I’ve reached the stage in the progression of my seasonal allergies that I’m constantly itchy, just under my skin. Supposedly only the top three layers of our skin have itch receptors, but that fact is as unhelpful as it may be true. All I know is that I can scythe at my skin as hard as I want and never get to that itch, and if it wasn’t the product of a neural glitch to begin with, it’s certainly going to end up causing one. I’m pretty much immune to most medications, and most antihistamines are included. Allegra gives me about a 10% effect, and Nasonex maybe 50% on a good day, so I’ve been combining the two. Alongside the 225 mg of venlafaxine (Effexor) they’ve got me trying to little effect and the occasional handfuls of ibuprofen for pain and whimsy, I feel a little Spider Jerusalem. Regardless, my sinuses and throat are still hoarding phlegm, and my goddamned skin still itches.
Last night my body decided I really needed half a day of sleep. I first woke up when Alice did, around 8 AM, but then I spent the rest of the morning drifting in and out of consciousness, barely able to open my eyes when I was awake. When I finally woke for good around 12:45 PM, my entire body felt physically exhausted, as if it had been fighting a battle. I could barely move, and even after a shit and a shower I feel like it’s a miracle that I’m more or less vertical. Maybe it has something to do with the dream I was caught up in, the kind of epic 100-hour FINAL FANTASY/BRAVEHEART/REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (see what I did there) fever dream that racks (I don’t mean “wracks”, do you see how bloody clever I am?) your brain and shoves it full of adrenaline and stress chemicals and emotion chemicals and whatever else it can find in the medicine cabinet and under the sink for good measure. It’s like a masturbation session that you really need, but you just can’t seem to cum, and you start off trying gentle love and lotion and end up digging into the darkest recesses of your porn archive, the stuff you rename with random character strings and hide under seventeen layers of decoy folders and try not to think about in the light of day, and after hours of sobbing effort you end up with raw foreskin and a sad, sticky towel and you feel exhausted and relieved and frustrated and angry and despondent and dirty and ashamed and furiously self-righteous in your victory of fap. Sorry, more innocent readers, I get a little prosaically dirty sometimes. P.S. the anti-depression/anxiety/ADD drugs cause that sometimes. The masturbation sessions, I mean. Being a Trained Attack Writer causes the prose, and being me causes the dirty.
Anyway, this dream. There were mechs and a glorious quest and a ragtag band composed of some friends and some reluctant enemies and some misunderstood rogues who prove themselves in the fires of combat. There was a greedy corporation that didn’t understand the truly evil forces they were tampering with, there was a lost race of ancients and their abandoned pitiable victim underlings in need of rescue (but also in a position to provide salvation through untold wisdom). There were beloved companions thought dead and brought back to life by mysterious technology/magic, and others tragically lost forever to the vagaries of fate. There were loves and hates and betrayals and forged friendships, and there was a tour bus to take us home after the fact. And throughout, in an image here or a concept there, in the wretched seconds of intermittent consciousness, there was the deja vu that this was not the first time I had had this dream, or at least a variant of it. All this has happened before, and all this will happen again.
Maybe I need to hate life in order to live it. Well, okay, “hate” is probably too strong of a word. But between a surprise flurry of drawing class assignments, the news of a piano recital in a month, renewed vows in my lapsed marriage to weightlifting, a band concert to be played in and a symphony concert to be attended, and all kinds of other things, this life is getting astonishingly hectic for one that doesn’t contain a full-time job. And in the midst of this I decided to reread Richard K. Morgain’s ALTERED CARBON series and have it remind me of the kind of stories I want to tell and the ways in which I want to tell them, and now my brain is full of words. I guess happiness really is the bane of a creative mind, if not an unattainable fucking illusion. We will teach you not to expect anything. That way, you will be ready for it. Thanks, Virginia. Get to the next screen, right?
All right, that’s enough of that. I should probably go eat something before this trembling turns into a full-blown panic attack.
Posted by Eug 
