No resolutions to the laundry list of grievances, but that's ok, what's the point of grieving if you aren't eventually going to move on in spite of yourself...
So I woke up this morning feeling like proper shit and decided to immerse myself in a nightmare of someone else's creation...rescue and harvest some children on Xbox for a bit... That is, I played Bioshock...
In the game, which I am actually playing through for the first time, I'm being presented with this moral dilemma each time I die 60 times and finally kill the giant Big Daddy Robot who protects the Little Sisters...
If I Rescue, I get less ADAM, which is some powerful shit I use to purchase genetic modifications and upgrades, but she becomes a "real girl"...
If I Harvest her, I get more ADAM, but she shrivels up and turns into a giant slug that looks like something out of the movie Slither... Effectively killing her... But making you more of a badass...
While I have not played very far at all in this awesome yet creepy fucking game... And I'm playing it way later in life than most of my fellow gamers...
Each time I go to make this decision of what to do with these eerie little girls, a decision I've now made a whole 5 times after getting my ass stomped by giant robots making orca noises, I have no implications of how it will affect the eventual outcome of the story, only that it will...
I usually love this aspect of gaming, used to be really into those Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books as a child... I've always described myself, ironically, as "insatiably curious." I love to manipulate variables and see what happens... While this often gets me into trouble, as it inevitably leads to testing limits and breaking rules, it's rare that my intent is malicious or even all that devious... I just want to explore... Anybody who's ever watched Star Trek or and Indiana Jones movie knows that exploration has both unexpected and painful consequences as well as a plethora of rewards...
Thus far in the game, I've "harvested" 2 Little Sisters, and "rescued" 3. I have no idea what these disturbing little girls are yet, or even, really what the ADAM I'm sucking from their tiny skulls is... all I know is, that I feel like I'm making a fucked up choice no matter what decision I make...
Perhaps you are wondering why I bring this up...
Well, I have this tendency to be really shit sleeper... I have been my entire life... Recently, in my desperation to knock myself out at night, I've turn to an arsenal of over the counter and herbal remedies to try to coax my overactive brain into slumber... I adapt to medications rapidly, so in the past month I've had to tweak the quantities of the dyphenhydramine (Benadryl), Valerian Root, Melatonin, doxylamine succinate (Unisom), Kava Kava, and the occasional Ambien (when I can get it) to absurd proportions for them to work...
But in the past week, I've noticed something strange... I'm not only dreaming... but I am remembering dreams, which I have only done intermittently most of my life... More than that, I am dreaming really bizarrely and vividly... and waking up with damn near perfect recall of the shit, to the point where it can both level and disturb me for days...
A creepy trend in these twisted dreams I've been having is babies and children...
And I'm beginning to realize where Stephen King gets his material...
So three nights in a row last week, I was inventing my own creepy dream children... most disturbingly, in one dream, I was entrusted to protect and nurture myself as a baby... I don't know if you've ever breast-fed a tiny version of yourself, with your exact face, hair, expressions, and personality, in the front pew of a church you don't belong in, but it's unsettling...
To say the least...
So, naturally, when you wind up having to rescue her and a school full of other elementary school children from 2 teenage ginger boys that transform into green demons that leave rectangular sores when they touch you that ooze radioactive neon slime, you really start to wonder what the fuck your subconscious is getting at... Not to mention when Baby You is ripped from your arms and carried away by the ginger-boy demons and an evil bald leprechaun with black spikes all over his head and carried into the underworld...
And everyone you know and love is there standing on my elementary school playground, fucking looking on and nodding as she's sucked into hell... like its the end of Magnolia and it's fucking raining frogs, "It's just something that happens."
But this is not all...
Only one night prior, in another dream, I had exited an apartment occupied by people I know and total strangers' children dressed in costumes from Yo Gabba Gabba...
And everywhere I wandered inside of this apartment, people would appear out of nowhere and then proceed to bitch about how rude I was for not seeing them... I ran from the apartment when they began mocking me for being blind... Now outside of this decrepit apartment, I saw bloody water gushing onto the steps and sidewalk from a nearby hydrant... as I sidestepped to avoid the "water", I caught a glimpse of an infant seated with its back to me on an adjacent stairwell leading to another apartment... I suspect I got this image from The Devil's Advocate...
When I approached to check on the baby, two enormous dobermans raced down the stairs to defend him... Baring their razor sharp teeth in my face...
So, my point in all of this is... It's got to be here somewhere...
I don't think dreams are much more than manifestations of what your subconscious is attempting to "process"... Nor do I feel deep remorse for the decisions I make in Bioshock...
What I am all mixed up about is the feelings they leave me with...
When I "Rescued" my first Little Sister in the video game, I felt like I had removed something dark buried deep inside her. She hopped to her feet, her eyes no longer yellow and glowing and said "Gee' thanks.!" But when I tested out the "harvest" option, to my horror, the child melted away and a squirming slug remained in my hands...
I think, on some level, I liken this brain drain exorcism shit to my entire life right now...
Caught between two courses of action, I am trying to decide what parts of me are most conducive to living vs. which ones render me useless and dead inside...
Excuse me now while I go scare the crap out of myself to get my answer...
Love and Neurosis
Little One
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