COMING ROUND AGAIN

Don't talk to me about journeys to the Underworld. I'm one of those people who doesn't dream. Oh, sure, 'Everybody dreams!' they say, with a knowing smile, 'it's just that some of us remember them'.

But I forget, I forget.

That's what they tell me, these people who remember all their incarnations. Seriously, they emerge into their world from some curious realm that reacts to their thought, and calmly step into this entirely different reality, haggard, hungover, habitual - and they are neither excited nor scared. Why? Because they not only remember their dream interludes but also they remember their continuity from the day before. Despite all the picaresque adventures of their nights, they seriously join this apparently stable reality with quiet resignation. Maybe their consciousness is virtually continuous.

I can go no further. At this point I am blind. When I finally shut my eyes, I drift awhile then I'm gone into the black - not for an eternity because as soon as I open my eyes again the world continues. It's as if no time had passed. When I was frightened of the following day I used to stay up - waking hours last longer - if I fell asleep OPEN my eyes it would be the feared morning (oh, I don't know, dentist, exam, interview, opening night), and yes of course, sometimes the anticipation was pleasant - how do you think I ever let go into sleep OPEN my eyes to another day.

And that's just the good days. After all, I seem to get sixteen hours daily life to everyone else's twenty-four. So I get a bit behind having to do my dreaming in the day - pressure on - but the only equaliser I have is that I don't have nightmares.

They've done tests. It's not sleep deprivation (so much) that makes a human hallucinate in the waking state, but being deprived of dreams. So, imagine, with no dreams, no surrealism, no lucidity, no monsters or jump-cuts, zooms or eternities, always with gravity, and hunger and life-threatening situations that are REAL goddamit, how do you think I feel when I open my eyes and it's still the same world, still, without a break.

At the breakfast table the jet-setters come in with their traveller's tales of mythic adventure; me, I feel like I haven't slept (I always feel like I haven't slept - sleeping is like blinking - about that refreshing.) Anyway, my world has to incorporate any fun I might get, and for sure it contains some problems I'll have to confront - dead subtle, too, some of it.

Rememberers are refreshed by their dimensional vacation (though sometimes they report getting stuck at some psychic Gatwick), and also remember what they were doing yesterday, and why. What I call sleep is like the black bar between the frames of a movie. Normally (awake) we don't see it, but when someone slows down it takes an age (a split second) to cross that line. Many mornings it's as smooth as a flicker book, next image, next day. Just some days I cross the line and it's a CUT to another scene entirely - sure, there's probably a connection, some editing is real suggestive, but there are shock cuts, like coming round and finding you're tied to a chair and there's a light in your eyes.

Oh, sure. Call me hero. 'Talk! ' they said. I can't talk after I wake up until I have had at least three cups of coffee, some days. At 150 milligrammes per cup I must be on a gramme a day. A gramme of caffeine.

It keeps me in the awake world - better the frame you know than the one that is to come. Funny that, most people think coffee speeds things up, and I take it to stay awake and get more time in the frame.

cut

- somebody slugged me

- they put something in my drink

- what happened?

- It all happened so quickly

Back again, seeing if this movie is in some kind of sequence or are these cuts really random?

I struggle to piece together what I remember of the time before the last blackout. With a memory of previous frames I might have a chance to pick up a theme, at least - some kind of order apart from habitual days, another page of the book, coherent action flickering by (or at least the image of it.) No abruptness.

I find belongings, sometimes, and notes to myself, when I wake up alone and I'm not tied to a chair or whatever. I have no idea what they mean, beyond what they say.

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