Saturday, May 28, 2005
I am thoroughly convinced that fatigue has drug like effects. I have been tired the past couple of days due both to staying up too late and sleeping in and due to the fact that I've gone back to the sleeping pad since the air mattress no longer will stay inflated. I told Kenneth the other day that in our adventures in the future we should try to do crazy things to give the adventure the feel of a dream. Due to the drug-like effects of fatigue and my actions tonight, it took on a dream like atmosphere which was kind of neat.
After seeing that my new paycheck still has not come, but realizing that I must deposit the one I had in my possession with or without the new one, I put up an away message on IM saying that I was going to the bank. My intentions were fully to go downtown, park by city hall, walk to the ATM by the bank, deposit the check, and then return home to my normal ritual of watching a movie on the computer.
When I reached downtown, the parking everywhere was full and after some time trying to figure out why this might be the case, I decided that maybe it was Friday. Due to the lack of daily differentiation that school provided, I'd simply lost track of what day it was. I drove onto campus and parked to go to that ATM since parking there was much more open. As I walked back toward the car, I saw a newspaper stand and realized that yes, Flagpole is still published in the summer. I should have realized that since I picked up a few issues in my visits to Athens last summer, but the thought hadn't occurred to me.
I flipped through it and noticed that the band Venice is Sinking at the 40 Watt on Friday night. This is one of the few local bands I have even heard the name of due to some association that Allison has or had with them. I contemplated the hypothetical of going to the show as I walked back to the car, and then about half way back decided that I was going to be spontaneous and go to the show. As I walked back to the ATM to get a little bit of money out to go to the show and then towards downtown, I was still not thoroughly convinced that I was going to go to it.
When I reached downtown, I realized that social comfort rapidly atrophies with lack of exposure when social skill levels are not high. As I walked through downtown I felt terrible anxiety just being around people and every time someone even glanced at me as I walked it made me nervous. The city, while full of familiar sites, felt like some place I'd never been to. I approached the 40 Watt to make sure that the Flagpole information was right and then found another newspaper stand to verify that it really was Friday.
Noticing that the club would not open until 10PM, I had to find some way to entertain myself for about an hour and a half until it opened. At first I walked through a couple of streets deciding that I would notice what stores were there and I was actually kind of surprised at what was there and learned where some of the bars that I'd heard the names of were located. My anxiety about being in the city was lower but still present so I decided I needed to go in somewhere. I passed a number of restaurants that I'd like to check out but avoided them for fear of the crowds and out of desire not to spend large sums of money. I walked into an ice cream shop to see if they had anything affordable, but left quietly without a purchase after examining the prices for a few moments.
My next stop was to go to Transmetropolitan since I had met with Kristen there once and thought perhaps I may run into her or an acquaintance there. After an awkward situation of trying to figure out why there was a person sitting on a stool at the top of the stairs, I remembered that I was supposed to get carded there, showed my license, and then continued inwards. Finding nobody that I knew, but determined that I needed to use more time, I sat at their computer and checked my email and Facebook.
After a few minutes there, I left and determined to find something social to do, I remembered that Allison had recommended going to Hot Corner Coffee, so I headed that direction since it is only a few blocks from the 40 Watt anyway. On the way there I heard an evangelical christian prayer about saving the people coming from a stage by city hall and I felt like somehow this night was a microcosm of all of the world with all of the world forces represented in it and I wondered in the macrocosm what I represent. When I reached the coffee shop, I was determined not to use their sitting space without being a customer, so I went to the counter to order tea and after embarrassing myself by asking if there was a difference between the many types of green tea that they sold, I purchased for $2.41 a large cup of their chai green tea and sat at a table. The only person that tried to talk to me was a half-drunk man who mumbled asking if I had a paper dollar bill to exchange for change.
When I ordered the cup, I must have appeared stoned due to my fatigue. My mental processes were not running at full blast and I felt kind of zoned out but specially attuned to some noises like the clanking of bottles. When I took the first drop of the hot tea onto my tongue, it felt like all of the follicles on my head were stimulated as if in some shift of reality. At about 10PM, I threw away my now half empty but bitter (I let it steep too long as I drank) cup of tea, and once again, went out into the night.
As I walked I felt like I was indoors all the time and I felt like they should just project a large dim analog clock onto the ceiling-sky so that anyone could look up from anywhere and know what time it was. After finding that the club was not quite open yet and that I could pay in cash without buying a ticket, I contemplated once again whether I was really going to go to this show. I had never been to a music show in Athens despite it being a music town. Still undecided but pressing forward, I sat on a bench and stared at the wall, feeling once again as if I was in a room in a building, and at once as if all that existed was what was in front of me and behind me was only emptiness. At one point while I sat on the bench, a very intoxicated man mumbling even worse than the first walked by saying something, and then sat on the bench, and kept talking. He was mumbling something about 15 cents and something about some car for which he had some definite reference in his mind but which he did not communicate to me. Not sure if he was speaking to me, himself, or an imaginary person, I ignored him despite the fact that he was right beside me. Never did he give me any cues that I could understand that indicated that he was speaking to me or realizing that I wasn't listening to him. Due to my fatigue, I didn't even feel awkward about the fact that I wasn't even outwardly acknowledging his existence or the fact that I could have been invisible and had the same series of events occur.
It was at this point that the night really took on an atmosphere of a dream as I felt the microcosm of existence and felt like either I or the rest of the world around me could be wholly imagined. I entered the club and found myself a couch to sit on to wait and watch and see the social protocol of this place and how it was supposed to work. I became decidedly anxious again wondering if Allison was going to come and whether I'd be able to figure out this situation alone. After a few minutes, a person entered that matched Allison's general description and I observed her for a while trying to ascertain whether it was her or not. I never did reach a critical mass of identifying cues to go up and see if it was her and she disappeared before the band that I thought Allison would possibly be there for, so I'm hesitant to assume that it was her.
The first band had okay music but their overall feel through their narrations failed to impress me. It did, however, give me a little time to ease into my environment. When Venice is Sinking came on stage, I was quite impressed with their music and I found them to be the best act of the night. During their show, whenever I would look toward the stage, my vision would focus on it and the chairs of people scattered in front of me and I would feel like I was in a movie. Being in this situation was out of character for me and something that normally occurs only in my imagination, yet it was being realized here. I felt the entire time as if at any moment I was going to wake up and either this night or else my whole life would have just been a dream.
The final band of the night was good but not especially captivating to me. Their music, however, provided perfect atmosphere for me to prolong the afterglow of Venice is Sinking and to contemplate over the night and the dream like euphoria I was feeling. At one point during this period I even left the safety of my couch to explore other corners of the room to acclimate myself to the area better.
It was also during this period that my sole exclusively social interpersonal interaction occurred. All of the previous interpersonal relations had been transaction oriented for purchasing goods or services or acquiring information. During the whole show, my couch remained occupied only by me, and then a girl walked by looking for a seat by the tables and unable to find one, she settled herself sitting in a fetal type position on the floor. After the song that was playing finished and the area quieted a bit, I invited her to my couch stating that it was more comfortable than the floor. This invitation and her acceptance of it was the only interaction I had with her. Various people may question why I did not proceed with more for either carnal or social reasons, but simply, I did not care to. I did not even look long enough at her to decide whether she was attractive. I simply reasoned that I had better to offer her than she had on the floor, it would not hurt me to offer it, and there was no reason to save the offer for any other person, so I gave it as the situation presented itself.
When the show finished and I exited the club at 2AM, I was surprised to find the town still full of life. I saw that on one road the police were stopping every car and reminded myself to have my car paperwork handy when I got to the car in case I got stopped too, but noted which roads were least likely to be blocked. I then hurried down my long walk through campus to get back to my car and discovered that the insurance paperwork I have is out of date so I need to search through my papers here for the updated versions. Luckily, my choice of route was not blockaded and I arrived home without a problem.
Now as I prepare for sleep, I fear that I will wake up in the morning and this will all have been a dream or, even if it is not, it will feel the same in my mind. I suppose that's okay though. I have this record here and I had a neat experience even if it did not accomplish my social goals. Often times when I wake up I hurry to transcribe the dreams I've had that night and at the end of a long transcription I realize that I have no left the bed at all and the whole transcription was done in a waking dream and at this point most or all of the dream is already gone so I cannot transcribe it in the real world. I do so hope this blog post is not like that.
I still do wonder though, is reality a dream? I very often feel that it is or that there is something more real than reality and tonight was a magnification of that feeling.