Voices inside my head

We live on a very busy thoroughfare. Our apartment sits across the street from a bar and there is an even more popular bar just down the street from us. Given these facts and the traffic (i.e. many trucks, early in the morning), we run a fan at night; white noise to cancel out that weary, wacky world. This being said, that blessed buzz does not always overcome the sonic assault.

Which is why I woke up at 4am this morning to the sound of people screaming.

Or so I thought.

Maybe it was really happening or perhaps it was just bleed over from a dream I was having and couldn't remember. Either way, I then thought I heard sirens. Fearing the worst (a shooting at one of the aforementioned bars, a fire, 9/11 redux, the apocalypse), I got out of bed to look out the window.

The street was empty and quiet.

Chalking it up to dreamy leftovers, I got back in bed.

And still heard sirens.

Figuring they were perhaps in the distance and that this explained why I hadn’t seen anything on the street, I got back out of bed and turned off the fan. Absolute silence, in so much as that is ever possible in our neighborhood. Not wanting to wake Susan, I turned the fan back on and got back into bed.

More sirens.

I now assumed that it was some trick of the air flow from the fan or some such, so I did my best to ignore it and go back to sleep. This was only partially successful. Those phantom sirens continued and a short time later I could have sworn I overheard snippets of the President speaking. The subject matter was unclear, but it was obvious something REALLY BAD had happened. This got me thinking about the fact that the Pope is in town, so being the good little "I was in NYC during 9/11" boy, I started spinning disaster scenarios in my head: car bomb outside his hotel, 9/11 Junior with a helicopter instead of a jetliner, etc.

You get the idea.

These types of thoughts (not to mention the granddaddy nightmare of New York’s now long overdue Flood of the Century) are not really conducive to sleep. Mild fear and pronounced curiosity really do keep Morpheus away from the door. Unable to slake my need to know and unable to turn on the radio (Susan is a heavy sleeper, but the tones of our local news station can hardly be described as "dulcet"), I quietly made my way into the office in hopes of garnering what was going on from the internet.

Nothing.

Not a god damned thing. I had essentially spent the last two hours have aural hallucinations. The Pope is fine, hanging out with all kinds of people, and living it up here in our "nation of prayer" (just love THAT new Bush-ism). The President has nothing beyond the usual dire state of the country to talk about and there is nary a drop of water to be found in the middle of our street. Catch ya later, Flood of the Century.

Don’t ask me why this is happening to me, as I have no idea. All I do know is that this shit makes it simply impossible to sleep. Hopefully this is just a one night stand (as it were) and I won’t have similar struggles tonight. Perhaps a good jog (I hesitate to call it "running" yet), some bike riding, and some swing dancing will be sufficient to tucker me out.

Either that or I go a week without sleep and finally end up losing the fight with my inner misanthrope, no doubt with disastrous results.

Haggard.


Echo… things that you said:

The Dustmite – Assassins Of Memories
(the dark, the hop, the dark hop)

Various - Future, Jazz
(more downtempo goodness)

Immortal - Blizzard Beasts
(grrrr! roaaaar! grrrr!)

Still Stupid - Still Stupid
(vintage DIY punk from Philly, circa 1985)

Neotropic - Mr. Brubaker’s Strawberry Alarm Clock
(close to as weird as it sounds)