I’m exhausted by the effort of my own terrible dreaming. ‘Dreaming’s no effort’, you might say, but the type of dreaming I do is. For sure it is, as you would know if it was you doing the dreaming. What I’m talking about are mechanical dreams you see, and mechanical dreaming is nothing more than a constant, unrelenting, vicious grind. It’s an uphill struggle with no joy in it. Dreaming on purpose, I call it – deliberately dreaming the mechanical dreams that I have tasked myself to dream. Only they’re not dreams at all really but something else. Something else that is more like a sudden, violent rocking movement to the left that is followed by a pause, and then another sudden, violent rocking movement in the opposite direction. This isn’t a dream at all really – I don’t actually know why I call it ‘dreaming’, but I do.

‘Dreaming’s no effort,’ you might say but I’m here to tell you it is. You’re talking about your own type of dreaming you see not mine, and that’s irrelevant to me. My type of dreaming is very different indeed – is like digging a garden that’s made up entirely of stones or dragging a huge block of concrete on a chain up a steep incline. The effort makes me choke and grimace and spit dust. I have dark rings around my eyes, which peer mournfully into a spirit world that only I can see. Only it’s not a spirit world at all, it’s more like a Grey Void which exists within me. A Grey Void with nothing in it. ‘Welcome to my Grey Void-world’, I say to people when I meet them. Now perhaps you see what I’m talking about! I hope you can, anyway. Only I never do meet other people and that’s the cruellest thing of all. I know exactly what I’d say to them if I met them – there’s no problem there – the problem is that I never do meet them…

‘Dreaming’s not as bad as you make it out to be,’ you might say, but that only goes to prove that you’re not listening to me. People never listen to me. I don’t just dream at night-time like other people do, I also dream during the day. Only it’s not daydreaming, you understand. That’s something completely different. When I dream during the day what I am really doing is that I am constructing my own reality, bit by bit. I have to painstakingly create each and every element in this dream, and then arrange them in a pattern that seems as if it will prove to be interesting, or at the very least bearable to me. It never actually is of course, but that’s my hope. That is always my hope. The worlds I create are banal beyond belief.

I can’t ever stop dreaming either because by now the dream has gathered its own dreadful momentum. It hurtles ever-onwards towards a predetermined destination. It hurtles ever-onwards towards a predetermined destination and no one has the power to deflect it. Nothing can ever change the mechanical journey we’re on. This is the Dark Goal, as some call it; this is the goal that we won’t (or can’t) ever allow ourselves to become aware of. The self-assigned meaning of our lives exists in opposition to this goal, which is more than just a goal since it can’t ever be avoided…