A pre-Winter depression
Fall had suddenly arrived to Vienna and together with the sun my good mood disappeared. A minor winter depression was already resulting in an inability to produce writings and in an unhealthy drinking habit.
Finding the most appropriate words to tell a story is easy and the trick is to combine them in such a fashion that they bring their destined message, the hardest part is to define your story. The realization that my being in Vienna is quite pointless in the view of my own life and in the view of the lives of the people I love, together with my inability to define My Big Storyline, my raison d’être, made my little winter depression even worse and it escalated after a weekend of catching up with old friends in Prague when on my way back home an absurd occurrence caught my attention, highly disturbed me and left me confused and trying to figure out the meaning of it. Looking back on it I can not with certainty say whether I really saw what I saw or that it was my imagination taking a go with me. In the metro station, leaving Prague, I was following a path of blood footsteps leading from the escalator to the train tracks, the blood had not condensed yet. If my sub consciousness was trying to tell me something it had chosen a very disturbing message to do so.
The picture of the footsteps remained fresh in my memory and I could not figure out what it meant since even without relating it to something paranormal I failed to find a reasonable explanation. I still haven’t figured it out but in the process of digesting the curious event I found the cure for my minor winter depression. It was not to party even harder but to start using my brain again. After having started reading a German novel I woke up in the middle of the night and finished two short columns I was struggling with for days in a brilliant way. Proud that I found my mojo back I fell asleep happily and dreamt of being chased by zombies. A vicious disease had caused people to develop cannibalistic behaviour towards so called fresh flesh which, of course, was no longer fresh when infected by this disease. When a worldwide alarm reached the people already halve of world’s population was infected and the rest was on the run. Fortunately I had managed to get away and after stocking a lot of food I barricaded the door of my flat and woke up.
I realised that I had just found a very reasonable relationship between the blood footsteps in the metro station in Prague and my strange dream. It no longer matters whether it was a vision I had seen, or whether there is a sensible explanation. What matters is that my imagination made a story out of it.
Julian Slotman
I'm from Utrecht, 22 years old, I did a bachelor Econometrics and Operations Research in Maastricht and I am currently doing the masters Public Policy and International Economic Studies. I like to read, write and sail and I'm an active member of both M.S.V. Tragos and ESN Maastricht. If you want to read about my experiences during my semester abroad in Vienna, or read about Oktoberfest or the Ball I participated in, please have a look at my older posts.