Another funny dream last night:

In the dream my friend Eric has a pet raccoon named Lord Chambers (obviously a British raccoon.) Eric walks him on a leash. He brings him to Kmart and Lord Chambers gets loose. He climbs next to a lady ordering a prescription in the pharmacy area and she lets out a bloodcurdling scream. Lord Chambers, frightened, runs off and causes a panic through the store.

What a funny dream.

The depression is gone, but there are still residual challenges. Like sleep. To survive a very painful childhood I learned to use sleep as an escapist drug. Perhaps this is why I did not have too many youthful experiences with other drugs. But like a lot of neuroses learned in childhood, this one no longer serves its purpose. Depression seems don' and gon' until I realize that getting out of bed is STILL the hardest part of the day. From there things flow easily.

I have a lot of pretentiousness to answer for, but now I'm nt so pretentious anymore - now I'm just good.

I need to let go of fear and start living fearlessly for the first time ever. But I can't be reckless like before. Now I have to live fearlessly and keep control over mundane life.

Licentiousness should only be practiced by the exceptional. It is our "rich man's gold." When practiced by the masses it degenerates into meaningless hedonism. Look at "Jersey Shore."

I guess I sometimes felt that I had to be the serious student and do all the tedious homework while everyone else was out partying and getting laid. Well, now is the payoff. Should I do a story about this for my writers' group. Involving me and peeping-tom activities. An idea.

A power surge destroys my telephone. Just after I get a cellphone. Coincidence? I think not. I think the universe is conspiring to make me happy again.

I'm working on a new character. His name is Beef. At least that's his nickname. That's what the kids at school call him. He's a big jock/fratboy. Everybody says to him: "What's up, Beef? How's it goin' bro?" Beef ONLY shakes hands with his coaches and other respectable adults (and he does not respect all adults.) Everyone else is greeted with a rough chest-bump. "Yeah! What's up, Beef!"

His mother thinks the name "Beef" is awful and would rather him be called by the name she gave him. But she does not mind that much. She is mostly just glad that her son is popular and if the other hearty popular guys call him Beef, then so be it.

And Beef is mostly happy. He raises a lizard in his room. He talks football with the best of them. His life revolves around his athletics and fantasy leagues.

There is only one problem:

Beef is gay.

Sometimes I used to smoke a lot of marijuana and get these panicky otherworldly feelings. This is one of a few mountains I have left to climb.

One of my mountains.

1. My sleep schedule. I need to get back on a decent sleep schedule. This is as simple as combating the nightime anxiety I experience. An anxious, panicky, otherworldly feeling, like I'm losing my mind or living in another reality or in a reality that is coming apart and where nothing is certain and guaranteed.

This makes it difficult for me to sleep at night. Not only that, but I am afraid of being abducted by aliens.

Last night, when it was still dark and I was just drifting off to a - finally - sound sleep there was a loud "pop" and the house lost all power. "Oh shit," I thought, "They're coming for me. They're coming for me." I jumped out of bed and ran down the stairs to try to run out the front door. By the time I reached downstairs the lights were back on, but the living room smelled like an electrical fire. A power strip in my living room was crackling, so I unplugged the appliances. The power strip continued to crackle, so I unplugged the power strip. But I still smelled an electrical fire smell. I looked and sniffed around and realized that it was from the phone cord, which is, stupidly, plugged into an old-fashioned two-hole socket. I unplugged the phone cord and it was hot and smelled like, again, electrical fire. I unplugged everything in the living room.

Now I am agitated that I have to live with one more worry. The mice should be trying to re-infest again soon too. Now I'm going to be constantly afraid to go away for fear of an electrical fire. I'll figure something out and deal with it.

Reality displacement. Wondering if I really have a past or if Iwas born just this minute. I have access to very few photos of my younger self.

I remember one: It was Halloween 1981 and I was wearing a little blue bunny rabbit jumpsuit costume. Boy, was I cute!

My mother stole all of my 92 year old grandfather's money and completely deserted him. She put him in a dingy hellhole where he sometimes spends weeks completely alone. She gives him such little spending money that he sometimes has to ask ME for cash. In three years he has not even had a Christmas tree. She even deserts him on the holidays. I'm honored to be the black sheep in that family!

I was going to post this on Facebook, but I don't want to give her the satisfaction. Not only that, but I am disappointed in my grandfather. He has always been so passive. If she had done even half to me I would have raised a ruckus to Heaven and Hell. I would have called her out in front of people. I would have contacted lawyers. I would have called and complained to everyone within reach. But he just takes it and is as peaceful and compliant as ever.

This is so contrary to my nature that I cannot even understand it. I certainly can't respect it. I cannot help but to love the man, but love and respect are different things.

As repugnant as violence and cruelty are, cowardice is even worse.

A Nightmare on Sue Street

I had such a bizarre, terrifying nightmare last night. I should really be a horror writer.

Her name was Julie. She looked like a hot brunette. We met over the Internet. She agrees to meet me at my best friend Eric's house. Once she gets there I realize she's severely disabled. She's like a crab. She can still walk and drive, but she is extremely fragile, quite disabled. She is wearing a shell over her body, like a brittle human exoskeleton. I don't even know what is under her shell and something tells me that I do not want to find out. I take her out the back of Eric's house and - as politely as possible - I try to get rid of her, to make up an excuse, to send her home. And she has me so creeped out at this point that I hope to God to never see her again. I politely walk her to her car, making up all kinds of excuses. On the way to her car, she trips, falls and cracks her body-long prosthetic, ending up as a heap on Eric's back porch. I rush in to Eric's house, not sure what to do. Eric has to leave for work. It's morning for some reason. In real life Eric works nights, but for some reason I was meeting a girl at his house early in the morning and now he was leaving for work. As he prepares to leave my other best friend Chris calls and tells me that he is coming over to Eric's house. I tell Chris the situation and ask him what I should do. I don't even want to leave Eric's house to meet Chris because she could be out there waiting for me. Maybe she would be leaving and I could wait until then and then try to shake her. What if she knocks on the window? I close all the blinds in Eric's house. What if she comes in through the garage? I close and lock the heavy door leading out to the garage. As he is leaving I ask Eric if it is okay with his parents if I go on the computer. Calling Christopher again and explaining to him that we should meet at my place. I try to get out of there. I'm afraid she'll follow me, follow my car. Chris pulls up. Is she still a heap on the back porch or is she moving around now? I tell Christopher we will have to circle around and go all sorts of alternate routes back to my house to lose her just in case she decides to follow us. Imagine if she learns where I live!

That was where the nightmare ended. I'm going to turn this into a horror story for my writers' group.

I hate Sundays and holiday weekends (because then Monday becomes Sunday.) Sunday is the day I am most likely to be alone. To avoid a relapse of depression as much as possible I have to at least get out of the house. So I go to Borders or Barnes and Noble for at least a few hours. There I try to read as much as possible, from New Age to the Classics to philosophyto short stories and magazines. By the end of about four or five hours I am in a bloodshot daze (like I am when I spend hours looking at pornography, but that daze is pleasurable in a much different way) and I shuffle from the store.

The question is: Does Junot Diaz read Wittgenstein? Or the Classics? Or Kant, etc...? See, I'm preparing to annihilate him in a literary war and I want to be well-prepared and stocked with ammunition.

I only want to become famous so I can verbally pummel Junot Diaz. He's pretentious. And racist. And he tries too hard to be cool (pretentious), ghetto (pretentious), and salt of the earth yet brilliant and quotey and blurby (pretentious.) He writes Newsweek-sounding ish for the jackets of other racist books.

I want to fuckin' destroy him!

But I'm pretentious too...

Last night I had a dream that my sister was an African pygmy tribesman. I stood over him (my sister) and shouted: "You were never there for me! You're a bad sister, etc..." The African bushman just looked at me. What is the significance of this dream? Did I dream of my sister as a pygmy because I see her as small?

I'm once again itching to get published. I hate writers who say "I don't need to get published to validate myself as a writer!" Well, neither do I, but GODAMMIT, it's just better to be one of the winners. And being a winner is getting paid for what one loves to do. Not that money even matters the least bit. I just want to be FAMOUS! Guts and glory! I need to get published at least twice more this year. Then I might even drink a beer in celebration! Maybe on Thanksgiving Eve in A.C. I always liked to go to Firewaters and order a pint of Allagash White. White beer is a bit harsh for the uninitiated, but I always liked to drink it THERE, at the Trop in A.C.

Why? Because when I hear the name "Allagash" I think of the frightening Allagash Abductions that took place in northern Maine and I am grateful to be in a crowded, busy casino with people I love.