My sixth sense

As anybody who has ever spent a night in the same house with me would know, I’m rather prone to sleep talking. And, recently, Sleep Screaming Until I Scare the Living Bejesus Out of All Inhabitants and Those of Neighbouring Towns and Countries.

It’s a little joke we play, my brain and I.

Actually I’m not in on it; my brain just likes the way I fling myself into sharp corners, hard walls and other potentially-dangerous obstacles when I’m trying to flee whatever is trying to kill me in my sleep. One time it was an ace of hearts. Another time it was a net. Most recently – like two nights ago – it was my sister.

The interesting/terrifying thing is that in the past 48 hours she did try to bring my death about...twice.

But first let me tell you about my sis: she doesn’t look like somebody who would leave her sister innocently sleeping in an 18th-storey apartment during a fire evacuation. But she did. Oh yes she did.

To her credit it was 4:30am when the alarm went off and I didn’t respond when she gently whispered “this place is burning to the ground,” in my ear. So she decided to let me sleep and trudged down the emergency stairway. That was peachy except about half-way down she suddenly realised that – holy shit – maybe this wasn’t a drill and I might actually sleep through a fire. So, in a bit of a panic (the type one might feel if one has left one’s slumbering sister for dead) she proceeded to scramble up the stairs. I like to think it played out like that scene in "Titanic"; everybody running the other way as she elbowed little old ladies and stole a child. Or am I confusing movies again?

Anyway, here’s something to remember if you ever leave your sister for dead in your top-storey apartment: you can’t open fire doors from the inside; the only way out is through the ground floor. When Kate realised this unfortunate fact – while imagining me crisping up like a fatty bit of bacon – she flew back down the stairs (probably lapping the ladies she had elbowed mere moments before), 17th floor, 16th, 15th, 14th, 13th, 12th…

At about this point the alarm stopped Everybody breathed a big sigh of relief and dedicated some involuntary facial expressions to the sweet girl who had been flinging herself up and down the stairs with a look of abject terror for most of the previous fifteen minutes. Mind you, I was still asleep and completely oblivious to the drama that had unfolded in the fire escape that morning, but my brain knew.

Last night I had a dream that Kate and Tim had left a human-sized chicken and pig costume next to my bed to serve as warning. The message: they would slaughter me.

Hours after I woke up Kate pulled me into the way of oncoming traffic. She has this in common with Mark. He also repeatedly tries to kill me in my dreams. My brain is onto something.

Right

So Munich is great and all. Fantastic, actually, if we’re going to be honest. And we are. We are going to be honest. Not as honest as my grandmother was yesterday when she related all of the bowel movements she experienced throughout the day, including their raucous conclusion (I need to take the time out to say EWWWWW), but honest enough to tell you if you’re looking “tired”. You are, by the way. You should get some sleep.

And right back to my point we go. Munich is fantastic except for one tiny (but really MAGNANIMOUS) thing. It doesn’t have – nor understand the need for – salt and vinegar chips. It doesn’t understand the need for any kind of flavoured chip, for that matter. Other than paprika. And paprika is a bit like dating your model friend’s slightly below-average sibling – you’re constantly fighting the need to scream “you ruined my waistline for nothing you filthy whore” (at the mirror).

Therefore there was a very measurable, very easily graph-able, decline in our interest in paprika chips. It went a little like this:

Right. So when I came to Australia for an unexpected visit you know what happened, right? Because you know Australia has every flavour of chip ever conceived (of course it does). Australia even has Vegemite-flavoured chips (OF COURSE IT DOES).

So you know what happened, right?

To the memory

So once again it has been a long time since I wrote. This time it was because the world lost a great person to suicide. Usually this sort of situation is exactly where my sense of humour would kick in. Call it a coping mechanism if you will. But it didn’t.

Instead trivial things – the type I write about – have become even more trivial. Most things feel like empty small talk. The world, whether it knows it or not, has been touched. It has been changed and yet it continues to move, mindlessly. I’m aware of how I fit in to the mindless cog, unable to detach, but completely aware of my own insignificance. And helplessness.

And this monumental thing has happened, and caused so much suffering, and loss, and questioning and I can only watch. Tears, sleep, words, nothing makes a difference, everything seems at once unstoppable and narcissistic.

I struggled with the question of whether to write something or not. For one, words are so set and entirely incapable of capturing the situation and, secondly, it isn’t my place. It doesn’t feel like my place to say much.

But I wanted to record this moment somehow, and to let you know that the world is different. And now you do.