Insomnia is a nasty business

Maybe I should buy one of those ceiling projectors and count the dots

Sometimes I try to imagine stuff to pass the time.

Like a slightly different reality where a different house sits outside the window or a flat part of the city is a hill or there is a place  for drinks worth a damn.

On occassion this works better than expected and I end up with a false memory so persistent that I catch myself wondering if a street or a building actually existed in the past and got demolished. The memory slowly loses intensity, like an old street poster only it’s not the colours that fade but the dimensional imprint, the difference between being in a place and looking at a photo of it.

Drove a lot today which I guess is one reason for being super-awake right now. It does feel like I haven’t driven enough though. The trouble with this place is that you can’t drive to the horizon when you want to and today I wanted to drive to the next planet.

It does feel than whenever I close my eyes this place shrinks, like something out of a twilight zone episode. But this city, in particular, seems to shrink in other ways as well. The food scene keeps getting more bland in ways that would make Kafka proud. Places that opened up with exciting and original menus announce –  in sequence –  to their customers that they rediscover themselves in order to present our unique Mediterranean heritage. In other words they’ll serve the same food like your local food kitchen but paired with words like jus and aioli.

I know I shouldn’t care that much about food. I have a hunch that the dissappearing menus are another manifestation of the trauma of things slipping away and never coming back.

Or maybe I’ve eaten more than I should during the holidays.

On a last note, I’ve heard crickets after a very long time, out in the country. I have a special place in my heart for crickets. Their constant chirping is an affirmation that the universe does not care but also that you shouldn’t worry about it.

Let’s be honest here

No one looks good when eating anything other than ice cream

I was watching an instagram reel of a brunch place I go to an hour ago and they had a video showing someone’s fingers picking pieces of the exact same sandwhich I had there this morning

I tried to find out if those were my fingers but they kept sliding in and around bread and cheese, I just couldn’t get a lock on them

Just when I was wondering where the hidden camera was and hoping they wouldn’t show my jaws munching away I realised the table was a different colour than where I was sitting

Relief

And an upgrade of my paranoia

There’s a film called The 13th warrior starring Antonio Banderas which is what one would call a cult film

It’s sort of a Beowulf clone which looks somewhat low budget but cost 160 Million dollars to make. It was a massive flop but I loved it when I watched it and to be honest I haven’t watched anything that quite matches its vibe –  pulp fantasy given enough weight to elevate it into that special realm that pre-21st century Hollywood films  inhabited, a halfway point between the real world and a kid’s idea of it

Anyway, there was a short scene where the hero is taken by Vikings in a raid and spends months or years with them until they get back to their home turf. In the beginning he can’t understand anything they are saying. Then at some point, out of the blue he starts talking back to them as if he knew their language all along, the idea being that he learnt it via whatever kind of contact he had with his captors during that time, although of course we don’t get to see any of it – to all intents and purposes in that universe language just rubbed on you with time

I decided years ago to test that idea by listening daily to russian radio on my way to and from work. Mostly pop songs but with bits of banter by the djs in between.

Countless hours later about the only thing I understand from Russian is “good morning”, and “dot”.

So yeah, unfortunately I couldn’t match Banderas language learning skills. Still a fine movie though.

Living in end times feels odd doesn’t it

It’s as if someone took what you would have felt as you waited for the planet killer asteroid to smash down and bottled it, with a label that said “one drop, twice a day”

The only thing I like about christmas are the lights

They should throw away everyrhing else and just have it as a celebration of light

Light in the dark.

This place sucks the magic out of everything

I remember a dozen years ago, the old town streets were adorned with little light fixtures every 25 metres or so, human sized at that. I remember posting pictures of them, here.

Don’t think I saw anything like that since then

Yesterday I walked by the main commerical street or what’s left of it

There was a metal cone at some point, twice the size of any human. On it a sign had Exxon Mobil written on it