Thursday 10 July 2014

An inability to sleep

I am once again cursed by an inability to sleep. I lie down, roasting hot, and wait for my brain to switch off. It doesn't do that. It keeps going. It is a Duracel bunny doing laps in my skull, and that's a tough thing to sleep with.

Squeak.
Squeak squeak squeak.
SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUE-ALRIGHT FINE I'M AWAKE
And so of course to pass the time I'm looking for things to enlighten or amuse me, and I'm drinking hot chocolate because obviously something hot will help me cool down. And so I have, in short order -

  • watched a +CrashCourse video on Rorsach, Freud, Neo-Freudians and other half-remembered things of A-level psychology,
  • read and written up a plan to implement analytics in email correspondence for a potential new freelance client
  • played half a game of chess with someone halfway across the world
  • and read about 70 pages of Confessions of a Sociopath, which is a difficult read purely because the author is a sociopath and therefore boringly self-aggrandising. If she lets a paragraph go past without mentioning her staggering wit, intelligence, etc etc it's a wasted paragraph.
That being said, it's an interesting read. Sociopaths are fascinating creatures who should probably be exterminated, since they live in a world free of consequences, recrimination, and guilt. They are only useful humans in a world which values cut-throat attitudes and an utterly uncaring attitude to others, which is true only of a capitalist worldview which views companies as people and people as resources.

Ah. That's the world we live in. Damn.

I went to see Derren Brown last night, and it was exceptional. I mean it was just as exceptional as the last time I saw it, and I'm still no closer to working out the tricks that I couldn't work out last time - and I'm also still no closer to getting my books signed. It's getting to the point where I'm considering camping out by the theatre with a pen and a Thermos flask.

I won't, because that is a very weird thing to do, but I also wouldn't be lying if I said the thought hadn't crossed my mind. However, I am going to say that if you get a chance do, absolutely and definitively, go and see it. It's glorious, and I'd love to tell you all about it. I seem to have forgotten most of it though. I think there was something with a shark. Or a bit of a shark. And there was a game of chess with a dark hooded figure who seemed to be simultaneously there and not-there, like a veil made of lead.

Skinny, too.

Anyway. It's probably not important.

My new job is still fun but my throat is still sore, and I could do with a whole lot less of that. Still, I've opened up a couple of times and organising the day's plan and stuff is enjoyable. Sweating through my shirt as we frantically sweep up popcorn and rescue discarded packaging from all over the place is less fun, but it's mindless and repetitive and it's actually pretty pleasant to shut off the brain for a bit and just do work.

Speaking of which, I should really give this sleep thing another try. Just lie there and try not to be aware of the fact that for several hours I will be completely unconscious while my mind plays randomly edited together footage of faces I've glimpsed juxtaposed with impossible scenarios, all of which will seem as vividly real as this blog while in this state of being.

Meanwhile my limbs will tense, my organs will slow, and my bones will get slightly heavier.

In short, I'm off to skate perilously close to death but not actually fall into the icy water, because (among other things) I've based several decisions on the assumption that I'll wake into this reality again tomorrow, and it would be a shame if they were all for nothing.

Of course this assumes that this reality is the real one, and I'm not dreaming this one, because while it's an entertaining thought that would require that there exist a reality where what I'm doing is utterly nonsensical.

...he says, signing off at past 3am while half-watching a Senate debate in Australia where a man called Lazarus has just spoken so who knows. It's entirely possible I'm in a dream.

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