Dancing with Myself

As I spend more waking hours of my day submerging myself into divisive political issues and continuing the endless job hunt, I've found that my brain has been voluntarily chained to the ground, linked to the contaminated, corrosive soil Monsanto declares safe for RoundUp Ready, GMO-laden crops. A little dab of poison will do ya!

However, my subconscious has been more resilient than previously thought. A war has been waged within the confines of my brain, and battle lines have been drawn. My night time dreams are growing stranger, more colorful and imaginative than they usually are, filled with so much nonsense I can't even begin to start stringing together serious analyses.

It's as if the Lost Boys from Neverland have taken the consciousness focused on the "adult world"for hostage, bludgeoning him with sticks and forcing him to run laps, get the brain back into shape.

"The work world is all fine and dandy, Peter Banning, but the imagination is sweeter like candy," they might harp, with their vicious little eyes and small digits, swarming around the suit and tie-wearing buffoon like imps layered with frost. Not fire. Never fire. Frost. The icy tundra is more beautiful and pleasing than a flickering inferno, at least to me at any rate.

It's that creative drive begging to get out. Tooth and nail, it's fighting to break from the confines of a cultural landscape that likes dull, lifeless backgrounds and human-less, figurative production rates. Numbers on a computer screen scroll before the gray orbs of a big wig executive, garbed in black silk, with a leash fastened to his midsection. To him, they have meaning. They fill at deadened gap inside his junk food-laden husk.

"Everything's shit. It's all bullshit," he moans, foam oozing out of his half-open mouth as he rails against an unemployed college grad turned prostitute later on in the evening, getting his rocks off to provide some simple, basic pleasure, one that is short-lived and meaningless.

In these waking states where my consciousness submits to this reality in order to earn some income, that subconscious that has so long been allowed to roam free gets angry. It strikes back later on, entering the world between sleep and wakefulness.

In the gap between the two realms, I find myself confronting... myself. My consciousness always walks down a barren, checkered tile hallway with one solitary door. Open the door, I stumble into a private bar with all wood furnishings. Flames lick the bricks of a fireplace along one wall while a perfectly figured woman in a tight, black getup serves drinks to the only two patrons in the bar. Myself and myself.

Cushioned leather engulfs me as I sit across from my subconscious, taking the pint glass that is served to me and sipping slowly, letting the hops flood my imaginative senses.

"You stop writing, and you'll kill this," the subconscious persona says, waving his arms around at the decadent decor lit by candlelight and chandeliers.

Posters of my favorite movies and comic heroes, hand-painted, cover the walls, framed in gold. My counterpart is also cloaked in elegant attire, wearing a custom, high quality black outfit with his own label adorning his chest.

I recognize it as the logo for Doktor nOnsensical, so that must be who I am conferring with.

"Go ahead and earn some cash. Pump it into marketing and build yourself and your namesake up, but if you forget to put pen to paper and let the rhythm flow, we'll fire you," he continues. "We won't let you turn into George Lucas."

I never say anything. I just watch and drink my beer. He's chipper and tells a few jokes, and then I find myself back in the hallway, the world fading into black as I'm summoned back into a waking consciousness - calm and hopeful. There is comfort there. There is a feeling of humanity and surrealism in the brain bar, even if it feels like there are a few personalities competing for power of the organic machine that my flesh makes up.