Magic mushrooms for Halloween
At some point, three to four hours later, at around 2 am of a Sunday morning in which the clocks have gone back an hour, a dread kicks in, some gripping horror. Is it all coming to an end? Or is what’s playing a long drawn-out representation of whatever remains in my viscera? Gut bacteria playing my memories like an ivory-keyed harpsichord. A feature film with layers I get lost in. Backstories and forgettable side characters that make unexpected appearances. Punchlines that make me imperceptibly giggle until I remember - I’m the punchline. Points of tension as entertainment devices whereas I’m looking for a Bergman B&W still shot of a Swedish summer coast, where the tide fondles two pairs of feet. There’s no subtitles and nothing unfolds.
That’s my bed, the feeling I’ll get as I open the front door, quickening in intensity when I charge up the stairs until it’ll pour over me when I push my bedroom door in a sticky, gooey, swaddling relief. But instead, I’ve got a wacky Fellini ensemble in a place that may as well be at the bottom of the sea. The actors oscillate between surreal and so real, and so they can’t be real. Like a PT Anderson from which I flinch but can’t tear myself away.
“Stay present,” I say, not aloud. The weight on my shoulders of missing four hours of sleep is matched by fuzzy reverberations of my room. Or am I mistaking it for the Wolverine-like claw of the very much Grim Reaper, Atropos, fate. The spectre of ageing. A pestilence our home is keeping in the basement, bed-bound for now. As I finger my phone, the rushing realisation of reality is an inevitable ordeal I’m drinking courage to face. Like how it’s more than enough to find curly body hair on bedding. To admit it’s there, brush it off onto the floor, vacuum it up, dispose of it in the kitchen bin and take it to the outside bin for the council to take away on a cold, gloomy, bleary-eyed weekday morning. It’s an unmistakable courage that goes unchecked. My Uber is waiting.
That’s my bed, the feeling I’ll get as I open the front door, quickening in intensity when I charge up the stairs until it’ll pour over me when I push my bedroom door in a sticky, gooey, swaddling relief. But instead, I’ve got a wacky Fellini ensemble in a place that may as well be at the bottom of the sea. The actors oscillate between surreal and so real, and so they can’t be real. Like a PT Anderson from which I flinch but can’t tear myself away.
“Stay present,” I say, not aloud. The weight on my shoulders of missing four hours of sleep is matched by fuzzy reverberations of my room. Or am I mistaking it for the Wolverine-like claw of the very much Grim Reaper, Atropos, fate. The spectre of ageing. A pestilence our home is keeping in the basement, bed-bound for now. As I finger my phone, the rushing realisation of reality is an inevitable ordeal I’m drinking courage to face. Like how it’s more than enough to find curly body hair on bedding. To admit it’s there, brush it off onto the floor, vacuum it up, dispose of it in the kitchen bin and take it to the outside bin for the council to take away on a cold, gloomy, bleary-eyed weekday morning. It’s an unmistakable courage that goes unchecked. My Uber is waiting.
