You’re Safe in your Sleep from this Girl

You’re Safe in Your Sleep from this Girl

Post update: “Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.” Schopenhauer

Check Facebook. Check Twitter.

Breakfast: Prozac and Lithium. Ready. Coffee and three Woodbines.

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Anyone can create a Facebook group. Everybody needs something to belong to, maybe. Nobody needs anything to believe in. I’d never created a group. I’d never wanted to belong. Other people do. There is a Facebook group for people who prefer the cold side of their pillow.

“I used to go to sleep to John Peel. Rough Sleepers wanted. This is a closed Facebook Group.”

It took two minutes to create and two minutes for the first subscribers to post. But, that was in the past present.

First post: “I’ll supply the soundtrack – you can take it with you anywhere.” – ME

Second Post: “Only for Sisters of Mercy; either departed or gone, or not.”

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This is the present historical. You might wonder why I am sitting here. I do, too. I might tell you later. I probably won’t. Check my Facebook page. You can do anything on Facebook they allow you to.

First night. Everything fine. Someone a man, wearing a bow tie, effortfully at ease said, “Newcomers are not asked to accept or follow these Twelve Steps in their entirety if they feel unwilling or unable to do so.”

Great start, I might like this. This is fun. Is it meant to be fun? There is a woman in the front row in a Spacemen 3 t-shirt; I think she winked at me. I tried to wink back, thought about adding a smile…too much? A half-smile. Don’t trip into smirk territory it might be off-putting. I had been practising the way actors must – I tried to channel Johnny Depp. Probably more like Jonny Rotten mimicking Jack Nicholson in ‘The Shining.’ She turned away. I would block it out, get it right next time, or maybe later. Next time…there’s no rush…no point rushing.

Soundtrack the moment. It will shine a light somehow. Light a cigarette to add atmosphere. We’re not allowed to smoke.

“If you got the money for a rehab cure
You ain’t got a problem you can’t afford
I was very nearly clean you know
‘Cos I only had twelve steps to go”

 I admitted I was powerless – that my life had become unmanageable.

Check Facebook. Check Twitter. Coffee and four Woodbines.

Breakfast: Lithium and Prozac. Ready.

Post update: “Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.” – Gandhi

I don’t sleep. I’m not sure if I can, but I am sure I don’t. I used to sleep. I have a book of all my dreams. I don’t read them anymore. I read them to others. Bedtime stories.

When I first spoke to Dr Robert, he asked me why I don’t sleep. I didn’t know, but didn’t know how to tell him, so I told him why I didn’t dream. I don’t think he got it. Thank fuck someone else was paying for him. Waste of fucking time. The idea could have come from him or it might have come before. PRESS RECORD – CAPTURE EVERYTHING. I wanted to ask Seren, but I couldn’t find her number. I remember her face. I’ll tweet her. Oh, no, I can’t.

 

 I came to believe that a Power greater than me could restore me (to sanity).

 

Check Facebook. Check Twitter.

Breakfast: Prozac and Lithium. Coffee and five Woodbines. Ready.

PRESS RECORD – CAPTURE EVERYTHING.

Where does an idea come from? Where do ideas come from? What makes an idea an idea not just another unplanned, random synapse twitch that sticks? It comes from within and without, from everywhere and nowhere, action and thought fused, mind and soul melded. Sometimes it just comes, sometimes not. They don’t come; however, you try to strong-arm them into being. This was just such a thought, just such an idea. This happened. This is happening. This will happen.

The idea came, tapping gently on my temples, and I had to follow it. No turning, just following the light to who knew where. Was it because I wanted to know? I didn’t need answers; I just wanted to know…Do you know what? The unknown not the unknowable…the unknowable would take it too far.

 I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God, as I understood Her.

 

Check Facebook. Check Twitter.

Breakfast: Lithium and Prozac. Ready. Coffee and three Woodbines.

I put down the phone again and picked up the phone book. I hadn’t used one since…well, boybands still mattered. I opened it, closed my eyes, and heard my phone ring, then beep three times. Rubbish ringtone. Something, new, a song that says who I am. I put down the phone book and scrolled through megabytes of pre-digitised music and there it was. My phone rang. How do I answer while on this page? Press the green button. Everything goes on green. I can’t be arsed to answer.

I am sure I had a song in mind. Turn the television on, do a crossword, surf Tim Berners-Lee’s non-branded interweb. Eat, consume, drink, think. Be, do, consume, think, drink. Yes, The Sonics garage pop raucousness at forty-five revolutions a minute. Make a call.

‘Is that Prydwen? Hi, it’s me.’ I said

Put down the phone.

Scroll through another list of names, nicknames, fabricated names. Make a call.

‘Hi it’s me…is Ingrid there?’

‘Yes, it’s me.’ she said.

‘No, never mind, Ingrid. I wanted to speak to Iorwen.’

“I was asleep. Do you know what time it is?” Ingrid slurred.

“Are you drunk?” I asked her.

“No, I was asleep,” she said. Her words usually crashed into each other like cymbals, like symbols, but I could hear every one, every beat of every one, the beats between the breaths, the breaths between the beats between the beating breaths.

“Are you stoned?” I asked.

“No, I was fucking asleep. What do you want?”

“Nothing really. I’ll text you.”

Put down the phone.

 I made a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself.

 

Post update: “Sleep, those little slices of death — how I loathe them.” – Edgar Allan Poe

Woodbine. Check Facebook. Check Twitter.

Breakfast: Prozac and Lithium. Coffee and four Woodbines.

This was definitely an idea, now…now that I’d spoken to Ingrid, when I wanted Iorwen, about her last blog post that she was going to tell me about last week, which was yesterday. It doesn’t matter now. It might later. I’ll ring her back. Let her sleep first.

I wanted to tell her that I had watched Bladerunner. She’d asked me if Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. I wanted to find out, but I didn’t know how. I’ll ask Rhiannon. I’ll go and see her, now, in a minute.

I’ll let her sleep. What happens when we sleep? Why are we sleeping?

Richard Dadd – Titania Sleeping (1841)

 I admitted to God, to myself, and to other human beings, the exact nature of my wrongs.

 

Woodbines.Check Facebook. Check Twitter.

Breakfast: Lithium, Prozac, and Lithium. Woodbines.

‘I know who I am. I’m not who you think I am.’ Or am I? I am sometimes, but I wasn’t when I sat in Iorwen’s room. She said she was cut up like William Burroughs.

I asked her how she went to sleep.

“No-one knows. I don’t know. My brain shuts down slowly or quickly, thoughts evaporate, feelings evaporate. Eyes wired shut. Brain on or off, I don’t know,” she said.

“Can I watch?” I asked her. I meant to say please, but forgot.

“Watch? Watch what?” she asked.

“Sleep.”

“How do you watch sleep?”

I think she tried not to sound interested, but maybe she was. She didn’t speak, but didn’t go to sleep, so I picked up my keys, my phone, and my speed and went home. I didn’t go home. I rang the third doorbell on the third house, number three, Treehouse Street. It said, ‘Tanwen.’

 

 I was entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

 

Check Facebook. Check Twitter.

Breakfast: Prozac. Ready. Coffee and roll-up.

I pressed the red phone symbol on her mobile and heaved it across the room to the sofa at ninety degrees. I had not answered first time, had ignored the message, and only listened to it as she rang for the third time in five minutes.

The same words at a different time; I had heard them before, but this time they struck. They didn’t stick.

“Please don’t call me again.” But, this time she added, “Congratulations, you bastard. Fuck off to rehab and leave me alone.”

“Una. Una?”

Sleep – Salvador Dali (1937)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I humbly asked Her to remove my shortcomings.

 

“Here it comes an then it goes And it hits me, takes me home I don’t know where I’m going And I don’t know where I’ve been But I’d do it all again

All I wanted was a taste Enough to waste a day Just enough to make me sick I can’t get too much of it Let it Flow”

Water and three Woodbines.Check Facebook. Check Twitter.

Breakfast: Lithium and Lithium. Ready. Roll-ups.

 I made a list of all persons I had harmed, and I became willing to make amends to them all.

 

The door closed. Jammed, slammed, shut. Out through the in door.

‘You can’t outrun the sadness you’ve seen.’ Una said.

Time is relative and quantic. It never stops or starts, just runs, limps, stop-start-stopping-starting time running out, ebbing, and flowing but there.

You said we are born to die. Carpe diem. Stop procrastinating. Say the words. Absolute time, a time for absolutes. Relative time. Relative to what? The past becomes the present becomes the future becomes the past and we don’t see it, we can’t touch or taste it. It is, but it has gone and it is to come. Click the pause button. Cue and review.
Una had said, “When you’ve seen sadness looking at you, you can’t run away.”
I hadn’t understood until then, sitting alone, counting the moments, seconds, minutes, repeat and recount. Press pause.
“Hope dies, too, you know,” Una said as her keys dropped and chipped the corner of the glass coffee table, last Saturday’s Grauniad unmoved, still unread. I’ll read it online.

 I made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

 

Breakfast: Check Facebook. Check Twitter. Seroquel. Spliff-bottle bong-spliff-bong.

Seren – She had a collection of plastic dolls heads; their eyes all shut. Thirty-six. I counted.

Prydwen – I read her my dreams.

Ingrid – I read her dreams.

Rhiannon – She never dreamed. I told her that she must.

Iorwen – She slept less than I did.

Tanwen – She listened to Sleater-Kinney before sleep.

Una – She said I spoke of dreams in my sleep. We played Mind Games together

Angharad – I spoke Welsh to her.

Llio She spoke welsh to me.

Iola – Nad oedd yn siarad Cymraeg â mi.

Zoe – I am not sure that I have met her.

Eira – I don’t know her yet.

Dilys – I won’t meet her, but she will know me.

 

 I continue to take personal inventory and when I am wrong promptly admit it.

 

Hello it’s me again. She fell asleep. I missed it. Next time I’ll get it. I’ll get it and then I will sleep. That’s how it works.

I left my phone at Angharad’s house. I set it to capture, to record, to see to know. I would know, then. Then, I would know. It ran out of charge, and did a poor dying swan impression, she said. I’ve never seen a swan dying either.

“Have you?” I asked Llio, finishing the story, before I made to leave.

I charged the battery overnight, counting the power surge from nought to who knows where.

I closed my eyes, so that I would miss it reach 100%. You can have too much reality. You really shouldn’t capture some moments.

The eye focussed and the ear – does a phone have ears? – pricked. I wouldn’t miss it this time. Llio wanted me to stay, but I had to go.

“I think you’ve left your phone,” she said as I said goodbye.

“Oh, did I?” I said, cwtching her and better hiding it from view. “I have to go now; Iola’s coming over to watch the West Wing.” I watch Clockwork Orange every night. Only the first and the last scenes. The rest doesn’t matter. Rest doesn’t matter.

 

 I sought through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with God, as I understand Her, praying only for knowledge of Her will for us and the power to carry that out.

 

Breakfast: Seroquel. Coffee and three Woodbines.

Iola didn’t want to sleep. I wanted her to. She wanted me she said. Sex and death, but not sleep.

“I’ve got Temazepam,” I said. “Want one?”

“I love Jellies,” she said.

She played me Temazi Party through her iPhone speakers. It lacked something. Out of time, it felt worse. She had two, but wanted an all-night Temazi Party, she said.

“I’m tired. I might try to sleep. Sleep with me,” I said.

She unbuttoned her waistcoat. Everything starts somewhere. Maybe, this is where sleep begins. Sex and death. I just wanted to sleep. I didn’t, nor did she, but created another idea. The creation.

That was my idea, no, it wasn’t my idea, it was a thought that fought the battle of who could care more and embedded itself. The thought became me and I was it. I was a thought an idea mutating beyond thought to potential, not to action, yet, but to the potential of action. When the world first buzzed in my head and creation seemed possible again, recreation, I was trapped in a box, not my body, just my head. I couldn’t see beyond the box and I could see possibility’s parameters, but I was eighteen then and I hadn’t had a thought yet. This was further than I had got. This was where I had to go. I would follow it, but I had to ring someone first. No point keeping things to yourself. Share it. I wanted to tell Zoe, but I hadn’t spoken to her and didn’t know her number. Facebook. Always there, always watching.

I told her about my idea. She got it. She rang Eira and Dilys. It was the afternoon, I noticed time for the first time, and they couldn’t come over until they had finished their shifts at the Internet Café, I hadn’t been inside, but I knew it was next to Rock-a-Boom from their posts.

I wanted to see sleep, to know it, to capture it actively; no longer a passenger, passively non-committal. Tonight, I would be active and from it would come…everything. Eira and Dilys had commented on the John Peel page and they were coming. They wanted to capture time too. We could all capture time, only for a moment, but it would be ours.

The beginning is the end is the beginning of the end of the beginning. The moment at which everything starts and stops. Stops and starts. Loops infinitely. Tonight is the night. Everything is ready. They are coming and we will all sleep.

I rewound and listened to everything. Everything I’d said into the app on my phone, every pause and breath. Everything captured.

 I had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps; I tried to carry this message to others and to practice these principles in all my affairs.

Post update: You lack the season of all natures, sleep. – Shakespeare

Breakfast: Nothing today.

I wanted sleep. Sleep loops infinitely…the end of the loop, when the edges fray is what is left. I found it. This recording is for you. It’s on my phone, check my Tumblr, Instagram, I’ve tweeted a link, my Facebook status is freshly anointed with time and place. Twelve short steps to the finish.

Where was I? Time, place, moments, seconds slowing, coming closer, bouncing, skipping, and floating, up and out, back towards me…I was scrolling, though names, but not people. The Sonics, sounds, rebounds, Psycho. Yes, Psycho, looped by the sonic sound of The Sonics. Perfect.

Everyone was looking. I was standing. “Hello, my name is Lucy and I am an addict,” I said.

“Hello Lucy.”

Fin…