Thanks, it’s one of my favourite pieces of writing and it just came out stream of consciousness, sitting on the couch in the dark at 4am, almost no editing or changes. The whole experience was incredibly powerful and I’m really happy I managed to capture it so clearly in writing.

I wrote this a couple of years ago after having this experience:

I had this dream last night, woke up from it at 4am and couldn’t sleep, absolutely possessed by the experience of it. I got up and wrote this, tried to capture it before it faded:

Walking the city streets at night, skateboard in hand, in a world of monsters and magic. Approaching the lights at a four way intersection I hear a group of youths talking loudly, laughing about spending their scholarship money on drugs. Round the corner and see them crouched against a wall, horned and fanged and bone white skin clad in punk leathers. I concentrate on making the right amount of unwavering eye contact; long enough to show I’m not afraid, casually looking away before it gives them an excuse to start something.

Standing waiting for the lights to change I look around, up each street of the intersection.

A hooker on one corner in a tiny vinyl skirt smiles at me invitingly, mouth splitting open from ear to ear into a huge grin filled with dozens of needle-sharp teeth.

The silhouette of something huge, teardrop shaped with stumpy appendages and a small head, only dimly visible in the dark of the alley it lumbers down, what might be its organs or something else hanging in clumps from its obscenely flabby torso. Can’t tell if I’m seeing the front or the back… is it coming this way? No, it’s walking away from me, cool.

A bit away down one street a grotesquely over-muscled figure walks, a tough guy swagger distorted by an awkward lean from his massively oversized shoulder and arm on that side. He walks under an overpass above the street and something like vines or tentacles whip down out of the shadows above, wrap and pierce his flesh and pull him up into the air. He thrashes and struggles, tearing the entangling tendrils to tatters around him as more continue to lash down at him. He begins to climb up them towards their source, yelling coarse abuse and insults. A street fight.

The lights change and I step onto my board, roll across the intersection. “Hey, Energy!” a dark skinned girl calls out to me. My name, though I didn’t know it until she said it. An acquaintance, she catches up to me, her handbag floating along in the air beside her like a pet. Across the road and she walks beside me as I roll slowly, make flirty chit chat. The footpath heads uphill and with a small push I roll up the slope, and then push again with my mind and maintain the momentum uphill, zigzagging slowly back and forward ahead of her as we walk and talk. “I see your study is coming along.” she says. “Ah you know me, I only put effort into the fun stuff.”

We part ways at the top of the hill, heading in opposite directions. A break in traffic and I flick the board up into my hand to get a couple of running steps to slap it back down into the street, kick hard with my foot for speed, cars coming around the corner now… and KICK, putting the force of my mind into it and the bitumen blurs beneath me as I fly up the street, cars falling away behind me, knees bent for balance, carving back and forward across the lane, a steady pressure pouring from my head and out behind me, pushing me like a jet. The satisfying clack of the board against the road as I POP, high and hanging impossibly long in the air before slapping back down, still at speed, now in amongst cars, overtaking them along the white dotted lines while others zoom by the other way, thrillingly close. Weaving through traffic and then a little hop over the gutter and onto the footpath, a release of the pressure pushing me, a slight skid of the back wheels to kill my speed, back to a casual roll on the sidewalk. Passing a garden ledge, pop onto it, floating and effortless, slide along the nose of my board. A convenience store ahead, people I know hanging out in front of it, smiles and nods as they see me coming.

I wake up with tears on my face. A dream, perfectly clear and vivid, feeling totally real and true, like a glimpse into another life.

Nah I was a terrible student, but smart and well read and with particular points of interest that I’d do my own reading on that I could throw at the teachers.

I used to do this to teachers I didn’t like in high school. My biology teacher eventually just let me sleep in class to avoid it.

It’s one thing to get swept along by the mob of social media, its a whole 'nother level of dumbassery to do illegal shit and then post the evidence to social media for the cops to come and arrest you. I dunno why that’s controversial.

I knew a couple that started playing Puzzle Bobble to do the dishes, even though the woman in the couple was not at all a gamer.

She turned out to be a fucking savant at that game and it led to at least 3 smashed controllers and their relationship was never the same.

What exactly do you think that changes?

I dunno man, I did plenty of dumb illegal shit when I was a kid but the thing that makes that shit fun is figuring out how not to get caught. Doing this shit just because some narcissist on tiktok told you to and all your friends are doing it, and then literally handing the evidence over to the cops, what am I supposed to think about these little morons?

I don’t have a problem with kids being kids, I have a problem with stupid people that are so mindless they just get swept along by the mob with absolutely no comprehension of the effects or consequences of their actions.

This is a million miles away from actually fucking with Scientology in any way that matters.

This isn’t about scientology, this is about dumbfuck kids going along with stupid shit they saw on the internet for social media clicks. This could just as easily have been a mosque or planned parenthood building. They deserve whatever they get.

What husband award did he win?

The Vorrh by Brian Catling. Very strange, dark historical fantasy set in colonial Africa. Exquisite, poetic prose and powerful imagery, one of my favourite books in recent memory.

Ah true, I forgot about the console.

I don’t think they give a shit about people emulating their old classic games, they have modern games.

Dude wtf are you talking about, the world is a very different place now to what it was 10000 years ago. It’s not that I can’t imagine a world without cars, its that the amount of shit that would need to be done to remove cars from modern life would be a massive, slow, expensive project. You’d need to completely redesign cities and pour incalculable amounts of money into the project, while huge swathes of the population protest rabidly against the changes.

Like, sure you can plan changes to cities to reduce the reliance on cars, but its a long, slow process that takes a huge amount of time and political will to enact. Just saying “ban cars” is an incredibly simple minded, knee jerk reaction to the issue.

That’s a ridiculous comparison, that video is about a single neighbourhood. You’d need to completely redesign and rebuild any modern city to function without cars.

Alcohol kills more people than cars every year.

Banning cars would radically alter every person’s lifestyle and require massive replanning of cities. It’s a ridiculous proposal.

Is your reading comprehension really this bad? I’m laughing at your incredibly simple minded call to ban cars.

You can certainly reduce the presence of cars in certain areas and improve the design of cities to this end. But just saying “ban cars” is idiotic.

We need to ban them.

lol