The shit that I’m tired of with him more than anything.

“I’m not a dick,” Gus proclaims, “I’m honest.”

Personally, I’ve grown rather tired of this line, which several have thrown my way over the course of my life.

I look at it in this way:

Communication is about contents, packaging, and delivery. Contents are what you think or feel or percieve and desire to convey. Packaging involves the articulation of these contents in words. Delivery is the manner in which you transmit those words to others.

Honesty only requires sincere contents — not bullshit, not lies, not things intended to deceive and manipulate another. And for all I know, Gus is being honest. His issue is with packaging and delivery. It is his default style of packaging and delivery that makes him a dick.

“I’m not a dick, I’m just honest…”

Bullshit.

The truth of the matter is that this isn’t an either/or circumstance. You can be honest and be a dick simultaneously, Gus, and if you can’t help but be a dick when you’re honest, then you’re honestly just a dick.

Amputatio (1/19/20 Dream).

I was at my parents house, upstairs by the stairway, and it seemed very brightly lit. From downstairs I could faintly hear what sounded like the voice of my little niece, though I was unable to discern what she was saying. I then walked into the room formerly occupied by my sister, Eve, before she moved out and found her sitting on what appeared to be a couch or a futon right above a window. Much like the hallway, it seemed considerably bright in there, though not unpleasantly so. As her and I talked rather casually, I suddenly noticed that she appeared to have only one leg. Immediately concerned and rather perplexed, I promptly asked her about it, and her face became flushed and her eyes began welling up with tears as she explained to me how she had lost it in a car accident. My heart truly went out to her, I felt so fucking bad for her, so I stood up, leaned forward and gave her a big hug just before I woke up.

Typically I have some idea of what a dream might mean, but I was at a total loss when it came to this one, so I consulted Dr. Google and contemplated the supposed meanings of the various dream symbols and went with what made sense to me.

Strangely, I’ve never considered what the body itself might represent in a dream, but it allegedly represents your conscious personality, typically referred to as one’s ego. This is at the very least consistent, as houses tend to symbolize the mind and cars symbolize either the body or ones motivation, and in dreams, as in life, we inhabit both — just as we inhabit the mind and body.

As for the element of amputation, the word apparently comes from the Latin “amputatio,” which means, fittingly enough, “to cut away.” In dreams, then, amputation suggests that you were cut off from something, or that you accidentally lost something, and whatever specific body part was lopped off represents the particular loss being referenced. Legs symbolize one’s ability to “stand on their own two feet” — to be in control of one’s life, to gain support and be able to navigate through it. It symbolizes confidence, too — being able to “stand up for oneself.” An amputated leg would suggest a loss of this support, control, confidence, and ability to navigate through life.

Given that my sister in the dream explained how she had lost her leg in a car accident, it would seem that whatever was lost, it was lost accidentally. As cars are often symbols of either the body or of motivation, or so it has seemed to be in the case of my dreams, it might suggest the accidental loss of the support one used to depend on, the confidence, control and sense of direction one formerly had, leaving one unable to stand on their own two feet.

Hugging as a consequence of empathy for such a circumstance might signify someone else offering another form of support, albeit emotionally in this case.

Is this a loss of my own, however, or a loss I sensed in my sister, or whatever she might represent? Or have I totally botched up trying to interpret this dream?

Over the weekend, I hung out with Moe, and in our hours-long conversation amputation was briefly brought up, so perhaps the subject was “primed” for me psychologically.

Stranger, however, was what the assistant manager saud to me, right before her shift ended today. Unprompted, as I hadn’t spoken to her regarding the dream, she tells me about a guy she waited on the other day who she suddenly noticed had two fingers. This in turn reminded me of a guy who comes in, a guy uve seen several times as if late. He has crutches and an amputated leg. When I mentioned this to her, the guy in the first drive thru booth overheard us and excitedly told me that he had actually seen the guy today. I added that I always felt bad when he came in, as unusual things attract my attention in a very intense way and no matter how hard I tried I always felt myself eyeballing his stump.

Once I realized the coincidental connection — or is synchronicity amore fitting term? — I was rather intrigued. After all, had it happened before I had the dream, I certainly would have thought that it provided some inspiration for it. And while this isn’t necessarily a paranormal,instance, and therefore doesn’t qualify as an experience I should document in,another blog of mine, which is dedicated to such exlerience, it dud make me think of the things JW Dunne spoke about in his 1927 book, An Experiment With Time, which dealt with precognstive dreams.

His thought was that were all precognative, and that this is evidenced by our dream life. Just as an experience yesterday may inspire a dream tonight, he claims, an experience the day following the dream might have just the same degree of influence.

At this point in my life, I can do nothing more or less than shrug.

After all: who can say for sure? Who the fuck knows?

Dude, Where’s My Mind?

As has been happening a lot lately, I got the opportunity to leave work half an hour early tonight. 10:30. Logically, I suppose I should elect to stay and make a bit more money, but as usual all my shit was done, I’d helped everyone else about as much as I could, and was going insane with boredom. This is pretty much a nightly affair.

So of course, I said, yes. Hell yes. Sweet release. Long-awaited liberation from the confines of my dreaded fast food place of employment.

I had to stop by the Circle K on my way home to get gas, though, and as I pulled in, I see that there’s perhaps four other cars getting gas.

This was suboptimal.

Being a rather anxious fellow, I decide to fill myself up at the gas pump at the far end, which was clearly a vacant area. As I’m driving towards it, though, I see that the slightly closer one — one that had been formerly obscured by the other cars — was actually vacant as well, so on impulse I pull in there instead.

Anything to save time. I just want to get this over with so I can go home.

So I park, step out, lock the door for when I go inside, slide my bank card into the pump machine, press the buttons I need to press and, tada, I’m ready. I have my hand on the gas gun, ready to draw quicker than Eastwood in a duel at dawn in a dust-caked Old West town, when I look back at my car.

I parked the wrong way. The gas cap is on the other side.

Sweet mother of fuck.

So I unlock my door, start it up, pull out, turn around, and pull back in. I unscrew the cap, grab the gun, slide it into the hole like a dispassinate, overworked, disillusioned porn star aching to get it in and out and in and out and non-fucking over with when the gas pump monitor reads something like:

TRANSACTION CANCELLED.
TIMED OUT.
YOUR FAULT, DUMBASS.
GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER.
START OVER.

Frustrated even more, I go through the process again.

Even when shit goes relatively smoothly, like when I park the right way the first time and stuff, I still loathe the thought and actual activity of stopping to get gas, particularly because I can’t just lock the gas-gun in the gas-hole and wait in the car.

No, I have to hold it the entire time, because for some reason with this car when the gun’s on any available setting it clicks off in a few moments because it reads as full. So as a consequence I have to lean against my car, squeezing the trigger, but not too tightly, as I watch the digital readout. As I watch as my gas tank slowly becomes full as my bank account simultaneously, yet far more quickly, becomes depleted.

Its as irritating as it is depressing.

Once its finally full, I go into the gas station to check my bank account on the ATM to ensure my check finally went through at the bank.

It did. Yay. Good news.

On my way to the cooler to get two 24s of Labatt Ice I see that my favorite cashier is working tonight. She’s a big girl and has something akin to what is popularly referred to as Resting Bitch Face, but rather than “certain bitch” it could also be interpreted as depression, extreme sleep deprivation, or an entire lack of passion for life at all.

As I don’t judge books by their covers and I always like receiving reinforcement that this tendency isn’t niave, I was quite pleased to eventually find that she’s actually an interesting, funny and reasonably intelligent individual. Our relatively brief exchanges tend to lift my spirits, particularly after a shitty day at work.

When we have them at work at the end of the night and I remember, I’ll often steal her some pies, which always seems to elevate her mood.

So I get to the counter with my beers and, like usual, see that the last person that came to the counter failed to take the second of time it required to look at the customer-facing monitor, see the rate-your-cashier questionnaire, and give credit where credit is due.

Before she rings up my beer, I press the “EXCELLENT” option.

Though I can’t for the life of me remember exactly what she said, it was essentially her act of reading my face and humorously referencing how I clearly had a bad day.

I respond with: “You know how long I’ve had my car?”

“I’d imagine a long time,” she says. “I always see you driving and wave like a creepy old lady.”

“You’re not creepy for waving,” I say dismissively. “I’m just ignorant and don’t see you. But did you happen to see me at the gas pump just now, parked on the wrong side, like a moron?”

She laughs, telling me no, she hadn’t.

As we go on talking, I slide my card to pay for the beers and I’m confused about something the card reader says — and express that confusion out loud. And I soon realize I shouldn’t be so confused, I shouldn’t be confused at all, as its saying the same thing it says every time I use it, its just that I’m so pissed off at myself at this point my brain is frazzled as fuckity-fuck, moving too fast and drifting too far away from my external environment for me to maintain focus on what I’m actually doing in the Here and Now or access relevant information.

As I finally press the button I need to on the damn thing, I confess that I hadn’t even intended to use my card, as I’ve got sufficient cash in my wallet.

“The gas thing really fucked you up,” she says, laughing harder.

“Birth fucked me up,” I clarify as I press “EXCELLENT” on the rate-your-cashier questionnaire on the monitor again, bid her adu through the laughter of her and the unseen guy behind me, pass through the doors, get in my car, and get the bloody fucking hell home.

Sex & Struggles.

Once upon a time I was under the naive impression that the desire for sex typically diminished with age, but I’m beginning to expect that, if this is true at all, its likely due to the fact that throughout your life you get it all out of your system by actually engaging in fucking. Then, once you’re in your 40s, perhaps, all that sexual energy has been discharged and the desire diminishes.

This is just not how it appears to be working with me, and maybe its because I’m a really late bloomer when it comes to damn near everything, I don’t know. Maybe watching porn has exacerbated the desire, maybe I was just too distracted with all the crazy shit in high school for my instinctive needs to properly blossom back then.

Given the choice, I’m not sure if I would elect to satisfy the desire often enough to keep my head clear or just extinguish the desire altogether, just banish that distraction once and for all.

At least one of the reasons this is on the forefront of my mind today is because I saw that girl again. Kara, as I called her in my other blog. We’ve never spoken, despite my feeble attempts, but the energy around her seems unusually sexually charged. And she’s the right kind of goth. She has piercings, tattoos, and these sharp, predatory eyes.

The last two times I’ve seen her — the only two times I’ve seen her — she’s felt angry, borderline enraged. Today she seemed a bit softer, lighter, happier, and though we still didn’t talk, I sensed some attention and curiosity in her toward me right as she was leaving, just as I was clocking in.

This is confusing.

And maybe I’m just delusional; the way things in my life tend to work, I’ll never know.

Though my curiosity about her is rather vast, my mind keeps wrapping me in sexual fantasies regarding her more than anything. It just gets tiring. This kind of interest rarely leads to anything and I could be focusing on so much more productive things.

It was so much easier back when I never cared about sex, didn’t feed the desire. It was also so much easier during those rare periods in which I actually had sex and was busy as a bee making up for lost time.

Either is better than this tense, agonizing limbo I’ve let myself remain in now — and for my longest stretch yet.

Houdini I Am Not.

Ever try to open the door of your bathroom from inside one day and, after the door opens, the handle comes off in your hands? Good thing the door opened first, right? Then, rather than promptly call your apartment complex to send over the maintenance guy, you just put the handle down on your nearby dresser and, lazy ass you are, you’re merely careful not to shut your bathroom door for over a week — until, one Tuesday afternoon, as you’re preparing to get in the shower before work, you suddenly realize you’ve shut the door behind you and, after calling off work and trying to MacGyver your way out for over an hour, you finally call your apartment complex, but they won’t pick up for some reason, until they finally do, but only after it’s been ringing for five minutes, and the lady on the other end of the line has a laugh and a half and, with some sympathy, says she’ll send maintenance right over, and the guy opens the door in 30 seconds to find a broken pair of scissors on the sink, a mangled clothes hanger in the corner, and wood chips and little plastic pieces of the piss-yellow plastic door knob scattered around the bathroom, all as you sit on the pot with the lid down, half-naked and draped in a towel, bearing an awesome look of shame upon your face?

Yeah. Didn’t think so. Me either. Swear.

In Dreams, Part II.

He asked me what was wrong, and it eventually came out that, aside from the same old issue of hating my job and not having the courage and ambition to get a new one, I realized how much I missed college. All the mindless minutiae of my job, all the shallow, superficial, mundane, throw-away conversations, it made me miss the intellectual depth and general atmosphere of higher education.

In stark contrast to my high school career, I had done exceptionally well in college, too, at least until that last semester. That was when the college began to push for more group activities. I am ridden with anxiety and work better alone. Even worse, that was when, three to four years in, I had my first public speaking class. The first public speaking I had ever had to do in college, strangely enough. My niave expectations, when I had finally entered college in my thirties because I had finally decided what I wanted to do — to be an English teacher, to major in Integrated Linguistic Arts — was that all the anxiety attacks I had endured while speaking before the class in high school had diminished to nothing, that it was something I had naturally outgrown, that I could do this.

As I said: so bloody niave of me.

During my first day in public speaking class, it was our duty to talk to the person next to us. Then we were to both to get up in front of the class for a mere 20-second speech in which we were to introduce our neighbor.

It was high school all over again.

Cold sweat. Clammy hands. Mouth dry. Throat narrowing to a straw, a coffee stirrer. Trembling. Stomach demons. Forgetting how to breathe. Feeling like I was dying in utter agony without any hope for the release of actual death as a finality. I felt like I had withdrawn into,my head and ultimately became all eyes. Inability to blink. Uncertain where to put my drying, intense eyes. Overwhlelned by their attention and the senses emotions. Overload to the extreme. Feeling as though I actually had to push out the words as I shuddered and slurred my words.

Fucking hell. Truly: fucking hell.

I sat down. I trembled uncontrollably for the rest of the class and never returned.

From there, things fell apart and went straight to hell. Ultimately, I dropped out of college. The dream of being an English teacher died. I defaulted on my loans. I succumbed to the depressing fate of my present fast food shit job. College was a failed endeavor. Maybe when I’m old enough I’ll just sit in on classes, learning for the sake of learning, no credits earned and no career end-goal, but aside from that, this was clearly over.

There was no going back now.

“You can go back,” Moe informed me.

Even with all I owe in loans, I could still go back, he said, but I’d have to follow through this time. I could have enough money through the loans to live off of as I go to college, too, and maybe get a part time job to get some extra cash. I could work at my fast food place of employment only one, two days a week, or, better yet, get a part-time warehouse job.

The thought of reclaiming the sense of focus and structure college provided, the thought of once again being in at least a closer approximation to a creative and intellectual atmosphere again, the thought of landing in a career I might be passionate about, that might provide meaning for me, that would be not merely a job but a desirable way of life and means of societal survival — it inspired hope in me.

Moe had managed it, so he told he in so many words, and there was no reason I couldn’t.

If not that, I could pursue a trade. Some time ago — probably longer than it seems, given the ever-accelerating sense of time as I age — some kids that I had previously known as they hung out at the fast food joint I work at had gotten jobs at a place in town. A place were they were being taught the art of welding. It was good money, and they urged me to leave the oil-infested shithole I was working at and pursue this path as well. They worked rather hard to inspire me, too, but I never made an effort.

As I told this to Moe, I register the possibility in my mind, and as he mentioned, if I did pursue that trade, not only would I get a better job and make considerably more money, but it could also provide another outlet for my artistic endeavors.

I’d failed to consider that.

The weird shit I could weld and even potentially sell…

I had never really explored any three-dimensional art before, and the idea sparked some lovely fires in my mind.

In the meantime, regardless as to whether I pursued a career through college or trade, I would be treading down a path where I would make what at least for me would be a considerable amount of money — money that I had never earned before. Particularly in tandem with my lack of materialism, my simple lifestyle, this would eliminate so many worries that currently plague my nights and days.

No more worries about making rent, paying bills, being able to afford presents for birthdays and Christmas, or fears of my car breaking down and having to rely on the charity of friends or my parents to overcome such obstacles so as to survive.

My parents wouldn’t die worrying about me, either, which is a growing concern of mine at this point.

I could even move out of my apartment and into a trailer or small house closer to my family, closer to the rural, closer to nature, far away from populations denser in more ways than one and the sickening cities and light pollution that serves to obscure the beloved night sky that always serves to feed my soul and soothe my mind.

So with Moe’s help, one could say I opened a trap door in my psyche and peered into forgotten or buried potential — potential I desire to face and explore yet simultaneously fear, as I thus far lack the necessary courage and ambition to tread down those anxiety-inspiring steps.

Why am I so fucking stuck? Why am I so damned afraid?

In Dreams, Part I.

I’m with a group of others in some dark, apparently abandoned house, and I think we were looking for a stairway. In any case, I’m fairly certain I was the one to find the trap door on the bare wood floor and open it. Below, a wooden stairway led down to a dark, furnished basement. It wasn’t cluttered and disorderly, just dark, and I have the sense that no one had been down there for a long time. Even so, there’s something about the thought of going down there that frightens me, something about the vibe of the place that creeps me the fuck out.

I used to recall my dreams frequently, and I would recall large portions of them. Nowadays, I only relatively occasionally remember a single scene if I’m lucky, and I wonder if its because I’ve developed the habit — which as of late I’ve been attempting to break — of immediately going to my phone or my laptop upon awakening and filling my consciousness with videos or social media garbage.

In any case, I failed to do that when I awoke today and, while letting my mind wander as I sat on the pot, I made an effort to recall any fragmentary recollections of dreams I’ve might have had. I knew I’d had a series of dreams last night, after all, so there should be something there within conscious reach, especially considering I’d just woken up.

And that’s when I remembered the scene about the trap door and the hidden basement.

This has been a relatively common dream theme of mine for as long as I can remember. Underground places where I hide are a common element in the context of my recurring doomsday dreams, for instance, though they are by no means specific to that context. To the contrary, the theme of basements, underground installations, sewers, or even hidden rooms is also a common dream theme for me in general — and for people in general, judging from what I’ve read and from the perhaps strangely large amount of dreams people I know have told me.

I know that these hidden areas, as we might collectively call them, represent the unconscious or shadow aspects of the self. And though I’m sure I’ve done it before, I googled the dream meaning of basements today to see if it might help me interpret this dream in particular.

Evidently basements represent the deepest and darkest vistas of the psyche — thoughts, emotions and memories that make us feel uncomfortable, issues that overwhelm us and so remain unresolved because we have yet to consciously and deliberately deal with them.

At the very least, that feels accurate.

I found the trap door, opened it, and saw the basement and the stairway that led to it, but the place seemed dark, uninviting, and unbearably creepy. For all I know, I may have subsequently walked down there, as I only recall this portion of the dream, but I feel that this wasn’t the case. So perhaps this implies that while I sought out and found this part of me, that while I’m aware of this hidden sector of myself, I have yet to summon up the courage to face it and explore it.

Typically when I have such dreams, at least outside the doomsday context, the hidden room or basement is cluttered, however, or at least that’s how I remember it without going back and exploring thr former dreams I documented. It seems like an area that serves as an unregulated dumping ground for forgotten, neglected or buried contents of the mind. Here, however, the place looked orderly, if not strangely clean for what seemed to be a hidden and presumably unoccupied area.

What the fuck might that imply? Its hard to tell for certain.

My mind travels to numerous, faraway places in the course of a day, often entirely unhinged and at best only distantly related to my external activities, so in my attempts to understand my dreams in the past I have often neglected to look at my activities in the previous day for indications of what my dreams the following eve might mean. In an attempt to remedy this neglect and provide, if nothing else, more meat to chew on in attempts to discern this dreams meaning, I decided to reflect on my activities the last two days.

Thursday evening, after arriving home from work, I worked on a post for another blog dealing with my exploration of my recurring UFO dreams which, along with the aforementioned doomsday dreams, are the two recurring dreams, or major recurring dream themes, that have haunted my nocturnal, subjective meanderings since at least as early as the mid-1990s.

I was drinking as I was doing this, which inevitably means I ultimately stopped working on that project for the evening, began writing poetry and smoking pot on top of the booze, and seemingly inevitably ended the night by falling down a rabbit hole of porn.

Within the last two days I also think I finished watching the second season of Lost in Space, and watched some YouTube videos — some informative, others clips of comedians I enjoy in an attempt to boost my mood.

On Friday, I hung out with Moe, and after he left I watched the rest of Inception on Netflix, which I may have started watching the evening earlier, if not days earlier.

The fact that I was exploring my recurring dreams of UFOs the day before and ended the night before the dream by watching Inception, which is about dreams, may certainly hold some significance — as might the conversation Moe and I had.

We hadn’t hung out in two or three weeks. Part of the reason was the holidays, part of the reason was my depressed mood coupled with my socially and emotionally overwhelmed state as of late. It might be due to the season, as while my depression and anxiety isn’t specific to the endless Winternity months, this time of year clearly exacerbates them.

I rarely if ever have enough money to purchase gifts and even when I do I never know what to get anyone and the process of driving and shopping has never been a comfortable one for me. As a consequence, I always feel like such a selfish piece of shit around this time of year. With some help I requested from my youngest sister, I managed to get gifts for my neice and nephew this year, at least, but got everyone else nothing more than stupid fucking cards.

One of the gifts I received from my parents was a draft table thing with a sliding ruler, minus the table part. It has little legs so that you can prop it up at a slant, and it will be perfect for my artwork. I loved it.

Before I left my parents house, as I was moving it so as to put it in my car, I hit a corner of a wall in the kitchen and busted the ruler part of it. I instantly started cussing and damning myself, an outburst of anger I certainly didn’t wish to display before my loved ones — and cuss words which, though fairly natural in my daily discourse, I did not wish to express before my nephew and niece.

I remember looking up after I calmed a tad to find my neice, concerned and curious, had run over. I caught her eyes and felt so fucking ashamed of myself.

Afterward, though it may have just been my imagination, the entire mood of the house seemed to drop. They all seemed tired, drained, miserable. So over Christmas. Eve, the middle child, seemed most miserable of all, though she claimed she felt sick from having eaten too much.

I know what its like to be possessed by the infectious emotions of another, and again, while it might have been my imagination, it seemed to me at the time that my outburst had somehow infected them all.

In any case, it was a shitty way for me to end a holiday get-together.

My clumsiness, my dumb act of damaging a nice gift, and my outburst before my family — my niece in particular — ate me up for days, constantly flashing back in my mind with intense, vicious, self-damning emotions that failed to diminish.

It still crops up, to be honest. I was and am angry at myself on so many levels.

At work, I have been increasingly bored, frustrated, miserable. It culminated in a thought that had cropped up in my mind on Thursday, my last shift until tomorrow, Sunday. In essence, I found myself thinking not only how much I hated this job and my lack of motivation and courage to find a new one, but that I really, really missed college.

This became a subject of conversation between Moe and I when he arrived Friday evening and we continued our tradition of sitting in the living room of my apartment and splitting a six pack as we got lost in conversation for hours — on this occassion, roughly six hours.

Right before the holidays, Moe had finally received his long-awaited notice in the mail that stated he had passed his physical. This meant he could now go down to Texas for over a year to go into training to become a pilot. I couldn’t be happier for him. At around thirty years of age, he had been beating himself up over the fact that he was still living with his parents, and that despite chasing a few potential careers through college he still didn’t know what the bloody fuck he wanted to do with his life and lacked any semblance of direction. For a long time his passion seemed exclusive to music — he is an epic bassist — though he tried to find a more practical means of making a living, of building a life. All his choices of focus in college, however practial, however well within his capabilities given his intelligence, however good a living he would be making given he pursued them straight through to the finish line, never seemed to truly spark the fire of passion within him, so he eventually lost interest. When it came to pursuing being a pilot, however, I could feel the difference. I could see the change, and I had no doubt — indeed, I have no doubt — that this is his path, that he is fully invested, that he will follow it through.

It will suck not having him around for over a year, and I will sincerely miss his company — he is one of a very small minority that I can be myself around in comfort — but I wouldn’t have this any other way. The guy needs this. He deserves it. I want to see him suceed in the pursuit of his passions.

At some point in our conversation he expertly shifted the focus onto me, however, which I simultaneously desired and feared. I had ghosted him the previous weekend and spent the week wondering if I had pissed him off; if, for all I knew, he might already be on his way to Texas. I told him the truth, which is that I had subjected myself to self-imposed isolation and really felt I’d needed it, that it had done me some good, and that is was by no means personal.