1 Jun 2009
vivid third railing...
Nicotine patches sometimes can cause vivid dreams or other sleep disturbances.
ok nicotine patch, you and i have been together for 20 days now and in that time we have shared some really special days and nights. you have helped me get my endurance up and be a functional soccer player again who can work out 4 times a week and run for days on the pitch without getting tired. just like the olden, golden, days of yore. for this, i thank you. too bad you can’t help out with the pain i still have in my broken foot. or can you? look, this is not why i am writing. it seems that the dreams you are pushing on me are getting more and more macabre and i’m getting slightly worried about them. the vividness of the dreams first hit me like a sack of nickles burrowed in an orange circus sock- pronounced, bright, memorable, and unsettling. odd, also, because they would be so fantastic and surreal, but at the same time so life like that i would have to wake myself up for the reassurance that yes, they are in fact a dream. incredibly, however, after waking up, i could will myself back into said fantastic, surreal dream upon hitting the pillow again to see how the plot line (or absence of one) would turn out. for a good two and half weeks i was loving this, all sorts of hilarity ensured, and unlike my non-patch dreams, which i rarely remember, these were right there, in their entirety for me to catalog and ponder the next day (s). so impressed that i was virtually sleeping in a collection of borges short stories (or an elzhi song) - not being able to distinguish dream from reality - or even caring to, that i was singing the praises of this patch side effect to my friends, acquaintances, strangers at local pubs, random ecuadorian ladies on the street, really whoever.
in the last week i had one where i was traveling around palestine on a unicycle with a friend, talking to her family members and other people (my arabic is flawless in my nico-crack dreams) and sampling their cuisine while distributing money and supplies to those in need. then the next day i had some kind of odd family reunion dream where my immediate, extended, and deceased family members were in a large mansion in detroit telling stories. within this one, a great uncle with a noted gambling problem, who i never met, but have been told i look like, kept pressuring me to give him inside information on the outcome of un general assembly voting records so he could talk to his bookie and wager on them. i refused, saying that i could be fired if i did such a thing, but his powers of persuasion were so strong that i ended up giving in and entered some odd time-warped international betting ring run by some sicilian and lebanese gangsters from jazz-era detroit where huge payoffs where based on un voting outcomes and entirely dependent on my insider information. another time i was on a candyland-like rolling hill, under the sun, without a cloud in the sky, talking about music with some dj i like, smoking a large alice in wonderlandesque waterpipe constructed entirely out of grass, like from the ground grass, not like ‘dude, great grass grass.’ seemed perfectly reasonable to me. these follow other classic dreams i have had in the past 20 days since i first affixed the sweet, sweet patch to my arm- my clinical psych phd candidate friend eating handfuls of ants and smiling at me, mute. chasing two hot, voluptuous, italian girls around the streets of the bronx and the fordham university campus b/c they stole my ipod and cellphone. defending our great country from some foreign air attack (could have been the ruskies) by whipping throwing stars at the fighter jets trying to bomb whatever american city i was defending. another time i was engaged in an epic foodfight with an ex-girlfriend at the gap in the mall in detroit she used to work at, but all we were hurling at each other were stuffed grapeleaves, vegetarian ones. it was fun.
yes, many of these were out there, and a little odd, but they were enjoyable and made me think and - while weird - were not scary or nightmarish in any way. well, the past few nights it seems the patch is leading me down an uncharted patchy path. all weekend my dreams prominently featured the motif of electrocution via the dreaded third rail on the nyc subway tracks. in one, i was running in the tracks, getting chased by rats, and jumping over the third rail (s) that were visibly charged as if they were hurdles at some insignificant middle school track event. then, one night, i made a reference in an email to doing a backflip towards the third rail right before i went to bed, and what do you know, throughout that night of ‘rest’ in my dream i was continually doing backflips from various platforms in nyc onto the third rail, like some modern urban circle of hell too disturbing for dante to include as one of his bolgias, but awfully reminiscent of the first one for panderers and seducers (i may, or may not, fit those qualifications) where they get lashed over and over again. these lashes, however, were inflicted not by horned demons, but by various 625 volt-spewing third rails of the ever-efficient mta stations that i have idled around in the last 10 years: 116, 110, jefferson ave, 72, 15th st/prospect park, union sq, 23rd, times sq, 40th st/lowrey, 4th ave bk, atlantic ave, 125th, canal. each time i would get electrocuted and then be at the next one, backflipping away again towards my electrified demise.
it was like an evil version of groundhogs day without the wit and personability of bill murray. no, this is the lower depths of the mind of an addict. i sadly, should be maxim gorky’s 21st-century queens case study. what will the next week bring? what about step 2, the 14mg? i’m a little scared at this point, i won’t lie.
