sirens

Sirens, bright halogen illuminations, lighting my face with dark red and sickly bright blue, casting alternating shadows over my features while blinding my eyes with emergency. The dry scent of concrete as it hits my cheek and drags onto the jaw to leave a matte scar over my face - grass. Fresh after the rain, black earth stains my face. Waterdrops wash my hair, as flowers are trampled under my limbs. Glimmer of light. Too bright. Shut my eyes, breathe dust, claw my way through the mud helplessly. A hundred questions go through my mind. The smell of rain comes to my nostrils by way of a slight breeze that washes over my face, drying the mud and providing my lungs with much needed oxygen. I fall, hands over each other, still dark, legs limp and sore.

I turn on my back - Sand. Wet, cold, salty. Strong scent burns my nostrils with salted power. I make another attempt at lifting my eyelids. I cry. Hundreds of shades of purple and orange are reflected in a mirror of water until the horizon. Each little crumple in the eternal sea throws back a piece of the sun at my eyes. A treasure of gold and silver, in a chest covered with a cloudy velvet in shades of purple and orange I never even knew existed. The divine display gives my senses the willpower to climb on my feet and stand up. Water washes wet sand over the scarred skin that sustains my stance. It washes away the pain, and simultaneously increases it with a stinging sensation caused by the salted seawater. As the wind brushes the hair from my eyes and dries the tears on my cheeks, I take a deep breath and explore my surroundings with a slow yet sober gaze. Overwhelmed with joy, I let myself fall into the water, letting my body float, letting the waves carry it away. I succumb to a long sleep which is only interrupted by the stings of salt washing, curing, my wounds.

A long and uninterrupted sleep ends abruptly with the question - AM I DEAD?

The answer doesn't come. Instead, I struggle to keep afloat. Waves, water, wind, foam, noise. I try to resurface. Instead, I sink. Vulgar movements of my hands and legs serve only to draw me deeper, suffocating, burning; my mouth and lungs swallow salty hell. Cough, loose more air in the process - what did I do to deserve this? A thousands thoughts rush to my mind, none of which I can remember the next second - my paradise ends with terror.

As I lift my upper torso, my forehead is dripping with sweat. I use my hands to hold my body straight. No water, just sweat, no sea, just fabric. All is dark except for the window letting in a vague moonlight in a dark and starless sky.

I guess it was all a dream, and so, I shut my eyes - never to open them again, for as they say, the least one can ask for, is to die in his sleep...

shivers

Shivers... a warm summer night after the rain. It is not so warm anymore. A slight breeze that carries with it just enough moisture to prevent my nostrils from bleeding with dryness. Again shivers... they warm my body up. Too tired to fall asleep, too intoxicated with coffee to be awake. Lazy eyelids mechanically drown and resurface, slowly, instinctively, for lack of anything better to do. A distorted moon, only hours ago perceived through a doubleteinted window, is replaced with the violent reflection of neon brightness. Again shivers. A quick look towards the air conditioning switch reveals a distinct lack of willpower, mixed with apathy as to the idea of turning it on. Maybe if I was suffering, but I'm not - that will come later, when I'll try to sleep.

Oh the sleep - virtually impossible to achieve in a place with perfect conditions (solitude, temperature, moisture), yet at the same time impossibly unbearable in a place where it was meant to happen. 5 tiny engines, designed to drill in my head and placed right next to it, which are omnipresent and perpetually-mobile - powered by love. Then there's the heat, generated by 3 and a half air heating devices (depending on if you count the fan or not - it moves the air that its engine helps to heat). This air being artificially heated, is also of a very dry nature, devoiding the whole environment of any moisture and thus serving to efficiently dry your nostrils to the point of bleeding (dry blood). Assuming it's a nice and breezy day, and the net on the window decides to let some refreshing air in, it also lets a myriad of sound effects filter in. These include any number of: baby cries, mothers screaming at said babies, lawn mowers (in quadraphonic stereo surround, since there are lawns to be mowed on the rear-left, rear-right, front-left, and front-right of our house), vacuum cleaners (slightly overpowering the sound of the aforementioned 5 tiny engines). Then there's the occasional neighbour who decides to put a high-torque engine against some metal object to produce a sound similar to what a chainsaw against a metal electricity pole might sound. And if I was foolish enough to leave my door open, hoping that some of the cool air that rests in the rest of the house might decide to drop by where I sleep, I am only confronted with 4 speakers and 2 subwoofers-worth of gangsta-rap, courtesy of my beloved brother - can you feel the love?

Such is a small part of what my rant about sleep might sound. I'm afraid to continue, since if I do so, I risk sounding like I'm complaining about not getting enough of it. And I'm not, I'm really not, I get plenty of sleep... the only problem is, it's not quality sleep. I seldom reach an REM state, and have very few dreams. No wonder that when I eventually DO have a dream, it is so dramatic and devastating, encompassing every suppressed memory and emotion preceding it, that I wake up sweating, and immediately turn on the 5 little engines in hopes of forgetting it with a little torment-power.

Shiver shiver... it just warms you up inside...up your spinal chord, and into your brain, gives you nice feeling and you shiver again.

brrrr...

the shivers are here.

something tired

I'm tired. My head hurts. I sip hot tea to soothe my throat. I listen to weird rock music so as to not cause any more pain with repetitive techno beats. My bare feet touch the smooth carpet on the floor. The window is open and a chilling soft wind finds its way into my room. My eyelashes can barely stay open but the prospect of them shutting seems even more horrible than keeping them awake. My motion is slowed down to almost a still or my mind is rushing past my ability to move. I look sideways; follow a nervous miniature fly on the screen trying to feed on the radiation. I look up at the lamp and see dozens more like it, dead, on the bottom of the light. My hair falls on my forehead and into my eyes, obstructing my field of vision. I don't remove it. Another fly on the screen, or maybe it's the same one? I scratch the back of my head in a tired shrug. I take another sip of the tea, slowly letting it fall down my dry throat and heat my stomach. Within, it will dissolve two aspirins that I consumed before in an effort to alleviate the pain. I’ve shut the TV a while ago when the sound of indistinct infomercials finally reached the limit of being more annoying that the effort it would take to shut off the TV.

I check any ongoing conversations only to find the last one occurred 35 minutes ago and it wasn't very interesting. I wipe sweat from my forehead and in the process remove the hair from my eyes. I can now better see the dead fly on the bottom of the screen and the flickering cursor that awaits input. I wipe the bug with a motion of my finger and clean my finger on the side of my chair. The music stopped. I touch the back of my neck again in an unsuccessful attempt to give myself something resembling a massage. I stare some more into the void trying to get inspiration for my next words. I lean back on my black leather chair and throw my hands in the air and eventually behind my head. I stretch.

A third bug is making its way towards the top of my screen. My eyelashes slowly give way.

The pauses I make between writing each sentence turn longer and longer. For some unexplainable reason, The Girl From Ipanima starts playing. It seems like a much slower and sadder version of the song. Either that or it just seems that way now that I am almost falling asleep as I write. I take another sip of the strawberry and mandarin tea that is getting cold. It has a sour taste reminiscent of the citrus fruit in its origin. I added sugar but not enough to mask the intended taste. Finally I finish the tea, absorbing the lingering aftertaste it left in my mouth. The current song makes a thunder sound as it fades out into silence, and I find myself longing for rain. Another current of cold air brushes my bare feet as I get up, standing on a part of the floor which is not covered by the carpet and touching the cold slick parquet. I push on the power button and proceed to my bed; collapsing there without a thought in my mind, off to never-never-land, gone to rest my head on a soft and pleasant pillow.