It's brighter on the inside

Why don't you go out Jay? Why do you live alone? They say.

Because it's brighter on the inside. I say. The smiles are real. Behavior is timeless. The bodies all fit. The conversations are seamless and effective, everything ends well, and nobody smells, nothing breathes, life as a fiction.

My thoughts of me and you are brighter on the inside. The smiles are white. The light is lighter. It never burns out.There are no dependencies because there are no anxieties. All is placid, warm, and immediately satisfied. We are drunk on smiles, ideas, affirmations, loves, promises, brief caresses, and just that still silence of two bodies close together, content. I am not worried. Nothing else exists in this bright interior. It is a burden to fantasy, the slavery of significance, the proximity of love and hate. I live as a puppet that I've carved from crisis, and with it I role play. I've placed it into this diorama of my life as a setting. And there I am with one of you. Together our puppets play, and I have not touched you.

Dream description: January 24, 2018

My dream begins with a Tinder match that I had back in August of 2017. She was a strawberry blonde, a few years older than me, fiercely independent and yet still looking for a date on her terms, her exacting terms. Needless, we hit it off via text, I thought, but it was a trap. The purpose of our chatter was to provide me with enough rope, and hang myself I did. And so after I mentioned a desire to have kids and placed myself in the role of the persecuted in my last relationship (an exaggeration, big time) she quit speaking to me. She quit speaking to me on the very day I had TekSolv training for a power plant job and the same day of a police shooting verdict that acquitted the white officer on all counts in the shooting death of a black youth.

The dream begins with my Tinder match inviting me to a bar. She looks great. She's in a skirt. Wow. She's invited me along to celebrate a new job she just landed. The first person I meet is a guy I've known since high school. He shakes my hand in recognition as do I. Then his face shifts to one of concern as he's felt a bump on my finger. I notice it too. I go to the bathroom and realize it appears to be a whitehead on the side of my pointer finger. I squeeze out the pus. Wash up and return to the barroom celebration. She's flanked by many of her friends, so much that I'm instantly intimidated and remaining standing at a few feet distance. I offer to buy her a second drink, although hers isn't necessarily empty. It is a complicated drink. First I'm given the ingredients. Then I'm told it's a "Boston [forgotten]."

I head to the bar, repeating the name and the ingredients in my head only to be ignored for a bit. The bar opens up to a huge concert scene. The colors are vivid, and the sound is a bit too loud. I think that I must pull out my phone and video a panorama of the scene. I don't. When I am served by the female bartender she gives me just one drink, hers, not mine. I wait for the other and while I am someone has snagged my first drink and so I begin to complain about working ten-hour days in a vain attempt to curry respect. It isn't working. The bar back makes me a weak drink. Then there's a group of men painted in white tribal paints resembling Aboriginals. They're my Greek chorus and they chant 'pig, pig, pig' to me. They reach out with their painted feet and smear white paint on my face.

The dream ends.

Signification begins. 

my problems

My issues are turning into volumes, and they will have a Dewey Decimal number here shortly.