Tuesday

 I dredge myself up from the tepid quagmire of another night, cutting short the taught strings of thought tugging me along the road to infinity. I'll stop here, thanks.

My eyes open. I stare at the mirror hanging over my bed. Darkness. I can see myself, but that's the impression I get.

Bipedal wobbling. Learning to use my legs all over again. Bump. Bump. Bump.

I go get a bowl of cocopops, poking a cat along the way to make sure it's real.

Chocolate. Milk. Crunch crunch. Blegh. What an aftertaste.

Back in my room, I sit on my chair and the power goes off, like some cosmic whoopie cushion of evil and annoyance. I get up and switch the mains back on. I wait for Hexidecimal (my computer) to power up.

I write.

I check what's going on on the internet.

Nothing. I am alone and disconnected from all else. My blog traffic feed shows I had a visitor from xxx. That means xxxx. Who, I should point out, used a search engine to find me rather than asking me what I've been doing by E-mail. Ah well. It's better than nothing, I guess.

I read my blog, because nobody else does and I think it gets lonely.

My morning is smeared across my glasses like a strange, ever-changing painting. Tuesday. Tyoosday. A new midget. Midget 1 & Midget 2. Work and Hexaemer. Consiousness.

Sigh. The geyser is cold.

I'm seriously reconsidering the whole cereal thing. My lactose intolerance builds up after about a week. Toast, you. Just eat toast.

Standard preparations...

'Ohm'. I am a self-contained universe. Hear my silence.

Reciting songs. Weird Al and My Chem. Shh.

I'm drifting.

Whenever the thought get too chaotic I give them something to visualise. Reltash orbited by three moons. Reltash dancing on its axis, running a figure eight around twin suns. So much spinning and so much motion there simply isn't room for anything else. I tip over an imaginary bowl of rice and pick up the flecks one by one. Stillness. Calm. Order.

It's like lifting my brain off a meat hook and dipping it into a jar of formaldehyde. So relaxing.

I open my eyes. Back to the world.

I feed the dogs. “Dogs sit”, “Lexi sit.”, “Tibby away.”, Pat pat. “Cute banderbeast. Lexi away.”

49 degrees Celsius. Thank you for your heresy, Prometheus.

Black Parade. Dear Hearts and Gentle People. I do my best not to look at myself while the water cascades around me. I tug out knots of loose hair. I shut the valves. I dry myself off. I brush my teeth, avoiding the mirror. I think of doing nice things for people, but I can't pinpoint the best time to do them. I shelf the ideas, for now. I shut the valves.

Timing. 12:15 minus 21 minutes minus

I really need to keep better notes.

15? Let's hope so. Minus an additional 5 minutes for safety, and

11: 34. That sounds right.

\SNEEZE ATTACK!!!!/

I survive with minimal casualties. But it's Mister Bon-bons, Sir. He's dead.

God damned those allergies. Well, soldier; remember the dead, fight for the living.

Aye, commander.

I set my alarm.

Clothes. Black pants. A short-sleeved blue shirt with 'xxx xxx' plastered to the front. I'm doing a lift at a preschool today, and I don't want to look like a homicidal vampire. Also, I really do need to find an excuse to wear this shirt, or it will just sit in my closet indefinitely.

Herm... projects... projects... The Artaean Manuscript? Possibly. Something more publishable, perhaps?

Nope. T.A.M. it is.

Blue ink from one of my 24 remaining gel pens. The best kind. This page is actually very pretty. I think I'll scan and upload it.

Big crystals. Swoosh swoosh. Feel my imagination, empty pages. Six. Six. Six. Six. Six. Six.

The Kill Bill whistle. A terrible movie, but a fantastic whistle. Wee woo, wee wee woo, wee wee woo woo wee, wee woo wee woo woo wee, wee wee woo woo woo wee woo, weewoo weewee weewoo weewee weewoo wee wee woo

and repeat.

I draw a crystal, pooling chaos into it until the original work is defaced and unrecognisable. I'll learn to stop with the details at some point and trust in the negative spaces, just as I trust in silence. While I draw, I whistle an unwritten melody; something that may never have been before and something that will never be repeated again for a thousand years. There's beauty in that, and consequential sorrow. But if I did write it down, if I did try to cling to that melody, would it retain its precise form of beauty? I don't think so.

Nothing is happening on Facebook. It is a sure sign that people have actual lives. If a tree falls in a forest, and no-one is there to see it, how do you know there's a forest in the first place?

Because people aren't on Facebook. That's how.

Tea! Rusks! The sad consumption of another lifeform's physical essence to perpetuate my existence.

I perpetually use the word 'perpetuate'. That'll need to stop at some point.

Thank you, rusks, for being bred in captivity and ritualistically slaughtered to appears my hunger.

Scrawling words in tiny typeface. Blood and crystal.

Mini-break. Data capture for xxxx. Thank you for feeding and clothing me and providing me shelter. 54544555554445555444455554444555444455554445555. I wonder who actually reads these reports? Probably the same people who don't read my blog. Well, I hope their numbers make them happy.

I am drifting. Sooooooo tired. Despondence. 'Meh'.

Live with it. Reality bites, no matter your flavour.

I put on my boots.

I read Vox.

Yum. Digestion and visceral explosions. A 'children's' novel. How little men know...

11:31

Time to go relocate the midgets. Goodbye, dark bedroom. I venture forth to face the harsh light of the world. Any minute now. Legs, work. Go on. Up. Good legs.

***

Whistling in tune with the music. Man, I'm getting good at this. Why aren't there any professional whistlers out there? The kind that don't kill people on radio shows?

xxxxx Avenue. Change CDs. Instrumentals: for people who don't want to emotionally scar three year olds. I play the Heroes IV Necropolis suite very loudly. Some kid turns around and looks at me through his car window.

Why, yes. That is your mind exploding.

I trace lines through my memory. Do I recognise this person? Is he one of the illusionary ones who show up on street corners and shopping malls wherever I go? I don't know.

Chaos! Tomanha! Rapture! Driving dissolves into a series of predefined motions. I'm not concentrating, but I'm not crashing either, so it's all okay. I'm drifting across worlds, feeling the tug of different memories well up around me, thrashing in the shallows.

I need to put some links up to this stuff on the internet. People have no idea what they are missing.

I, Librarian.

xxxxxx. yyyyyyyyy. Fetch [Midget 4], who may be promoted to [Midget 1] if she never learns how to talk. xxxxxxxx. “Bye, [Midget 4].” I wave. Nice kid.

Tribal drumbeats and didgeridoos. The Hellgate Theme. The Exile Theme. With one last babbling shriek of death I park Jason Vorhees and go inside. If I keep driving this quickly and charging by the hour I'm never going to make any money.

“Hello Alex.”

Water. Bedroom. Writing.

My thumbnail is bleeding. When did that happen?

Sigh. Reading things on the internet. Listening to other people's music. I'm getting so tired of trying to feel something. I need to disappear for a while. Be someone else.

Artaea will do, for now.

Mmmm nyum. Blood. Tasty.

Gah! Stop staring at the nothingness on Facebook!

Artaea. Many words.

Zoom Time strikes again.

***

xxxxxxx. “Hello, [Midget 1].” Silent driving. I like this kid. It just sits there and eats its lunch. “Bye, [Midget 1].” Wave.

Elsewhere in xxxxx. Waiting in my car. The world is boiling. I'm reading Vox and slowly turning into a hot sack of phlegm. My disembodied eyes blink, trying to focus on the words and the story and having marginal success. Counter-posed elements of decadence and toil. The powerful push the average out of the best areas and claim them for themselves, growing increasingly lax. The average live in areas where survival demands extraordinary measures, and cease to be average. These transformed beings can then strike back at the powerful and claim the best areas for themselves, hopefully having learned from hardship.

Leaving the car. Wearing a small blue tag that says I'm not a pedophile/rapist person. Oddly reminiscent of Psychonauts, especially since the sidewalk is curving above my head. Yawn. Ooze. Continue reading. Hymns floating from children's mouths. Pitchy. I try to ignore the memories of my childhood. Mostly successful.

[Midget 2] does even less talking. This really is my lucky day. We walk to the car. I drive [Midget 2] up the road. “Bye, [Midget 2].” Drive back to Blairgowrie. Rhapsody in Blue. A song for people too weary to drink coffee.

Drink water. Write.

Cool air.

Head on desk. Listening to music, because you matter.

Hunger. Feed me. Feeed me!

Grapes. Another fruit. I am eating unborn children. Thank you for your sacrifice, carbon-based lifeforms.

I swear someone moved a satellite. This frequency was never this strong.

Boots off.

Artaea, a human butterfly. I am writing a metamorphosis.

SMS. Will you be able to look after our inhuman babies for a week during the daylight hours?

Yes. Send.

Wait – next week? No – maybe? I have Midgets 1 through 5 next week. How much do you like your babies?

We'll see.

Darn /.

I need to sleep. I need to sleep. My brain is popping, one ventricle at a time. Do brains have ventricles? Mine does. And they are POPPING.

Does it matter that everything is happening out of order? What is that deranged voice yowling 'shlayan' at the edge of my consciousness?

4:46 PM

Lights off.

I brace myself for the inevitable.

Oh, but what comes after is so much sweeter.

I'm lying down. I'm still lying down. I'm not going anywhere. I'm thinking. Just let the thoughts flow over one another, thousands of puppies squirming and trampling one another to reach an outstretched hand. Echoes. Booming. I cannot feel my meat, but I can hear everything around me. Gasps of noise punctuated by the demon stream of tentacle thoughts leaping page after page towards the void and never quite filling it as it explodes outward and leaves a black rinse of emptiness from which I sit within and watch and hear but never feel. I am nothing. I am restless space.

And then, so very quietly, I hear a change. The thought that comes to mind is of the Universe flat-lining. One long, drawn booooop of null value. I lie here in these waters for as long as I can, sensing the world around me, lukewarm and detached, and think, yesssss. This is what you need. To just lie here, and let it all disappear.

6:29 PM

It rushes back, and you can probably tell I'm not very pleased. Whatever made me break the surface of the water is gone now, a fleeting scurry of motion. I'm here, a little less asleep. But as always, I am left with that haunting question: did I sleep?

No. But maybe, just maybe, this was something better.

Just think of all the pretty symbols. See them up against the wall.

I insulted someone's thrash metal. Sorry, xxxx.

Furious motion. Scissors. Masking tape. Dog food. “Good Bambi.” I am a voyager in a spinning reality.

Supper. Peas and carrots. A fish entity. A slice of lemon. Some kind of potato... things. Starting to understand why dinosaurs don't eat peas. Gnash gnash.

I'm weeping inside.

Sorry. I'm so sorry!

I bite the lemon slice to the rind, and swallow it whole. This thing died for me. I'm not about to squeeze it dry and toss aside its perfectly good flesh.

Gah. The massacre is over. Thank you for your sacrifices, vegetable entities, fruit and fish matter. You will not be forgotten. Just like whatever I had for lunch.

I find some paper. I throw away last year's calendar. I throw away some other stuff for good measure.

Tearing out pages. Taping them together into one gigantic wall-sized canvas. String. Clips. Hoisting a flag. An empty page.

It'll take a while longer to expand upon the edges, but for now I've run out of time, and to be honest my shoulders need a rest. (Haha. 'to be honest'. That's redundant here.)

Lounge. Open the door. “Be free, doggies!”

Couch. I too, am a vegetable entity.

The Office. I laugh, because I am seeing articles of physical reality behaving in ways that do not match up to physical reality itself. This causes a form of bodily agony in which my lungs expel air rapidly and a tight pain runs up my diaphragm.

Hysteria, in other words. A reaction brought about by fear.

I tape another set of pages to the wall. Almost done.

House. Medical nonsensity. Ontological & logical value. Scratching Alex behind his ears.

Blogging. Weariness and truth walk hand in hand.

How can I be tired again? I haven't done anything.

I put the last four strips of paper into place, right down near the tiled floor. Before I can tape the last piece down I fall over completely, rejoicing in the cool tile, in what few happy memories I have, and in the quiet of the moment.

“Achenar, are you alright? Do you not like them?”

“No. No, its not that, it's just... they're soft. I'd forgotten what that felt like.”

One last strip in place. I am facing an empty space; a wrong-angled mass of paper. I can't leave it blank now. I consult my notes, and put three Sigils into place: Time, Spectrality, Meaning.

I lose myself in the work for one very long moment, tracing lines and Sigils here and there. Absolute Laws, Attributive Laws, Balance. A starting point. I still have so much to learn.

It's late. I put the mess of pens, pencils and books I've scattered back into their places. I try to get my scanner working. It's taking its time. I start editing this post. So many mistakes. I scan the images. I prepare for launch.

Goodnight, whatever you are. I hope you sleep better than I do.