Troebia's Diary

[manuel_moe_g]

Wow intense

[troebia]

Sorry if this thread is becoming scatterbrained but I warned you, it's my diary and I seem to be in a "flow of consciousness" mood.

Bob Dylan supposedly said once that the most beautiful sound he could imagine was a cheap transistor radio heard from another window down a windy street, and I now find the meaning in those words: I'm hearing my wife's mobile phone from another room and she's listening to Italian folk songs...I can make out some words here and there, and there seems to be an excuse for my hearing not getting everything since it's muffled. I'm familiar with the song by Angelo Branduardi and that's what's left: memories.

I wake up at 3 AM from a dream that seemed like something out of a cheesy 90's comedy. Somehow I've been hired as a middle manager at a prestigious ad agency, and I hate every minute of it. Everything I do is meant to get me fired, but instead unexpectedly turns into virtual gold. The agency is organising a reception for their most important client, some kind of annoying big shot woman from Paris. The whole team is lodged in that ultra-exclusive hotel in Taormina, Sicily featured in a season of the Netflix series White Lotus. Both our client and a stellar creative I've hired from Sweden are supposed to arrive in the afternoon. Due to some organisational fuckup, the creative arrives to the wrong airport at the other end of the island. While being whizzed in a taxi (apparently there are no aircraft available) to the hotel, he begins to improvise his presentation via Facetime relayed to an enormous screen on the hotel's terrace with stunning views of the pool, the mountains and the Mediterranean as a backdrop. He comes online just as he's pissing on a goat by the roadside while drinking from a bottle of liquor. I am of course overjoyed since it can't get much worse. I can't remember much else, but it involved him interrupting an important catholic procession on the way through the city and creating a scandal, relayed to us on the screen in impeccable high definition video. When he finally runs through the entrance of the hotel, you can at the same time hear police sirens approaching up the steep hill. He crashes into the reception in a stolen cardinal's robe and cap, with a goat in tow. He kisses the client on the mouth while the goat starts munching at her long dress. He's already on his way to the big scenic swimming pool, and there he empties a gallon drum of red ink into the water before anyone can stop him. Somehow instead of a monumental disaster everything turns into a social event posted by other hotel guests to their social accounts, becoming globally viral in minutes. The brand soars in popularity and instead of being taken away we are both showered in champagne, while people throw themselves into the red pool ruining their expensive dresses and suits. Oh wait, now the Swede is taking a gun out of his pocket. I'm right next to him and can clearly see it's made of cheap plastic, but half a dozen bodyguards of the ultra-rich and powerful are already aiming at him with their real ones. At this precise moment, the carabinieri in pursuit burst shouting onto the terrace, guns also drawn...

[Mental Fairy]

Wow and I thought I dreamt in crazy detail, we are interesting people ain’t we! I’m lost for words.

[troebia]

Wow and I thought I dreamt in crazy detail

I think we all do, but we've usually forgotten everything when we wake up. Sometimes (rarely, sadly) at night I enter a strange state between dream and awakeness though, when I can go into the dream and see things that are happening from different angles, even rewind and replay, and change "the script"!

Now a couple of days into an alcohol detox. Booze has always been my antidepressant of choice but I've lately been having episodes of dizziness and fuzziness of thought after having a few, even something in my vision. Not good. Now I even experience what I believe to be withdrawal symptoms, like antsiness and muscle cramps or tingling. I am an alcoholic, I'm facing the fact...

MIL is returning this weekend to stay again, indefinitely...it will be a struggle. I will try as hard as I can to not let it affect me. I've got shit to do. At least she normally stays in the sofa in front of the telly and doesn't follow me around everywhere.

Adding:
This is such a strange space to be in. I can't rely on the alcohol buzz anymore and some trains of thought now are much more painful, clearer, as if the fog had lifted. There are things that really suck...and others to be glad for. I'm not making any sense, sorry.

[troebia]

Tingly and restless, but I'm not giving up caffeine too. Oh I love that afternoon Xanax I'm allowing myself to have. Oddly, the heat (30º C) is bothering me much more now without alcohol. I'm painting a lot and destroying most of it with experiments like "what would happen if I made this bold stroke here?"

Memory seems to be improving, which is both good and awful since I get sharp, strange flashbacks. Weird recollections of situations like shopping without anything special happening some time ten years ago, but also sadness and depressive stuff from the past I thought had had a proper burial.

Memories of abuse, neglect and missed opportunities swirl around in lucid dreams and I get to change the scripts. I dare to kiss my teenage crush, a pimpled chubby girl in a small town. It's recess at my new school and a bully tries a punch but in this world I'm street wise, easily avoid his fist and use the impulse of his movement to ram his face hard onto the sharp corner of a locker. He cries out for mommy, now toothless and maybe blinded in one eye, too. I say fuck you to a lot of people, including almost all of my family. I get to have a dog as a teenager, and disappear for days on end into the wilderness. I choose a practical career as some kind of craftsman, like carpenter, locksmith or electrician and later have my own tiny business, working more or less when I feel like it. I live in a van for most of the time. When I settle down with a partner, I've first made damn sure she is atheist, kinky, and that all her family is as good as dead to her: no MIL here.

[manuel_moe_g]

I feel it through your words.

Especially remembering the most mundane stuff from years ago, among the details, the crushing feeling of melancholy

And stupid regret of things undone

Please take care, Troebia

[troebia]

the crushing feeling of melancholy

That's why it's so hard to give up alcohol, since it dullens that oppressive mood. Of course I have other addictions, like doom-scrolling and masturbation, but none are as effective.

Lately I've been falling into online rabbit holes about the first polar explorations. Those who signed up were some hardened bastards, and quite a few died under extreme circumstances. Real Men who didn't even flinch when they had their frostbitten fingers and toes hacked off. The only shame was in prudently turning around without having reached the objective, or having to resort to eating their companions' remains when there weren't even any dogs left.

I mean compared to that level of extreme existence, all I could possibly decide to do in my own modest life with my relationship, livelihood through art and with decisions about dental implants and hearing aids, is just trivial. If it came to total personal meltdown I'd become a quickly fading memory afterwards for those that knew me.

Think about those who are in high security prison, or severely crippled like my neighbour. No, there's no consolation to be had there for lack of initiative, lack of enterprise. It's my own fault: you lazy shit, munching Xanax instead of doing something constructive.

[manuel_moe_g]

I hear you Troebia

But remember, there is no “pain Olympics”, your subjective experience of your own pain is as real as real can be

Also, those old time polar explorers were probably running away from their fucked up emotions, lol

Please take care Troebia

[troebia]

I like the subjective approach, but I suspect Roald Amundsen would have disagreed!

Btw there's an Inuit family who claimed their grandfather was Amundsen's love child. During one expedition, winter caught up with the explorers and they had to spend months in a camp together with the local population, and there was a lot of sex going on in the dark. Only with more recent DNA testing could the family's claim be disproved. He was a practical guy who had quite a few lovers but never married. There's no record of him having any kind of relationship until his 40s, which underlines how focused he was on exploration.

[snoringdog]

Hello Trobea,

Wow, rabbit holes indeed.

Such a harsh assessment of yourself, and comparison with a true outlier (Amundsen).
Sometimes I think of such extreme focus as his is a form of mental illness... An obsession, like Ahab with the whale.

But getting down to it, we all seem to have a real adaptability to harsh conditions and the ability to spin our realities...

Those in extreme circumstances struggle mightily, but can be come "lazy" and "self-indulgent" when the pressure is off..