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epitome of incomprehensibility
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What_woke_you_up_this_morning?
Not the actual sunset, but a frightening dream fragment with funny dream_conversations; I recorded it in my journal earlier.
One of my parents alerts me to my phone buzzing. I'm either wasting time watching a video or still reading messages on a cell phone forum, trying to troubleshoot the problems mine is having. In that forum, a teenage boy has proclaimed that World War 3 will start on June 3. It's that day now, isn't it? When I told that to Dad, anxious, he said the kid had just been reading alarmist things.
Anyway, I answer the phone. For a while I hear it ringing on the other end, as if I was the one calling, and then the other person's voice is faint. Then it comes in clearly. It's a friend of my dad's. "Kirsten? Did you hear that the African Empire is backing up the Asian Empire...?"
I hadn't, and I don't question why the continents are apparently organized into empires. I just know that the African Empire's misplaced loyalty is the spark that will lead the world into war. It's tragic because some Putin-like figure, not even "Asian," has coralled in a bunch of leaders in with talk of rebelling against the white-centric "West," though his motives are mostly about his own power.
I don't want to show I'm alarmed, though. I say something non-committal.
Calvin (whose name isn't Calvin in real life) gives me attitude: "You should care!" he says, or something like it. "You're going to die in the war!"
"I don't *plan* to die in a war," I say in what I think is a calm, sarcastic voice, "but if I do, many more people will also die, so why should I care so much about myself? Why should I single myself out?"
I'm pleased with my rude selflessness. It seems to be the attitude to take: a weird mix of pride and attempted detachment. I'm pacing as I talk, and I go back to the living room window. Cumulus clouds like snow mountains are coloured by the pastel sunset.
I'm about to ask Calvin, "Look at the sunset - isn't it beautiful?" even if that will enrage him instead of calming him down.
But when I look again, I see a grey starburst of an explosion, arrested in midair. It looks like gravel and dust is being blasted in multiple directions from a single point. It's not like the nuclear bombs people feared, but it's close, too close - did a missile hit the house next door? I am selfish after all; secretly I felt entitled to the continuation of my peace in an obscure suburb, a reward for not being important. Where can I go to escape?
I run for the back door, afraid the frozen image will unfreeze itself and the debris crush me.
...
And I wake up, fear quickly turning to "No, that's not real," but I'm still on edge, wondering what real-life circumstances prompted the anxiety.
-The phone call alluding to death: yesterday, a distant friend ("distant" as in Beaconsfield, but not someone I talk with all the time) gave me the news that someone in our poetry group had died. In January. She was the wife of my former teacher who shares the same name as a well-known author (not the only person I know who does, oddly enough). I was looking at the calendar as she told me.
-Frozen images: my laptop screen freezing, e.g. the night before. The other functions continue, but the visual display goes white or weirdly discoloured. So far, tipping it forward or back has corrected the problem, but I'm worried the whole machine might stop working. The person at Best Buy said it should last 5 years, when I pressed him on that point. It's been 6.
-Interpersonal anxiety: nervousness that I annoyed someone when I worded stuff badly, which echoed the poetry-friend's worry that I was mad at her for not getting back to her on Facebook Messenger (I found that funny because she's about the last person I'd have a reason to be angry at)
-War: well, if you're in Ukraine or any other place that's got fighting going on, "it's not a world war" isn't necessarily a comfort when a bomb hits the building next to you, is it? What's just a frightening image to me is a reality for so many others.
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