Inferno, Purgatoria, Paradiso

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.