Thursday, January 7, 2010

Boring Machine Disturbs Sleep

I wake every morning the same way: suddenly and without ceremony. Always to the crack of light in between the curtain and the windowsill revealing the time of day from the colour it lets through. There is a digital clock display just out of my immediate vision, but I never use it. Nine times out of ten the daylight is an enemy, the room is too hot, and I am dehydrated. One time out of ten I will lay in for a while.

I wait until hunger sets in to eat. I will turn on the computer and brew a coffee, but until the pangs in my gut will not let me sit still I do not find the motivation to cook. It all seems rather perverse, in the shadow of another bout of self-poisoning, tending to compulsive behaviours and chemical addictions before interfacing with the base desire for food. Sometimes I cannot even find the will to cook and instead spend my own scant hard-earned on a carb-heavy(certainly not a "rounded") bought breakfast. Still waking, barefoot, pulled into whatever clothes are nearest on hand, I skulk into the street and wander silently to one of several nearby eateries.

The contents of my bedroom rotate but the image remains the same: Single-cell clothes pile taking up a good portion of floorspace, drumkit partially assembled, surrounded by discarded parts and a fine sawdust that layers the ground from a thousand wooden sticks shredded on metallic rims, desk stacked with various discarded food containers until it bothers me and I bin them, and even then it doesn't take long for them to collect again. No seats bar my own computer chair, no real standing space. Solidarity has conditioned me to live this way: as I am the only person who ever sets foot in here nobody has to suffer my poor semantics. In a communal situation, or even had I the occasional stray to sleep here the night it would look nothing like it does.

My suitcase lies in the middle of the floor where I put it down upon my return, as though if I do not remove it then I am only visiting here. The hat I wore sits on the mantelpiece, ready to move again at a moments notice. There is nothing of mine on my walls, there are none of my belongings outside this room anywhere in the house, this is not even my bed. The assembled drumkit is the only physical anchor to this place and to this state, and even then I could have it down in under ten minutes if I so desired.

This all must change.

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