Last post I used this image. I didn't give you the full picture.I'm glad I waited to post this.
Todays post is bigger than I wanted it to be.
Have you ever had one of those dreams where it seems really, well, real? And then you wake up, at least you think you have, and realise that the dream hasn't ended? And then, hopefully, in the real world and not in some straight to tv horror film, you actually wake up. Phewsh! What a nightmare!
There's nothing worse than doing battle in your dreams only to wake and have to do it all again - and you ever realise how rubbish you are at fighting in dreams? All that pre-experience doesn't do you any good whatsoever because, when the real event happens, all you know how to do is lose - that or wake up, and you can't wake up again if you're already awake.
Still following this?
Well today I woke up...hang on, first things first. Remember that poem I was writing about bugs? Well, I had another bash at it (oh, pardon the pun - I don't often bash the wee beasties, not often, thankfully...for me...). Here's what I have so far, not a draft as such, more a collection of associated phrases indicating something of the movement and imagery I'm interested in pursuing, or was when I wrote it:
Un-homely.
There are three in jars on the sill: insects.
You'd have to hear them to know what they are.
Mute: I have captured their identity
but the fear they infect me with cannot be kept
or even held. Reduced to a pencil tap I collect
their facts, memorise their features through that
which is featureless. You can see
their difference more clearly through the safety
of a jar. They have travelled the equivalent
of miles around a glossy ellipse: each one slips
as it tries to scale the side, all those legs and not
one can get a footing. I've never liked them
and to think I came all this way to find a fear
with features I recognise only by my reaction to them.
Window ajar: I return them outside, lesson learnt,
to butt noisily against the pane (still
ignorant of my sensitivity), or silently wander.
I used Jim's starting point and went from there. What I was aware of, as I wrote this, was that there were several things going on in my thoughts and that it was the clash of these which was one cause in my poem's non-communication. Firstly there was the noise. The first poem I posted was entitled "Cicadas": it isn't merely their buggyness which frightens me, it's their noise, and for several months of the year it is constant through the day. However, at night we have crickets - similar you would think? Yes and no. I like crickets. I can hold crickets in my hand, if I'm feeling brave. I like their sound. I detest cicadas. At some point I'm going to work on the cicadas alone.
Secondly, there was the feeling of alieness - not only of the bugs being alien, but of my feeling alienated in a place where these bugs are at home. I wanted to capture (oops) the feeling I had, often still have, of being not-at-home: an un-homely feeling. This in turn leads on to ideas around heimlich and un-heimlich and touches on the gothic, the surreal and the notion of things which are all too familiar being at the same time most frightening. I want to write a poem with these elements in.
Finally, there is the realisation that different senses react differently to different aspects of buggyness. There's a lot of difference. Certainly it all results in the same fear but the individual elements deserve distinction.
Now, shall I begin at the beginning or at the beginning of the end and work backwards - what works for you?
I woke up with the breeze from the open bedroom window blowing my hair across my cheek. It was just a dream, phewsh, here I am in my own bed with a gentle breeze to cool my perspiring brow. I sat up. My hair was still blowing the same way, only the window wasn't open.
Back a bit. I had gone to bed after checking my blog (for what, blog bugs?) and drifted off into a fitful sleep. I had a dream about a hairy spider - specifically a hairy spider in the bathroom which someone (my husband?) flicked into my face.
I woke up and felt a sense of calm rationality sweep over me when I thought of the last image I had observed closely:
The moth "eyes" - and I laughed at how funny it was that I had cropped off the part which scared me - see the little furry critter in the left hand corner ("LITTLE" USED HERE TO SHRINK FEAR TO MANAGEABLE PROPORTIONS).
I looked at my husband who was looking at me and I saw an expression register on his face which I felt ought to have been on mine. Especially considering the fact that my hair was still travelling towards my eye.
A flush of adrenaline had me flick my hair from my face. I felt nothing. I saw nothing. I did the thing they do in horror films when you shout "NOOOOOOOOOOoooooo"!
I peered over the edge of the bed and saw:
five little diamonds, twinkling in the sky
which one did I pick? Go on, click the link - I dare you.
I want to say that I rushed to grab my trusty bug hoover and carefully disposed of this fellow to hoover up some spiders of its own (white tails are unusual in that they only prey on other spiders - veritable gladiators of the bug world).
The End.
P.S. Sleep tight, mind the bugs don't bite! Oh, and the scale...it's all wrong, the one on my head was much bigger, about five centimeters across, bigger than my eye in any case, or in my head!
Short story newsflash - there's a competition over at the Tomlit blog if you're interested. Get your entries in quick though, deadline is December 14! Think I'm going to enter.
