A dream from the early hours:
My mams friend is asking me if she can borrow money off me. I begin to feel conflicted as the price goes up and up, and I am trying to negotiate the amount I can borrow her bearing in mind my own financial circumstances. I am thinking of my future study and how I will need to keep money aside for that. I grow increasingly uncomfortable with this dialogue, the exchange of money is no longer just a matter of practicalities, but it takes on an emotional dimension, like it alone regulates my entire human contact with this person; my emotions themselves become valued.
I then pass a poster on a letter box. It is an advertisement for a charitable organization, maybe Oxfam. On it are various people’s faces, maybe those the charity gives to. I peel at the poster somewhat and then leave it. I head towards a charity shop, with intention to just walk straight through as I seem to be going somewhere. Passing through, I see Sean in there. He seems withdrawn, and just aimlessly standing there, almost lost in limbo. Me and him used to go to charity shops a lot together to source books. Him for reading, and me for making collage with. But here in this dream he is not really looking at anything, he doesn’t know where he wants to be. I hadn’t planned on hanging about here, I had planned on walking through, though I stop on seeing him. I see his mouth is dry and chapped, his gums bloody. I make conversation with him, I say this is a good charity shop. He asks me what makes it good. I say they have lots of books. And also, I gesture to a leather couch and say ‘they have a sofa’. Then, on him seeming so aimless, and his mouth in such a state, I invite him on a detour, for a fruit smoothie. Maybe that will make him feel better. He follows me out and I wake up.
On waking from this dream I recall the words spoken at the church the preceding day. The word ‘immortal’. At the funeral it was asked that instead of flowers that money be collected for a mental health charity. As if this would redeem something from death, as if death was not a complete irredeemable waste. I assert that it is.
It doesn’t matter where the money goes. It matters where we go. This morning I had the distinct preference for money to be ‘wasted’ on an irredeemable plethora of flowers. For those flowers to die, and for none of those flowers nor the money that purchased them to return to me. Revolting against the threat of scarcity, which I feel conflates the irreplaceability of each life with ‘what it can offer’ or ‘earn’ beyond and despite its own specificity, sacrificially, I ask the judge, “how can I be of ‘use’ to you?”. Save the environment? can Sean be recycled back to us? Resurrected? No.
I don’t want the flowers returning as his spectre. He is dead. The irredeemability of death today haunts. The living propagandas a ghost in place of more freshly cut bouquets and this is mourning:
My mams friend is asking me if she can borrow money off me. I begin to feel conflicted as the price goes up and up, and I am trying to negotiate the amount I can borrow her bearing in mind my own financial circumstances. I am thinking of my future study and how I will need to keep money aside for that. I grow increasingly uncomfortable with this dialogue, the exchange of money is no longer just a matter of practicalities, but it takes on an emotional dimension, like it alone regulates my entire human contact with this person; my emotions themselves become valued.
I then pass a poster on a letter box. It is an advertisement for a charitable organization, maybe Oxfam. On it are various people’s faces, maybe those the charity gives to. I peel at the poster somewhat and then leave it. I head towards a charity shop, with intention to just walk straight through as I seem to be going somewhere. Passing through, I see Sean in there. He seems withdrawn, and just aimlessly standing there, almost lost in limbo. Me and him used to go to charity shops a lot together to source books. Him for reading, and me for making collage with. But here in this dream he is not really looking at anything, he doesn’t know where he wants to be. I hadn’t planned on hanging about here, I had planned on walking through, though I stop on seeing him. I see his mouth is dry and chapped, his gums bloody. I make conversation with him, I say this is a good charity shop. He asks me what makes it good. I say they have lots of books. And also, I gesture to a leather couch and say ‘they have a sofa’. Then, on him seeming so aimless, and his mouth in such a state, I invite him on a detour, for a fruit smoothie. Maybe that will make him feel better. He follows me out and I wake up.
On waking from this dream I recall the words spoken at the church the preceding day. The word ‘immortal’. At the funeral it was asked that instead of flowers that money be collected for a mental health charity. As if this would redeem something from death, as if death was not a complete irredeemable waste. I assert that it is.
It doesn’t matter where the money goes. It matters where we go. This morning I had the distinct preference for money to be ‘wasted’ on an irredeemable plethora of flowers. For those flowers to die, and for none of those flowers nor the money that purchased them to return to me. Revolting against the threat of scarcity, which I feel conflates the irreplaceability of each life with ‘what it can offer’ or ‘earn’ beyond and despite its own specificity, sacrificially, I ask the judge, “how can I be of ‘use’ to you?”. Save the environment? can Sean be recycled back to us? Resurrected? No.
I don’t want the flowers returning as his spectre. He is dead. The irredeemability of death today haunts. The living propagandas a ghost in place of more freshly cut bouquets and this is mourning:
fuck off to the fist
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