Sunrise On My Eyes

The morningmares have started again. Morningmares are my nightmares quite simply because I have them in the morning. I don't dream during the night; as I believe it, external forces of light impose upon the closed eyelids forming random patterns amongst the veins and skin bits in between the light source and the exposed eyes. The eyes and the brain then interpret the light randomness into absurd stories about flying, being friends with movie stars and living in medieval castles alongside an abundance of made-up cartoon characters.

My own personal theory, due to a lack of any prior scientific knowledge to back it up, is that I'm too heavy a sleeper to be affected by fairly light amounts of light - the kind of background light from outdoor street lamps that filters through the translucent vertical blinds, the wee crack of light that slips through the gap under the door to the landing and the ever-blinking standby LED on however many portable devices you happen to own and leave in sleep mode. I require a vast amount of heavy light in order to visualise a big ol' bit o' chaos. That's why I tend to dream a lot more on summer mornings just before groaning myself back into consciousness at 8am; sunlight's already been prevalent for a good three hours and the walls are of a startlingly bright hue of cream and the vertical blinds are a bit shit.

As previously divulged, I recently jumped into this year's summer stint at my prior, and - most likely once University's over and done with - future, store of employment. It's the thrid time I've "started" working at the place and, in accordance with the opening sentence of this prosaic mess, it's the third time over a vast extended period of time that I've actually been dealt with work-based dreams. The first time it happened was after I'd been working for some two or three weeks at the joint. My memory when reflecting upon dreams is sketchy at best, which doesn't really help when the dreams are little, vague and sketchy to begin with. Anyway, all that happened was that I was sat at a checkout, hearing the constant monotonous bleep of the secondly barcode-reading ceremony. After a short while, I'd read aloud a random currency-orientated number conjured up by my brain and wake up sleepily mumbling something along the lines of "that's four ninety-three, please..."

Over time, my familiarity with the store's environment has allowed my mindstuff to create more elaborately horrifying situations out of a midsummer's sunrise on my eyes. Most recently, I've visualised myself as being the sole worker left in the store by the time 6pm comes around (4pm on Sundays) when the store is due to close. In a bout of absurd dream-ism, I've been entrusted to hold the fort single-handedly and it's up to me to serve consumers on a checkout, keep the store generally tidy and lock the doors the very second closing time hits.

Unfortunately, real-life experience has proven to me that, even with a small party of staff members on board, the general populace tend not to adhere to opening times and approach the locked automatic doors and stand vacantly confused at why they're not opening, all the while ignoring the fact that the metal shutters are down and most of the lights inside are turned off. If those doors aren't locked, basic human psychology kicks in and informs a person that this place is obviously open and they may spend as long as they wish browsing, selecting and purchasing goods. Upon noticing the lack of other people doing the same thing, they proceed to ask the checkout operator "what time d'you close?", which is almost always answered monosyllabically: "six" ("four" on Sundays)... always a fun exchange if spoken after the time in question.

Back in Imagination Land, I can't keep up with the relentless queue of existing customers in-store as it is, let alone make my way to the doors to effectively stop it. More people keep flouting the closing-time rule and, therefore, the queue of customers never ends. What's more is that I become increasingly flustered that I am alone and have no back-up staff member to help me out, as well as becoming increasingly aggravated at the sight of every new potential customer merrily wandering through the door at a pace akin to that of an art museum visitor. Also, I want to go home. I never get to go home though. I remain in a fixed state of work whilst all alone and ultimately getting nowhere slowly until I wake up. Some kind of analytical dream psychologist might interpret that as a metaphor for my outlook on my professional life, my social life or, in the case of Freud-followers, my sex life or rather my lack thereof.

Either that or I'm just boring enough to dream about a real place instead of a flying castle made of candyfloss inhabited by Johnny Depp dressed as a cartoon frog or something.