But at least I don't see you float away

My hair was pinned to the ceiling leaving me dangling ungainly, waving around like a skeleton decoration for Halloween. All the while the phone was ringing and ringing and I couldn't reach it because I was too high. Somebody was shuffling around below me, I could just see the top of their head below my feet but I couldn't speak. Not that I had no voice, I was incapable of opening my mouth. I watched instead as they rummaged through my bag and my jacket, found a packet of cigarettes and waved at me as they pocketed them. My purse disappeared likewise.

Goddamn fucking bastard. I never should have given him a key.

Another bad morning

I was at a party, different rooms for different sets of people with overlap because I steal groups. It was Kirsty's house since parties generally are there. A note was handed to me with a conversation that trailed down in clumps of terrible handwriting that basically said

I know what you want. She leaves at the end of the night. Do what you want with her but tomorrow she's off limits.

And I sat on the edge of this metal thing while the party paused to wait for my reaction and I felt like crying or laughing or screaming. I had been sold and this was the receipt. He stood up and left and I waited and tried to make it out the door after him. Not sure if I was going to kill him or ask him why or what. Instead I ended up in the kitchen with laughter and whistles flowing through the swing door. I starting tidying up. It was eleven o'clock. His hands were tangled in my hair and I stabbed him repeatedly with knives and forks and empty beer cans but he wouldn't leave. Then one room started emptying. I stood up some stairs so I would be level with the last of them and he hugged me but left. Scored my cheek with his stubble. Couldn't stay, I'd be fine. As soon as the door shut something hit the back of my head and I fell. At this point I got up for some water and found myself in tears. I don't know what any of it means. I never know what any of it means, just that I'm tired.

Later I was shaking this little animal, ugly and odd shaped. There was something caught in its teeth and I shook and shook and shook until this pile of nonsense fell about my feet. There was a gun and History and yesterday and his cadaver hands and a set of playing cards and a bunch of other things and I poured it out while this girl watched me with the biggest bug eyes. She concluded that it meant violence and I crawled blindly towards the plug where my phone charged and typed in eleven numbers I didn't know I still remembered but I woke up before I called it.

It's really nothing new

I've got black coffee, an orange and a little hedgehog pill and this is called how I'm going to make it through the day. I can't read which rules out every one of the books cluttering up my couch and I left Kerouac feeling awkward next to a prostitute because I could no longer understand him. The majority of my films cannot be watched because the remaining ones are subtitled or monotone and I can't concentrate. I set myself a task this week, well two tasks actually. Task number one was scavenge around town for cheap dvds and maybe a pair of tights and not come home until I was exhausted and I had walked far enough to see something new. It's the task I usually set myself when I go to uni only with more turning up to lectures maybe. Task number two is chapter three. I printed it out, I pulled out the appropriate notebook and I scoured my floor for a decent pen. But can't read, can't write so I just type nonsense to assure myself I can still communicate. I'm spending most of my day hiding from my phone. In my dreams all it does it ring. In reality it beeps with another distant meaningless hey from someone more bored than I. I'm not sure what I'm waiting for to be honest but I appear to be doing so.

My new passport arrived. I am officially allowed to run away now. It's my insta-cheer up these days, calculating flight costs. I was slightly amused by the fact that if you fly to Paris on the 12th of February you could pay £130 and coming back on the 16th will cost you £180 with everything inbetween getting staggeringly high. But take a trip a week before and you'd pay £60 each way and gain more points by being unexpected and breaking expectations! I didn't even ask to see flights in Feb but there you go, it decided I should. I also laughed as I looked up football dates so I won't be surprised later and there's a game on Valentine's day. Parkhead holds some 60,000 odd (mostly) men. That's a lot of annoyed wives.

Oh bleh I need to hurry up and feel better, I made a goddamn list of things to do this week! I actually wrote it down, neat and concise and organised and bam I got the sniffles and my mum gets flu so I'm left making sure the house doesn't fall down. I hope I never have kids, let me tell you that now. I had the strangest dream last night that I can't even begin to describe. I swear it felt real. I was sat in my old sitting room, squeezed in with a bunch of other people I didn't know and we'd just been to a girl's funeral. I had a bunch of diaries in my hand that had been hers I think and her boyfriend was going to write a book but they kept slipping down the back of the sofa into a shelf of cobwebs and then I had an argument about Catholics, someone insisted I had to go down to buy milk and all I remember is the guy had purple in his hair and facial hair that shifted if you looked at him for too long at a time. Do you ever get that feeling when you've been looking at someone for too long and their face shifts into someone else? Like it's as if you've never really looked at them before because you know them too well and then you suddenly see what they look like and it's completely different from the way you know them? I kept getting that when I talked to him and I woke up annoyed but without a headache so that's something.

Everyday means another bee to rescue. Goddamn stupid bees.

My friend was a mix of a girl named Ashleigh from school who had done gymnastics and Nicola the first friend I made at uni with her mad hair and soft Edinburgh craziness. She took my arm as we wandered around the dark woody campus, looking for the door. We found a seat, padded leather bar stools on grass and settled down for the powerpoint presentation that would act as our introduction to the degree. It was long and I was eating an apple. I span the core round the table until I started getting looks from the other people so I stood up and made my way to the front to bin it. My skirt was black and fifties sticky out and my shoes rubbed into my heels as I stepped around clusters of students. It was agonisingly slow and I had to take the long way round. By the time I got back a new group of people had taken seats around us. My stool was hidden between the backs of whispered laughter and I shrank smaller, darting through until I managed to get my ass on the seat. I straightened up and pushed them away. One guy I shoved was this huge broad dark and scruffy man who snatched my hand in his and introduced himself loudly, booming that he had another class to get to and I had to shout my own name several times before he heard me. He cuffed the top of head as he left, laughing as my hair exploded even bigger. The lecturer had things to tell us, something about a repeat the next day and then I back outside with my friend complaining that I missed my university and she sighed and pushed me down a hill.

Then Julie had a birthday party and her dress wasn't zipped properly up the back but she wouldn't let me fix it. Her and three others had plates of cakes only the cakes had been crumbled into the paper of the plates and I shuddered to see them try to scoop it into their mouths. This tiny little girl kept complaining of being hungry and then she picked up a screwdriver and several screws, called them a fancy name and tried to fix a shelf. I took a screw away from her and pierced my finger. Then I was on my hands and knees in a bookshop looking for something for Julie who was shouting abuse at a bunch of people in the doorway. I was tangled in a card display when one of them came up behind me and tripped me up. I leaped up and he held my hands as I struggled to hit him and all he did was laugh.

Woke up to deal with bees.

Thinking about puddles, puddles and mistakes

I didn't tell you about my dream the other night. I wrote it down so I wouldn't forget but I just could not be bothered blogging. Funny thing I sometimes forget I have actually posted something here. There's a post here for almost every day and I often have no memory of writing it.

Anyway, dream. It started in a street, there was some fuss about a dress, I don't remember this part too hot, but there was a big fuss anyway and then sometime later this little girl skipped past me to hail a cab. Big yellow New York one like cabs always should be. She had her long hair in a french braid, I remember because I can't do it but my aunt could and she used to twist my hair on top of my head when I was little and my hair stretched all the way down my back. I was watching a programme just there and this girl had this wondrously long braid and I sort of want that. I also sort of want to chop it pixie again but I probably won't. So she skipped out, dragging a suitcase and she was wearing the dress. Black and white and skimming her ass as she leaned into the road. She slid into the cab and the boy with me whistled. We were in the jungle. We stayed in the trees not wanting to touch the swamp. My view cut to the three guys on the other side. They were posed smiling bubbles under the water and I worried. He told me not to care and then I lost any control over the dream. There was a crocodile. They panicked but it was in the way of the only exit. But an Irish guy threw a rock, and he kept on throwing stuff until it was buried under some sort of large computer. I saw this scene so many different times. I kept waking up, and then I'd shut my eyes again and see it and I couldn't understand why so I made my Irish man who switched into many different men and eventually started to cry kick the computer which was now a box off and there was the dead crocodile staring at the trio with the dress and a braid in its teeth.

"This is fucked up. Fuck you guys," said my Irish man and he started throwing stones again at something else and then my mum woke me up by hovering by the end of my bed and I freaked out.

J'y suis jamais allé

We were snuggled up tight like kittens with my arm holding her waist tight so she wouldn't fall into the river. The jut of my thumb grazed her breasts and there was a wall of blazing red frills between her thighs and mine. I shook her awake when we passed Notre Dame. There was a raft that was supposed to be an island with too many people on it so it was in danger of sinking everytime somebody moved.

"Priests!" shouted she for they were priests indeed and so there was a lot of moving because one would kneel down and two would stand up and so on. "Catholics!" At this point my brain gave up on me because nothing was making sense and decided to toss all of us into the freezing water and I drowned. Red frills and ribbon wrapped around my middle and tied me to the bottom of the riverbed while the priests bobbed up and down, drowning and then not, and one would kneel down and choke while two would stand up and so on.

I woke up to the distant sound of a marching band which I assume was the orange lodge because it nearly always is at this time of year and because it makes the dream infinitely better if that was so.

I just remembered my dream last night

There were four of us, three guys and me. Of the three two were guys I knew but one I couldn't place. There were a lot of other people too mostly female and they kept throwing things at me because I wasn't paying them attention. Cards were thrust in my hand and I tried to tell them I didn't know how to play poker but instead I said hell yes I want to play. I was originally on a red chair but I slowly slid off but before I fell to the ground a fourth guy (who I also knew) pulled me onto his lap. He took the cards from me, stuck his tongue in my ear and I told him what cards the other guys were holding. They had showed me them when I admitted I didn't know how to play so he asked me and I had a long debate about the morals of cheating in a poker game because there's the bluffing which is just lying which is just cheating and anyway then I hid under the table. There was this huge book but I couldn't read the words properly because I kept getting kicked so I gave one leg a paper cut and he chased me round and round the table until I threw one of the girls at him and then I woke up.

Now I almost didn't post this because I firmly believed this had happened and even now as I type it all out I cannot say for certain that I didn't try to play poker at some point this week and have made an ass of myself by saying 'oh yeah I had this poker dream, crazy times'. It's a worry.

On the other hand there's a Jimi Hendrix concert on tv right now. It is freakin' awesome but that should be obvious.

Pagan Poetry

I was sitting in a big couch. Those leather ones you sink into. He kept asking me what was wrong until I snapped and I told him everything. Absolutely everything. His response was a hug. I shrugged him off because it can't fix anything. And then I snapped. This is when I stopped playing first person and floated off to watch myself. I screamed a big Fuck You to everybody that crowded round to gawk at me. I wanted them to see me. It was a show. He chased after me and I told him his life was a lie and he was a bastard and I hit him so he hit me back. Fist through my face that I could really feel. There was a crunch and a gasp and I thought you never see women getting punched in the face. There are millions of films and scenes with men in fights and their nose disfigured but it's too horrible to show a woman in the same position. It's unseemly. Essentially you've ruined their looks and hey what's a girl with an ugly face? Desperate. So I laughed. "You fucking hit me." And the crowd told me I had to start over, this wasn't right. I shouldn't be laughing. A man had hit me. He should be killed. Instead he asked me to marry him since I was already wearing the dress. And I was. White corset with a huge skirt ballooning out from my hips like a hooker trapped in a meringue. Pavlova whore! I told him not to be silly. There was blood on the dress and I wasn't going to marry a man who hit me. He took me to the hospital and they asked if there had been any trauma to my face and I laughed so hard I woke up.

Maybe not from the sources you are pouring into

I was baking cookies in the kitchen when the doorbell rang and I panicked because I don't like it when the doorbell rings and it's only me in the house and I have to deal with things. So I walked down the hall, jumping up to hit the door frame on my way out of the kitchen only it was much higher than I supposed and there was this netting thing, all red and yellow and far far too bright and I tangled my finger and broke it like whathisface did in primary. When I get to the door I have no idea who the guy standing there is but he's a friend and he brought cake like I'd told him to. I tried to lead him into the house but he decided he wanted to go through the garage but you can't because the door is broken and instead he walked through my house, out the back door through the back door of my garage and stood in there and complained about the mess. By the time I found him and got him out the back door had swung all the way open and became a puzzle I couldn't work out how to put back together. I thought I had it sorted and I went to lock it but there was a cobweb in the way and he decided this was a problem. He blew it away but it blew inward and got all tangled round my still all bent the wrong way finger and I was so pissed off at him because he was acting so smugly gentlemanlike. I locked it and the door fell down. We covered it with a sheet. Then he started tearing apart the cake he had brought because there was a ring inside and he was going to propose but then he realised what if I swallowed it or someone else got that slice and I remember falling down and laughing.

When I woke up my phone was flashing because some drunk idiot with a girlfriend had sent me the word "Yum". I have not responded.

Maybe not from the directions you are staring at

We were standing on a corner trying to work out where to go. Everybody was shouting and pulling in different directions when he came over and tapped my shoulder. "I've got a present for you." He pulled up a huge suitcase and started to open it when he paused. "You're probably gonna hate it." So now I was worried. It was this square penguin toy with a zip up the back. I stretched out my arms to hug it and he hugged me instead but the angles were wrong and we just sort of collided. I tried to open the back of the penguin but he freaked out so I had to stop. There were a whole lot of of weird things in the bag with the same square penguin thing on it and he murmured something like they were backup ones in case I hated it and anyway it wasn't the real present there was something else but this other girl pushed between us and started a conversation about her dad's birthday. I was fidgeting with a roll of ribbon when she started cutting up this plastic sheet to protect the present she was giving her dad (I couldn't see what it was). She spent ages cutting it and I was sure it looked too small but she wouldn't listen to me. Another girl came up behind me and started bitching about what an idiot she was and how everyone knew what her game was. He pulled my arm and tried to talk to me but the plastic flew out of the first girl's hand and sliced his face in two. My finger broke as I tried to hold him together and I woke up as Julie bumped into the end of my bed as she was getting dressed.

Emotional landscape

There was a girl in a yellow sundress. The kind I can't wear because I'm too short and my breasts are too big and my belly too round. Makes me look pregnant. She was in a yellow sundress and a blue toweled hoodie and she pushed past me in the street. It was getting cold and I had fifteen minutes to make it to the shop and buy what it was I needed. It was some sort of powder for a pudding. It wasn't necessary but it was ideal. "You better hurry up," said somebody. "The hookers are in and they buy up everything. They know the world is ending." I tried to run but I gave up. I was too tired. The whores were packing trolleys and baskets and their bras with everything on sight and the man on the till just rolled his eyes. Apocalypse nonsense. The girl was gasping on the floor and moaning as stiletto heels pushed her out of the way. I was the only one who seemed to notice her or care that she was clearly in pain. I carried her to a couch and brought her a drink of water. "You saved me," she smiled with big white teeth and I shrugged. They didn't have what I needed but one girl handed me a potato and they wished me luck.

My walk home was broken by the constant ringing of my phone as message after message flashed up but I couldn't read it because I didn't have the right kind of phone. It was the yellow girl. She was in love with me. She was notorious in the area for dying until someone saved her. Then she would fall in love with me and my world would end. The potato told me this. Words carved into the skin. As I reached my front door my phone rang but it was someone else and he was trying to tell me something important. I think he wanted to see me or he wanted to give me something. Three girls, sisters from up the road one of which was an old friend of mine barged through. "The concert's starting in ten minutes! Did you make the pudding?" I asked the man on the phone to wait a moment and I searched through the cupboards and found jelly. I gave them this and the potato and a shoe and they gave me a cat in change. By the time I got back to my phone he had hung up and I had eight new messages from the girl. I locked my phone away and tried to go out but she was standing on the grass, her blue hoodie hanging off her shoulders and as soon as she saw me she stretched out her arms and whispered "boom."

"I fucking told you so!" cried a whore as I sat up in bed with a headache. I found my phone in my bedside cupboard and my pillow on the floor. Make of that what you will.

I had a dream last night. I was stuck in a flat full of skinny ass models probably because I saw this girl whose thighs did not meet. Does the wind whistle through?

Speaking of girls I saw yesterday, because I love to keep you informed of girls I see that are worth mentioning, I presume the French are on holiday because the large bagpacked groups of olive skinned students have arrived. I thrust my way through one group of these, exhausted, far too warm due to heaters being left on in the offices, trying to hide the big blue plaster on my wrist because it looked so utterly ridiculous and squinting a little more than usual, when suddenly one of them turned round and shouted "Gauche!" in my face. I received half a smile in apology but who cares, she was gorgeous. A french bundle of hair and a purpley red jumper. It made up for the twiglet legs of earlier and the trapezium shaped man still to come.

Anyway dream. I remember struggling to pull my tshirt off from under this weird dress thing that someone had zipped me into before I could take my existing clothes off. I remember something about glasses and people prodding my eye. I punched this blonde girl in the face while she slept (classy I know) and all these tiny pills came flying out of her mouth along with atomic fireballs (which I have an insane craving for now). I mean they just kept coming. And then that was some sort of a clue because those pills were found somewhere else and I'd solved a murder.

Then I read the most amazing book I have ever read and it changed my life and I woke up to the last three chapters of the goddamn Aeneid for the exam I am ill-prepared for.

Plus side? My eye doesn't hurt like fuck anymore. It is only mildly irritated if I look wildly about the room for instance. Also my hair doesn't suck for once.

This heaven gives me migraines

They started in fourth year maths. In front of me sat a line of those who were just whiling away the days before their sixteenth birthday and the freedom that would bring. One of them hated me, called me a frigid cow for two years straight until he got so high he forgot who I was. Another plotted to bomb a whole area where the rival school was situated.

"But ma granny lives in Eastfield!" The fat girl was distraught.
"So tell 'er to go to the Spar that day." He tried to return to his plan.
"She disnae shop there."
"So tell 'er she 'as to that day."
"But she 'ates it! You're gonnae kill ma granny!"
"No fer fucksake, amurnae. I don't have a fucking bomb!"

We had a test that day. I couldn't see the questions. I couldn't see the numbers of my calculator. I remember not being able to feel my fingers hold the pen so I'm not sure how I wrote. A girl who used to be my best friend but barely spoke to me these days took me by the arm when the bell rang for lunch. She led me to the office and left silently once I was seated. My old tech teacher brought me water and clucked over me like my Papa did. Aggressively caring. When I threw up the staff yelled at me, like I'd planned it. the boy next to me waiting for his social worker kept dancing and cracking jokes until I managed a smile. He even tried to hug me.

Since then the headaches have been frequent. Some of it can be blamed on forgetting my glasses half the time and straining. I read far too much with screwed up eyes and a frown. Last night I stared hard at the word document that had too many blank spaces and wondered if I'd eaten enough. I gave up early and lay in bed until the book fell from my numb fingers and the pillow engulfed me. I was drowning and I tried not to panic. When I panic I can't sleep and if I can't sleep everything gets a lot worse. So I shut my eyes not too tight and my mind takes me to a bar that's really a couch in somebody's bedroom and I'm trapped awkwardly between these two guys who talk way too loud and laugh at me. One falls asleep, dead weight on my thighs and the other plays with my hair speaking nonsense. Then I watch myself pass out and one of them carries me because we have to go, somebody's found us when we should be hiding. They chase us but I never wake up and with the loudest bang they fire a gun at my head and just as I jerk awake a cat with a big fake moustache yells "gotcha".

I got full marks in that maths test though, despite working blind.

Sleeping in

"It's a fucking masterpiece." The man rolls his eyes and slaps me until tears splash down his fingers. Then he finishes dressing me . Braces roll down my breasts and I pull them away with my thumbs. "This is fucking ridiculous." He slaps me again and my head is swallowed in a hat that's far too big. To see anything I have to crane my head back. There's a girl I knew from a long time ago. She's always here. There's a kitten in her arms wrapped in a trenchcoat. "What happened to him? I have to tell him it's a masterpiece." The cat slaps me.

There's a party in the bath and she's sitting on my lap, playing with the edge of my hat. I'm drowning in her hair but she smells so good I don't want to push her off. But now she's babbling in French and I don't understand and I can't understand and I can't stop talking because if I stop talking they'll all leave me. Ducks roll out of the taps as I try to adjust the water and one of them spits a paper boat at me. It slices a line through my arm. I unfold it but the words won't keep still long enough for me to read them. The girl is kissing my neck and I keep pushing her away. The cat is curled up on my lap playing with the ribbon that hangs down from the top of my stocking. The man is on the phone telling everyone I've finished and they laugh and I struggle to get out of the tub to take the phone away. Somehow the girl dies. There's blood everywhere and I snatch the cat up and put him in my pocket with a ball of string. The boat crumbles in my fingers and petals stick to my skin.

Marie-Antoinette is in the kitchen slicing carrots and laughing. There are more cats in her hair. I disentangle them and try to rearrange them in the coat but they are just cats in a coat, nothing more. The dead queen lets out a shriek of laughter and a Russian shows me the door.

"It is the Queen's naptime," she places a finger to my lips and it tastes like metal. The cats are tangled again in one big kitten ball and I roll them out the door with me and when I wake up I'm staring at the blue of my carpet, my nose inches away from the pile of paper I stayed up too late scribbling on.

I'm just a girl living in captivity

I was there to seduce a prince, there were trials or some such fairy tale nonsense but they were either over or my mind was too lazy to bother with them. I was in a restaurant and they toasted my good work with wide smiles and red wine and he followed me into the bathroom. I don't know who he was in relation to me but he wasn't the prince and I wasn't supposed to be seeing him, that much I knew. He wrapped his arms around my waist and watched our reflection. He told me not to cut my hair, it was long again but curled which is not possible without rain when I'm awake. My dress was blue like his shirt and his stubble tickled my neck as he kissed me. Then the screams started. Ear splitting awful screams and he kicked the door of a cubicle down and I watched a beast of a man rape this girl who'd failed with the prince. Then the room was full of people and it was a bedroom with a cardboard box holding the bastard. The girl was dead, tidied away in a drawer and he was impatient to go. Nobody seemed to mind. I threw myself at him when he tried to leave and he crushed my hand in his before throwing me face first into the door. It was at this point my eyes must have opened because from this point on I had that awful feeling that there was something missing, that if I could just see properly everything would make sense. I never knew why this kept happening in my dreams until Julie and my mum told me I slept with my eyes open quite frequently and freaked them out.

Anyway he told me to go back to his house to keep me safe. I went back through to the restaurant and ended up on a train. There was a boy in a green blazer from the school my dad went to and he sat next to me placing a hand on my knee when I smiled at him. I shook my head when he asked my name, saying I was too old, don't be silly. But I was wearing an oversexed school uniform high pigtails, tight shirt, short skirt and socks that kept falling down. Everything was falling down and I spent the whole train journey trying to right my outfit while this boy tried to kiss me. I pulled a coat off a man behind us and wrapped myself up against the rain as we walked along the railroad tracks and I pushed the boy into a ditch before I made it to his house and his blue shirt engulfed me and I was safe. We slept on blankets on the floor with his brother and he gave me a book with a red cover and told me I was in it but I never had a chance to read because these girls pulled me to the bathroom and started having showers, first one then the other talking irritable nonsense about people I didn't know and there was something behind them I couldn't see. I kept pulling his shirt down to cover my ass as more and more people pushed in and I couldn't breathe. Then his arms were pulling me back to the make shift bed and he pressed his lips against my ear and I woke up.

On the plus side nobody was made of cats and all of my teeth stayed in my mouth.

What's a wonderwall anyway?

I find myself wondering if how I do things is the normal way. Like does everyone do the I'm waiting for the microwave to ping dance or the sugar stir wiggle into their coffee. I like knowing that I'm not the only one who sings along with the computer as it turns on or employs the shoogle method in times of desperation (and actually use that term, which is odd since I thought I'd made it up). I flounder a little when I don't know if I'm reacting appropriately to something. When you've spent as long as I have being told you're weird, mad and crazy it kinda screws your head up. I'm not very consistent. I was flattered when a guy offered me a VIP ticket to T in the Park free of charge if I slept with him in the tent we'd be camping in but I was creeped out when another guy claimed he'd always been attracted to me. Somehow that seems round the wrong way.

I got up out of bed this morning as Julie was doing her hair and gave her a fright as I loudly declared that I had to pee. I was still quite asleep, I know because I walked into the wall and woke myself up. I don't remember falling asleep. I remember lying in bed being tired and then I walked into the wall and it was morning. I've never slept like that. There's always the agonizing replaying of everything and thoughts bouncing off my closed eyes. It doesn't matter how exhausted physically or mentally I am, I can never get to sleep. I remember being small, I musta been under four because it was in our old house and Julie wasn't there, and wandering around late at night until my dad would tuck me back in and tell me to think of nothing. I crawled back into bed and thought maybe I finally learnt to sleep. No dreams, no pesky thoughts just rest. Not like the night before when the kittens took me to a new bar and we drank tequila and somebody beside me was smoking French cigarettes. I woke up tasting that dark smoke.

Or the night before that when I had the most ridiculous dream about a princess and woke up the next morning to find I'd written it all down. An almighty scrawl of nonsense. I've typed most of it up since part of me obviously felt the need to share it. Once it makes sense in English you can read it and have a laugh at my subconscious writer.

I was happy this morning. Nothing new to mull except hairstyles. But a song plays in my head and I sway as I make my coffee and my mouth opens quite on its own and belts out: Everyday I wake up alone because I'm not like all the other boys. Ever since I was young I had no choice but it's ok to lead me on. I must admit it's not much fun to be led on by such a one as you are. And then I remember the dream about the man but I can't recall his words to me, only my actions. I crack my jaw and pour in more sugar with a wiggle. He was going to change my life. And all I can think is well at least he wasn't made of kittens.

For a minute there I lost myself

"I just want simplicity. No more convoluted situations, no secrets I can hide from some, lie barefaced to others and throw heavy-handed at an unlucky few. I'm tired and I can only sustain selfishness for a short time and then it all comes tumbling down on me and I have to care about everybody else. I do my best to speak plainly, tell people what I think with a degree of tact. Yes, I lie. Yes, I reshape history, omitting certain truths or at most telling them so off-handedly that I think I sound like I don't care. Sometimes I don't remember what is real and what I imagined. In the end what I'm trying to say is when are you going to stop pretending. I am half-sick of shadows."

But the kittens have lost interest and the music changes. Goddamn Radiohead. Sheet music is before me and my beautiful neglected acoustic in my hand. The neck fits so well in my grip and I wrap my body around its own. I remember Em and Am and Bm. You can't play a Thom Yorke song without a hearty dose of the minors. I remember smiling when the other girl thought C was a stretch. I remember being happy there were no bar chords because I was terrible at them. And I remember being glad I didn't have to read tab despite being told that anybody can read tab. It messed me up. I blamed my tutor. He had spent a year and a half teaching me classical fingering. I had just about mastered a Malaguena when he changed his mind and handed me a sheet of chords to learn. I'm gonna brag here and tell you that I was the only girl still taking guitar and I was the only one who didn't mess up the practical exam. My ex boyfriend freaked out and my soon to be current boyfriend fluffed his 2nd song. The music department took care of me. I was the token female guitarist and sound engineer. It meant I spent time in the cupboard with boys who at first tried to feel me up but soon accepted me as one of them. We did things like write Gibson and Fender on the school guitars that had more holes than strings, and folded every piece of paper into an aeroplane. We also shunned the Viking and the wandering minstrel and invented our own tunes slagging off the waster that nobody liked and was the only one who still called me a frigid cow even when it stopped being relevant. The only lyrics I remember are "Why is Glenn standing over there? Because he's a fucking idiot." All of this floated through my head as I sat in the bar full of kittens and performed.

I woke up half-way down the stairs and flinched as I realised I'd been dreaming. I stumbled back to my bedroom and wrapped a blanket around my freezing legs. Maybe Freud could tell me why I keep having conversations with kittens, or people who turn into kittens. The internet (which is much quicker than finding a working flux capacitor) tells me that "To dream of kittens, denotes abominable small troubles and vexations will pursue and work you loss, unless you kill the kitten, and then you will overcome these worries." But the same site tells me that if I dream of "kissing a strange woman, denotes loose morals and perverted integrity" and come on, no it doesn't. If anything it says I have latent lesbian tendencies, durr hey. But the site is the reproduction of a book written in 1901 and I don't care enough to look at others.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead

Morning. The light creeps in around the edges of my blind and assaults my eyelids. I roll onto my side, away from the clock that digitally chips away at my remaining time. Probing fingers count the bruises on my legs, pressing each one gently until I wince. I find five new ones and one new dent where my leg had yielded against the jutting keys in the filing cabinet. Absently I pick the skin off my fingertips and count the hours to my exam. I'm safe at six.

I half-lift my messy head from the pillow but he says something. I'm not certain yet who he's supposed to be but his tone is urgent and I settle back down. He's smoking. Everybody smokes these days. He's smoking and he's telling me something and it's important. Life changing. But other people encroach on our conversation. The scene changes. I'm walking down a street in a crowd and there's a girl hanging off my arm asking where the relationship is going and who will keep the kitten when I leave. There's always a kitten. Maybe if I had taken psychology like I'd wanted to I could explain it all. But I'd gone with the safe choices, and bombed. She's pulling on my arm, wants to drag me away but I can't go with her. He's going to tell me a secret.

I'm in a lift now. I don't like lifts. He dragged me in and we float between floors and I feel just a little sick. He takes me in his arms and mutters nonsense. It's always nonsense in the end. I pull away from him and the kittens turn up again, winding around our feet. He hits me. My head cracks against the metal walls and I pull myself out of bed. I don't need to see the rest. My legs pick their way carefully around my piles of literature. There's the books I had to study, books I still have to study, books I'm reading, books I want to read. Too many books and never enough time. I stagger to the mirror and check I'm still in one piece.

There's a bit in The Bell Jar where Sylvia Plath starts talking about experiences. How she thought that if she visited the Alps she'd come home and see the reflection of a tiny mountain in her eyes. And when she lost her virginity she'd see something different in her eyes as well. It's something that's always stuck with me. I always wanted to see the change. I used to spend hours staring at my reflection waiting to see something different. When I came home drunk for the first time I ran to the mirror to see but the girl that stared back told me too many unwelcome truths so I burst into tears and didn't drink for another year.

There are no revelations in my eyes this morning so I have no choice but to begin the day.

The enjoyment that can be had from discussing the weather is second only to sex, and approximately equal to a good strong cup of tea.

What with the crazy storms outside, the miserable headache inside and the incessant dripping that kept breaking the barrier between the two, I did not get much sleep last night. Course I can't complain. My mother had none at all and woke to deal with my gran's shed; the roof of which had landed in a garden down the road. She's gone back to bed now, confused and angry.

Who broke the sky?

During the couple of hours I did sleep before Julie got up for school I had the craziest dream. I don't remember much now. Only that it was a musical. A musical involving lesbians and a plot about a missing ring. And it was ridiculously complicated and I was confused for much of it, trying to reason with the people around me.

I'm procrastinating. I can't study. There's a list of dates and names and pots I need to know by Monday and none of it is sticking. I am so sick of looking at aroused Satyrs and Greek men throwing up. Or the best one: a pot whose feet were shaped like male genitals "giving a shock to the holder." No shit the holder is shocked. He just wanted to enjoy a little wine, instead everyone is mocking him for holding the penis cup.

I'll have to drag my ass back to the library tomorrow. At least there is nothing to distract me there. Only smokers to sniff and fat women who hog three computer spaces and eat bananas loudly. You disgust me, fatty. And the toilets have the best graffiti. Only in a library would you find: "So girls, what's your favourite poem?" and someone highlighting the choice of Keats with a "YES TO THIS!"

Okay, I'm gonna stare at these pots some more. If my brain dies in the process you get 10 minutes to claim what you want of my possessions because I'm too tired to write a will.

When Lesbians Fall Down

There's a fancy underwear shop on the way to work. Every week they have a different shop front. A while back they tied all the manniquins together with ribbon in some sort of weird bondage thing. This week all the manniquins were all in elaborate lacy things and collapsed in to each other. Crazy lesbian orgy? Shocking shop front installation? Or a warning against wearing very high heels to bed. Unsteadyness is almost guaranteed.

After smacking my elbow off the bathroom sink my left arm is pretty dead. My cough is clearing though so I just look like a crazy person and sound pretty ok. Hurrah.

I had a mad dream last night. I was in a bar but I was trying to leave to catch a flight. I couldn't leave until I'd found my brother and said goodbye because I wasn't ever gonna see him again once I left. (I don't have a real brother by the way). So I searched every floor and everywhere I looked everybody who was there started staring at me or tried to keep me from going. The weirdest thing was how clear I could see everybody's face. None of them looked like anybody I actually know and I've never had such clear views of strangers in my dreams. Plus they were all male. Any girls who were there either disappeared completely when I looked at them or turned out to be drag queens who kept complaining how their tights were falling down. I finally made it to the very top of the building where my brother was playing pool. We talked for a while. I told him that I'd fainted and he laughed and called me melodramatic. He told me he was getting married and it was such a shame because if he wasn't he would be able to see me again. Then when I went to go he started dancing with me. He twirled me around, swung me down, leaned in and whispered "laame" in my ear.

Woke up hella confused and missing my fictional brother.