I cannot sleep. A rather problematic issue, one that I cannot change. I can't sleep. Does changing the sentence slightly alter this? No.
I cannot sleep. Instead I stay awake thinking of blog posts. How utterly useless. Seriously. How absolutely fucking pointless. What a fail.
I am awake.
Last night I had a dream; I was gliding. Not flying, not soaring or any other synonyms, simply gliding. I could see below me; miles below, everything, a panoramic view of Dante's inferno.
I know, wtf right? I could see below in perfect clarity... hell. If we're going to use Dante's vernacular language; L'inferno.
Do you know what I'm talking about? Dante's inferno is a part of his poem about hell, pergatory and heaven. To cut things shorts, it's a 13th c medieval poem about the afterlife, Dante goes on a journey with Virgil, and sees 9 concentric rings in hell.
I could see the rings, but I was not afraid. I couldn't tell what I was gliding on, but it was something tangible. I don't know what. I say gliding; it was not soaring which implies ups and dows and luls in the meter, it wasn't floating which implies aimless wandering, nor was it flying which sounds solo, no, I was gliding. I just don't know on what. There was no Virgil with me, I was alone and I was weightless, as if you could transcend your own body. There were no words in this, no concept I don't think of even being alive. I wasn't afraid - I wasn't even sentient. I was just gliding above hell - hell which uniquely resembles a giant Dart board. Don't ask. I don't know either. There were the concentric rings, the core and the periphery. I could see everything. How fucking weird.
I can't really describe hell because I can't remember it, bear in mind I wasn't in hell but above it; a bird couldn't describe what it's like to play in a field if a bird never actually lands in one.
One thing though, with piercing clarity I remember the sky. It was blue - not our normal sky blue, but deeply, almost painfully bright. Not illuminous, just illuminated. I believe there's a difference in these words. On second thought, I think the colour is Cyan.
Blue like... I don't know, how do you describe colour? Imagine what you want.
Just blue; there was nothing else - no clouds, no sun/moon/stars. Nothing, just barren sky. It wasn't hot and it wasn't cold, it was just... still. The sort of still, stiff, soporic, stifling air I imagine you would find in a charnel-house. I read that term (charnel-house) in a poem once. My favourite poem strangely enough. I would never love a poem about sodding Daffodils, nah, not me.
In the greynessand drizzle of one despondent
dawn unstirred by harbingersof sunbreak a vulture
perching high on brokenbone of a dead treenestled close to hismate his smoothbashed-in head, a pebbleon a stem rooted in
a dump of grossfeathers, inclined affectionatelyto hers. Yesterday they pickedthe eyes of a swollencorpse in a water-loggedtrench and ate the things in its bowel. Fullgorged they chose their roost
keeping the hollowed remnantin easy range of coldtelescopic eyes ...Strangeindeed how love in otherways so particularwill pick a corner
in that charnel-housetidy it and coil up there, perhapseven fall asleep - her face
turned to the wall!...Thus the Commandant at BelsenCamp going home forthe day with fumes ofhuman roast clingingrebelliously to his hairynostrils will stopat the wayside sweet-shopand pick up a chocolatefor his tender offspringwaiting at home for Daddy's return ...Praise bounteousprovidence if you willthat grants even an ogrea tiny glow-wormtenderness encapsulatedin icy caverns of a cruelheart or else despair
for in every germof that kindred love islodged the perpetuityof evil. Chinua Achebe Such a dramatic dream deserves an equally profound soundtrack; overture of Handel's Messiah anyone? No; I like this song; there's a heart beat in it but it's also ethereal, like mortality and fiction mixed together, almost like this bullshit dream.
