Nightmares

Recently, when I have been trying to write, all I have been able to produce is ugly, dark and boring. I don't want to share what I've been working on both because it is not of sufficient quality and because it is greatly lacking in generosity.

When I write the good DIftW I get myself into a special mental state. This is the great effort of the writing. So long as I have an idea I am at least slightly interested in, if I can get myself feeling like that then it just comes. Now, when I try to write I find myself in falling into a pit of despair. So, I have stopped writing.

I have been troubled by nightmares. The simplest ones are when I am a kid again and either at home or at my grandmother's or in Wales. "Last night I dreamt I went to Collye Grove again." These places are perfect, joyful wonderful memories, but I find something about it deeply upsetting. Perhaps it is the contrast between then and now? I am yearning to regain my childhood.

I have dreamt twice that I was tricked into going to South America to play some gigs. Slowly, all the other musicians drop out until only I am left with the duty to show people round an old mine. It's in a dangerous, abandoned remote village. I travel up there and try to make the shack inhabitable. Then my co-workers turn up but there's something sinister about them. They say "you've been here two hours and you haven't even put the kettle on?" and so I have to go outside to the standpipe to get water. It's night, and creepily there are lights on in the other buildings even though they are abandoned. A crazy hairy man appears from one of the huts and starts throwing hatchets at me. I run back into my shack and then I wake up. This has happened twice.

I found myself in a sleepwalking state in a tent recently (this is not something I often experience). I was neither awake nor asleep. I was conscious but still dreaming. I was able to open my eyes but it was unpleasant so I kept them shut. I found myself searching along the seams of the tent, desperately trying to find the secret door. I knew where the actual door was, but I had to find another one. Then I went back to sleep.

The worst dream of all was that I was in a house I owned with a wife and a three year old boy. The boy had a certain name that was significant but I don't recall it. I didn't know anything about the boy, it was as if I had ignored him his entire life. There was more detail, but it's gone.

These are just a selection of the nightmares I have been having. Last night I was in South America for the second time. The night before I think I slept soundly. Every other night from Wednesday back about two weeks I have had a bad dream.