Day dream
Drowsiness is always unreliable during the days of acute anxiety. It is highly probable that, even when tired and sleepy, we won’t be able to fall asleep, that we will wake up startled just as we were about to drift off, that we will have nightmares, and that many strange things will happen during that time, time we’ll later wish we had spent out of bed, no matter how knackered and weak we might be to tackle our functional errands.
All of this is normal, especially when going to bed at night, during the days of acute anxiety.
During mixed episodes of anxiety and depression, however, the justified mistrust occurs mainly before napping.
Over time, barring a radical improvement in the objective conditions of one’s own life, the difficulties surrounding everything related to rest will continue, but reduced to a role of mere Aristotelian efficient cause: physical, mechanical problems to fall asleep and sleep a lot and well, but freed from the repertoire of unreal, psychedelic and extreme tortures.
Weeks after diagnosing the end of one of the good phases of my hair and announcing my imminent visit to the hairdresser, the hair had been showing harmonious growth and now looked even better than in the misinterpreted moment of peak and loss — shinier, with more vigour, with a better balance of areas with volume and straight areas: less grey and brown and more blond waves.
I even felt sorry for the possibility of messing up my hair on the pillow.
It was early afternoon, both in the bedroom and in my dream. I didn’t know who I was, why I was there, or what part of Madrid it was, but it was me and I felt like I was somewhere in the city. It was a typical posh summer party with outdoor seating, where the seating consisted of stools instead of chairs.
(Come to think of it, this could be due to the plan to make all attendees appear integrated in harmony, all of them literally at the same height—level—whether standing or sitting, and all in an active and lively state even when sitting, since a stool deactivates you less than a chair.)
There was an abundance of white in the outfits, light and airy garments, that sophisticated, expensive, Very Important Informality, that looks great. The girls were pretty, dressed and groomed in the same Very Important Informality as natural, spontaneous, as if they didn’t mean to.
As I headed to the indoor part, I came across Tom Cruise at the door. He responded to my gaze with a broad, friendly smile, which I interpreted as a celebration of the radiant, youthful appearance of our old hair and then the nap was interrupted.
I noticed I was having (anxious-like) trouble breathing even though the dream was being awesome. I heard my own snores until I lifted my chin from my neck. I brought my chin closer to my neck again to check if the snoring would resume, and it did. I had never snored consciously and on purpose before.
Contrary to my calculations when I lay down, the heat was beyond the fan’s capacity. It would’ve been easy to turn it off with the remote and switch on the air conditioner with the other remote, but even that quick and easy manoeuvre seemed risky, lest I break my half-sleep and couldn’t resume my previous dream where I had left off.
There was still an hour until the alarm went off and I managed to fall back asleep, but this time the dream came mixed with other dreams, like in those movies with separate stories that converge at the end and that are so fashionable now.
My hair was not spoilt when I woke up and looked in the mirror.
While getting off the bus on my way to work, The Cure’s ‘Close to Me’ was playing on a massive oudoor seating packed with people sitting in low chairs with backs.
Back at work, I bought a nice cold Frappuccino in a glass bottle at the Chinese store (on the corner next to the Chinese woman’s bar’s corner), and while alternating the drink with a cigarette standing in the entrance, facing the dry shadows of piss (that we had discussed in another article), I spotted in the distance, among the trees of the cement park, an advertising post for Martini.