Childhood Discomfort

This meditation pertains to a dream I had recently regarding my old Nintendo Wii, seemingly harnessing crude measures of conveying dwindling time before ineffable suffering; a sobering plea to evict the disintegrating ruins of my childhood home as soon as possible.

Details remain clouded, fragmented in that murky, swirling fugue that inevitably consumes all dreams. My psyche was once again transplanted into Montauk's body, which itself was launched back into a youthful period in life where simply retreating to my room to absorb myself in old video games was an essential respite for us.

The Nintendo Wii, gifted by family earlier that year (circa 2008), for the most part operated as a resolute and reliable electronic warden, steadily rolling in the night hours to dispel the day's conflicts and loss before some indistinct blip of unconsciousness. However, for whatever dream-insanity addled reason, the console soon began glitching inasmuch as it would no longer power off. One could press the power button and, without earnestly holding or repeated pressing of it, the system would simply flicker back on. That was just how it initially started. I cluelessly assumed some faulty power adapter within was responsible, but truthfully, I don't think logical rationale was applicable to this phenomenon. There was deliberate, weathered purpose behind its actions.

The number of required repeat presses grew. Eventually, even a tentative success could later be shattered by a disheartening, jarring power-on in the middle of the night. From there, the symptoms grew more surreal: playing audio from other games besides the one actually in the disc drive, or broadcasting familiar songs in place of the game's soundtrack. Contemporary music I associated strongly with the same malefactors and proprietors I was trying to dissociate from. What once comforted was rendered its own source of distress, whether it was the music or the grinding spin of disc-drive motors. The latter was further amplified in the dream; it flashed visions of bone saws and mincers chewing through flesh through my mind.

Peripheral context to the happenings of the dream, my carer had fitted locked gate around all the electrical outlets in my room in response to prior suicide attempts through inserting metal utensils into sockets. One of numerous tidy exits entertained, poked around at like sad gray slop on a plate before losing will to ingest such carefully titrated 'medicine'.

I thought, perhaps, leaving the device on with the television muted and covered by improvized towel drapes would mitigate my concerns. However, whatever fault was happening in the Wii had spread to the television connected to it. Further, I would hopelessly toggle the 'volume down' button on the old VCR-CRT, which turned into a delicate operation as the set would sometimes randomly, inexplicably soar in loudness.

One night I had precariously gotten it to a decently quiet volume and just left it on the character select screen from Mario Kart Double Dash, which I had been playing shortly before hoisting myself into bed. That night, it was nightmares which awoke me - dreams of the same loss, sacrificing what little of cleanliness and blue was retained within. Sleep felt hostile and taunting with cold, cadaverous talons, so I hoped to pull aside the drape and use the TV's light for some ambient illuminations. Anything to cast away dense blackness of sleep's embrace. I gingerly pulled the towel off aside and saw all the characters in the game (except Yoshi and Wario for some reason) had been replaced with disfigured, gaunt looking husks resembling individuals I knew in real life. School acquaintances, clinicians, estranged family, wrapped in blurry low res textures that still belied macabre mutilation and ravaging.

At that point in the dream, I tried something obvious I hadn't previously considered, somehow resurfacing from repressive ignorance. My arm jolted to snatch the AC input out from the back of the Wii. In doing so, a sudden surge of electricity rocketed through my fingers and through my extremities, a deep, rattling vibration that hurt in its intensity, feeling nauseatingly foreign. The Wii did turn off, though, and yet -- horrifyingly and amazingly -- it caused the sun to 'turn on'.

Instantaneously daylight outside, and starkly so when it was around 3am. The glow was cold, lurid and sterile, as though the sky were some giant LED array beaming harsh digital beacons directly into the room. This light continued to brighten to the point where vision shimmered and left bleached retinal artifacts in illusory purples and blues, all the while the acrid, coppery scent of atmospheric ozone and component smoke from the CRT/Wii permeated the room. A suffocating blanket of sensory saturation: whiting out amid critical error.

My ears rang as I looked down at my now numb, tingling hand: my fingers were turning black and the skin was withering and rolling away. Red, black to gray.

Some retrospective notes:

These devices, though inanimate, are things we pour our emotional ferver into, good or bad. It is like well loved toys or clothing. Electronic or mechanical things which mean something to us through countless hours enjoyed, refuge granted, absorbing any burning negativity we may be carrying with us like a purifying filter in a blood transfusion. The life we breathe into them gives them a kind of wiry, restless half-life of their own, of a sort. Fragmented foresight. Knowingly peering back out at you as you passively peer in, not realizing a part of yourself has become alive in your reflection. That's where belligerence seems all the more probable, it became impatient regarding the status quo before you did.

It is telling you what you already know but deny: An askew cautionary voice that knows within you what you swear is not yours. Not you or your fate. As a parting thought - I wonder if I have dreams like this because of the incident with YOPYOP. But whenever I do, it involves some technology younger than I. Patience takes time and wisdom; this behaviour is not surprising when imparted with such insights without measured temperament honed through experience.

I sleep next to a 40 year old bear and a friend whose age is spiritually inquantifiable, neither have once scared me.