2025-11-27 Journal Entry

I have decided in this moment to not be a little bitch and write some stuff. I have been particularly down on myself about writing lately (he says this every time, dear reader; ignore him; insert bart simpson “say the thing” meme here) and so we’re doing it.

And since I have nothing that I feel matters, I’ll write for a bit about the dream I had last night. Don’t groan, dear reader, everyone loves to hear each others dreams.

The entire dream had this sort of pinkish-red hue, like the camera operator had a nasty case of pink eye. It took place in this strangely circuitous set of interconnected rooms. The whole scene is probably somewhere between The Backrooms, a laser tag course, and Escher’s “Impossible Stairs.”

There may have been more before this point that I’ve since forgotten, but I recall running into a room and hiding behind the door. I couldn’t shut it behind me, because my pursuer was close enough behind that he would hear the door slam and know where I was. Behind the door was a two-by-four, which I grabbed and held at the ready. A man came in behind me dressed like a low-level henchman from a Bond villain’s lair, all black (in a turtleneck, of course) with a ski mask. When we met eyes I was already in motion and smashed his skull with my makeshift weapon. The dream seemed to cut forward a few seconds, cutting out several blows to his head like a DVD skipping, and I bolted down the stairs.

The room I found myself in was large with a door in each corner. I started to make for the opposite corner when more Bond villain henchmen – a better-trained force than the henchmen, as evidenced by their suits – perhaps pulled from patrol duty at some extravagant mountain villa, no doubt – flooded the room.

There must have been a dozen of them, and I was dead.

The next moments seemed to last for an hour. It was the feeling of dread and doom, the feeling of a man’s blood on my hands for nothing, how it could have been worth it for my escape but now was senseless violence, just as here was senseless violence against myself. The henchmen had no weapons but their hands, and they tore me to shreds. As I was shredded, I remembered the shame, wondered where my whole life before had gone. I wanted my memory to be erased from the earth, for my legacy to burned like Carthage, to be salted such that it would never rise again. I wanted nothing to do with myself.

I don’t know why I felt such shame. Nothing in the dream quite implied what I had done, or whether I was guilty of anything at all for that matter. But I felt that guilt much the same. What felt worst, I supposed, was not so much that I had done anything – well, before taking the life of Turtleneck – but that I was Guilty in the eyes of so many others, that I was Hated. I was in an impossible place faced with an impossible task, and for that I was killed.

I don’t really know what this dream means, if it means anything at all. As I’ve said in earlier journals, there’s probably a metaphor in there but I don’t wish to draw it out. Dreams may be like art, and I’ll follow the advice of Susan Sondheim and not interpret it any further, let it land as it should.

Cambodia is a diffult place for so many. I’m thinking now of when I went to Kulen Mountain yesterday. On the mountain there’s a large reclining Buddha statue that many tourist groups go to, and near the entrance is an intractable number of beggars. Some were blind, some had signs that there legs had been blown off by landmines. Many were children, though I have been told not to give money to them for they’re likely being taken advantage of, and the money will go to their prosecutor. (All the more reason I would want to help.) Even in town, I feel bad declining so many offers from tuk-tuk drivers because I know that their time to make hay while the sun is shining on this tourist season is limited, but I still also put on my headphones and go on my way.