We remember our own lives, Schopenhauer wrote somewhere, a little better than we do a novel we once read. That's about right: a little, no more.
Michel Houellebecq
The sound of men mumbling in Spanish outside my window woke me up bright and early today. Then an engine started and a minute later the house was under attack. That's how it sounded anyway. It seems my landlord had hired two men to pressure-wash the house and they got started at 8:30 am, beginning with the window above my bed. Did he think to let us know beforehand? Nope. Pressure-washing is a loud process. At one point I was certain they were going to break my window and the water was going to come bursting into the room. Why did the landlord need to have the house pressure-washed? Because the county had sited him for "excessive peeling paint." Translated: make that unsightly dump look presentable you old white trash cracker. Yes. This is my new home. I'm not even going to mention the lack of central heat which engenders the growth of mold--Atlanta is a very wet climate after all--which turns my eyes a dull blood red that scares small children in public places. Nope, not going to mention that. The house does have a certain charm however: I have lots of space and I can make a racket. And it's cheap by local standards.
So I found myself awake early this morning after just a few hours of sleep. I read for a bit, did some laundry, and when the house washers moved to the other side of the house I decided to play a little sleep game I like to indulge in occasionally. The snooze button on my alarm clock guarantees the snoozer exactly four minutes of uninterrupted bliss before the alarm goes back off. Yes, four minutes. I'm not sure how I came to own the world's most sadistic and vindictive clock, but I do. Through years of difficult experience (I know, I know--why don't I just throw the fucking thing out and get a new one--well that says something about me doesn't it) I have learned that with the aid of my four minute snooze button I can have a long series of mini-dreams. I never manage in those four minutes to attain any kind of deep sleep, so the dreams just sort of float along very close to the surface of consciousness. It is a very different sort of compositional format for dreaming. Sometimes each short dream is different from all the rest; sometimes they all seem to be linked thematically. The sleep is so shallow the dreams often have an unusual lucidity. But more often than not, they fade from memory almost immediately. This morning's game featured travel, New Orleans specifically, and Muffalettas, with a changing cast of characters. That's about all I can remember, but one thoroughly unremarkable moment retains the clarity of an actual event. I imagine that someday I will remember it and mistake it for one of many such trips, forgetting altogether that it was a dream.
If you ever find yourself with an hour to kill, and can devise some means to wake yourself up every fourth minute or so, I suggest you give it a shot. Or if you're ever staying in my peeling, damp, mold-infested house you can borrow my clock for a while.
