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.

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.