Comparitive Imaginings.

Not all my imaginings are dark, you know. Some of them are light and pleasant. The problem is that the dark ones are heavier and more substantial, and they’re stubborner than any mule when I try to shake them off. They put their claws out and grip and refuse to let go until they eventually fall asleep for a while. And then they wake up, climb onto my back again and repeat the exercise. The light and pleasant ones, on the other hand, are misty and ephemeral. They breathe sweetly scented breezes at me for a few minutes and then dissolve into clouds of vapour before drifting away on their own airy nothingness.

I don’t trust the light and pleasant ones; they’re frothy and featherweight and give me a Walter Mitty complex. They make me feel silly and deluded. When they do talk to me they tell me to wake up and get real. ‘We light and pleasant imaginings,’ they whisper, ‘are but pointless dreams which offer nothing. Only our cousins, the nightmares, hold any prospect of becoming reality. Put your trust in them if you’re more interested in prospects than the present. That way you won’t be disappointed.’

Writing this is irritating me so I’m going to stop here (except to say that the light and pleasant imaginings nearly always have the same player taking centre stage, which is probably why I don’t trust them.) I think I’ll muse on Dr House’s end-of-episode aloneness instead. Tonight it caused him to hallucinate the appearance in his apartment of the late Ms Cutthroat Bitch who whispered in his ear. It was reassuringly familiar.