Tuesday 13 January 2015

The stuff of nightmares

It's the stuff of nightmares which we have all had.

Hiding under a table and seeing the legs of the person you know would kill you, walking about three feet from your face.

Bad enough if you are an adult, like the man in the Hebdo office. Just think what is was like for those kids in the school in Pakistan.

Stuffing yourself under a child's desk like an ostrich with your head in the sand, knowing that the rest of your body is in full view, and your big, vulnerable arse will give you away, you just wait for the bullet like you do in nightmares.

Last night I lost H.I. again - as I have done so many times before - in a large city crissed-crossed with canals like Venice of Amsterdam, except about 50 times larger.

All I knew about the boat we arrived on was that it was made from solid bronze. I couldn't remember the name and by the time I had alighted and turned in the wrong direction, I was lost.

I tried to make a short-cut to get back to it, but found myself a quarter of a mile away without any obvious route back.

I climbed the cables of suspension bridges and - finally giving up - I asked a young policeman with no English to take me there. He asked the name of the ship, but I could not remember it.

I described it, and he intimated that he knew just the ship, so I followed him across more miles of waterways. I knew H.I. was not carrying a phone, so I knew there was no point in calling her.

If she had been holding a phone, my one would have gone wrong - I knew it from previous dreams.

Eventually, he took me to the end of a wide canal side and pointed to a ship.  It was the wrong one and now I did not know where I was, nor how I could ever connect with H.I. again. The young policeman became side-tracked by a group of children and started to dance with them - Zorba like - forgetting me completely.

I stood in the middle of a square and began to cry like a lost child.

63 years old, and crying like an abandoned boy of 7.

This is how it is going to all end up, I know it.

29 comments:

  1. For God's sake get a grip of yourself.

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    1. I didn't tell you the rest of the stuff which is on my mind.

      I started to feel like my big, vulnerable arse was about to be shot-off by you.

      You are so fucking English. You are so fucking vulnerable that it makes me look like Conan the fucking Barbarian.

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    2. Wait a minute... you put capital G on 'God'.

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    3. That's an interesting slip
      I meant to type
      Oh dear

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    4. Not die, if John's comments are anything to go by.

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    5. (I was thinking about Zombies, btw)

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  2. By way of explanation, I saw a small girl behaving a little rowdily in the pub tonight, but not too badly, being bolloxed by her Mother's boyriend when she returned, and the girl had buried herself in a book by way of escape - in the same way that beggars and junkies do on hard pavements, or even walking down them.

    The man soundly slagged of the girl to the mother, and the girl burst into tears but still pretended to read the book, even though she could not have focussed on the words through the tears.

    I wanted to go over and hug her, but - after a while - the mother did, so I probably over-empathised with the little thing.

    Still, it shows that I don't have a trace of psychopathy in my make up at all, which is the most important thing to me.

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  3. I've had nightmares where I'm frantically searching for someone...I know how awful they are.
    I'm sorry you're upset. XO

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    1. It wasn't that bad, and I'm over the feeling now, thanks Sherry! We all need a bit if self-indulgence every now again.

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  4. Hey Tom: It seems like a version of the 'where the hell is the hotel but I don't know the name or street'. I haven't had one of those in awhile - they're terrifying.

    And I can never ever dial a phone properly in my dreams when I'm anxious/scared, etc. And I haven't been able to lucid-dream myself out of that, either.

    Hope you have a good sleep tonight.

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    1. I think everyone must have pretty identical dreams, Carol - these are the only anxiety ones I seem to have.

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  5. It's been so long since those kinds of dreams. I used to have terrorizing dreams of throwing cages left and right, looking for my brother. He always was in the last one, dead. Eight years later he was dead.
    On the other hand, I dreamed my boyfriend died when his troop plane crashed into the Rocky Mountains. He missed his connecting flight, his scheduled flight was switched out for another due to engine trouble, so aside from another demotion for missing the plane because I was reasoning with him about not going, no harm.
    Perhaps a bit of underdone parsnip?

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    1. If it was underdone parsnip, then the effects were extremely delayed. The last time I ate a parsnip was at Christmas. Still, at least your brother's demotion might have saved him from the Rockies.

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  6. Dream 'frustration' is un-nerving. In my experience dreams like that can spoil one's day.

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    1. They throw you straight back into childhood, no matter how old you are. In a way that's quite reassuring.

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  7. My bad dreams usually involve losing the dog, or sometimes driving a car from the back seat…..impossible I might say! Surprisingly I didn't have a dream about cars last night, as yesterday in our little town, an elderly woman crashed her car into a bench and killed the man who was sitting on it.

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    1. That's terrible. Some people carry on driving a little too long.

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  8. It sounds awful, I know what these dreams can be like. Through my 20s and 30s I had horrendous nightmares - being chased by swarms of Gestapo in France in WW2, by aliens on a strange planet, and many other variations of the same terrible fear of being caught. And haunted houses - terrifying things behind doors. I haven't had one in 15 years or longer. I think my husband was the cure. If you would like to borrow him let me know, it's a good reason to include him in my travel plans for Christmas! ;-)

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    1. I haven't had one of those terrifying nightmares since I was a kid, Maryanne. My uncomfortable ones are more to do with general insecurity, I think. If I have a dream which involves haunted houses, etc. I actually enjoy them.

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    2. So the husband won't be needed? ;-)
      I have lovely house dreams these days - amazing endlessly enormous rundown places that instead of being haunted are full of doer upper potential, and I am planning what to do with them. I do rather like doing up houses! :)

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  9. Apparently everyone dreams but you won't remember them unless you wake in the middle of one. I can't remember the last time I dreamt, nightmarish or otherwise. I fall asleep, I wake up.

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    1. Yes, I know people who say they don't dream, but why should I not believe them? I think that if you are a really well balanced person, it may be that you do not need to dream. Reptiles don't dream, I am told.

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  10. The farmer says he never dreams - I think he does but just doesn't remember them. I have vivid dreams but not as awful as this.

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    1. It's not too awful. A little unsettling, that's all.

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  11. Your dream reminds me of that movie 'Don't Look Now", which also took place in Venice, but which was more deadly... I have dreams of forgetting things that are crucial -- like a passport and also of being in an elevator, but instead of falling it's moving up at an alarming rate...

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    1. You must have been up the Sears building? Every time I see a dwarf in a red plastic mac, I panic.

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