nightmare luck is green setting: a real bed in a real house hour: four am (hour of the tiger) day: winter solstice as i sat awake, breathing heavily, i thought about the etymology of this word. does it have something to do with horses, i thought? and what if one has a 'bad dream' during the daytime? mare, sea... is there a special word for bad_dreams in other languages? i can't seem to recall.. then again, i can't seem to recall much. i hope i'm not still dreaming. given the record from that dream, it's entirely possible. the only clue that i'm really awake is that weird shit hasn't started happening, even when i think about it. i think this does it. no more sleeping in beds. bad juju. i feel like my heart has been eaten.. the only thing that really scares me is loss of control. which makes weird the fact that awakeness should be a safe zone, seeing how so much recently has been burned up or swallowed whole. someone told me this morning, over coffee, that one need only remember that every part of a dream is a part of yourself. i replied that that was exactly what made me afraid. the setting for this dream constantly shifted, as i jumped back and forth between different states of 'consciousness'. the co_op, a garden, my room, other rooms.. all these things were intensely real. the people, also, the people i knew, and the people i created in the dream. i could not tell that i was dreaming. more accurately, i could not tell whether i was dreaming, or awake and hallucinating. "john, is this a dream? john, why can't i remember things? when was the night i got fantastically drunk? was it last night, a week ago, or a month? more? why is there a week of memories i can't recall? who are all these people?" a large girl, more of a gigantic blueberry. i know who she represents. my brother, and another friend in the garden. picking peas and berries, eating them, savoring. the friend asks us why we refuse to take e. much talk of taking drugs, as i notice a movement out of the corner of my eye. my parents and two other adults are sunbathing on a deck. retreat. the co_op is unusually well lit, ambient sunlight streaming in as it never would. other than that, a perfect replica. a congregation on couches. diving into the depths of my soul. all of their voices gradually come under my control, their words become what i think they would say. i'm talking to myself, as they merge into one homogeneous blob. a cowboy walks out of the wall, smiles at me. i panic and try to control him also, but he laughs and says, "no, that won't work. i know you." i drift out, trying to communicate. one hand remains in that dream, while the rest of me returns to my bed. i try to type out my message to him. there is no chance of reply. i am sitting in my bed. the room is dark. something isn't right. i hear the sound of a blind being drawn. my mother is coming. must cover my nakedness.. the door to my room opens, and through it jumps the blueberry girl, like some sort of witch. no, my imagination.. my mother steps through, letting the dog in. things twist, turn. the dog jumps onto me.. something isn't right. "mom, i think i'm hallucinating." her face distorts into a horrible mask of colors, bone sticks through, the room starts dissolving.. the dog generalizes into a warm idea on my lap, having no physical being. there is no way i can defend myself from it without hurting it. "that's all right, dear.." did my mother just tell me that my total loss of perception of reality was all right? i'm losing control, these things don't make sense. i wake up, really. i spend half an hour lying in bed trying to remember just what of the last several days is real, and what wasn't. so much of it seems like a bad dream. failing a final, possibly failing another. spending an absurd amount of time writing a mediocre paper. people's faces all dissolving around me. getting drunk at six in the morning, for no reason. cleaning up vomit from friend's bedsheets. what is this life i have now, what do these things mean? i feel to normal for so many things to have changed as drastically as they have. i've woken up, but the nightmare continues. what am i doing, where am i going? what am i looking for? i don't know anymore. 011222 ... pushpins my nightmare. i woke up. 011222 ... kerry my sleep is terrifying.. my dreams are bipolar raging whimpering bloody rollercoasters. i never knew all of that could come from my own head. when they tortured that girl and i watched.... it was me. and i couldn't feel the nails they used to pith her, but i could feel her fear and i could feel her agony and i was the one screaming. and the man whose eyes and nose and mouth they taped over with Xs, likea NOFX cd cover, it was the same thing, the same people doing it. always the same. 021217 ... kerry i scrape my nails over the window the sky is contorted with flashing lightning and clouds. my dreams aren't dreams they're always nightmares my nightmares are Eugene W. Smith photographs starving babies war blood on soldiers mercury poisoning victims birth defects the insane japanese in cages my head is a cage and my brain is trying to climb out. the ribs are coming out my ears. i'm crying ashes. i'm choking up mercury. 021222 ... megan i dreamed that you didn't love me anymore. i didn't cry in the dream, i just stuck my chin way out and made sure everyone knew i didn't need you. but secretly, inside my heart was beating out of my chest, and tears had formed a ball in my throat. how could you do this to me? i woke up and had a good cry, and the rest of my day went on without any problems. sometimes i'm scared to go to sleep... 030113 ... bandersnatch this is the scairiest dream i have ever had: colors: all black everything was black, exept for people. they were green, a disturbing, discusting, bright green. there is a (green) man standing in front of me. he is unhappy, and he thinks his face is too big. he takes a knife, and cuts along the bottem of his face, then stickes a vacume hose in there to suck everything out. then, some other man hates his eyes, so he leans forward, opens his eye with one handm and uses a light to melt out the other one. when it is done, he opens the open yey with his hand, and melts it out. then there is a third man who thinks he is too fat, so he takes a knife (the same one the first guy used?) and just slices down his chest to slice off his stomach. now that i have typed it up and seen it writen, i think that it is more of a disturbing dream than a nightmare. but does that make it less frightening? 030113 ... belly fire sometimes I think I call to you yet no words do I speak I raise my arms to reach for you instead I find my will too weak I crave the comfort of your face when dark is all I see and, straining, I listen for your voice when silence threatens me and when it seems I've lost you taken all and left to waste the nightmare breaks to pieces and I wake in your embrace 030602 ... anomalous i guess not all my nightmares are technically nightmares some are just frightening dreams 050516 ... flux sleep paralysis hypnagogic and hypnopompic though, they say, if you can center yourself and get past the terror, it's one of the easiest doorways to lucid dreaming. 050517 ... raze she brought over this brown bread studded with apple. not something she made. something she bought. he said it was delicious. after she'd gone he told me the truth. it wasn't anything special at all. i watched him walk up the stairs of the house we lived in before this one, shedding his clothes, seething over some imagined slight. "it isn't worth losing your mind over," i said. what i wanted him to hold onto was already gone. his legs were stilts shielded by pale skin. he climbed into the sink and fell back into the bathtub i once slept in, breaking every bone in his body. a scream seeped out of me. high and shrill and horrified. like no human sound i've heard before. i shook myself awake to escape the scene. 230913 what's it to you? who go blather from