Things to do at 4.00am #2

I’m like a child. Enter­tain­ing such a silly and child­ish notion. I don’t want to sleep until it gets dark, until night turns blacker than pitch, because it’s not right. It’s still day­light. It’s not right. Don’t send me to bed without any sup­per, feel­ing scol­ded and hungry and aching for a dream that will never come.

I crave wake­ful­ness. I crave being alert because I don’t want to miss a moment. I am teli­ing myself that some­thing will hap­pen — tonight, it’s got to hap­pen or else — even though I have no reason to believe that it will. Yet if I let my eyes flut­ter closed for any­thing more than a blink I might miss the most pre­cious moment of life to have settled on my shoulder in two weeks or more. I would curse myself in the morn­ing, more than any occa­sion I’ve drunk and regret­ted it, spoken and regret­ted it, even exis­ted and regret­ted it. I would curse life itself and scream at its shocked, sallow-skinned face that I want to tear it limb from cruel bloody limb for being so damned unfair. I don’t want to spend even one more heart­beat run­ning on empty.

Here and now. I am in my real­ity, which isn’t like yours. I have four weary hours to burn this candle at both ends before I will tell myself that all hope is lost. I wish I had a pot of clean emul­sion, a stiff-haired brush, a pile of local ink-stained rags and a door to paint.

Give me mono­tone. Mono­ton­ous. Stark white and calm­ing all sen­sa­tions of curi­os­ity. Believe it or not, I desire dull­ness. I yearn for a sim­pli­city sig­ni­fy­ing noth­ing more com­plex than a simple Is. But no, I’m even out of will­ing wooden sup­ports. My blank can­vas will not cooper­ate. So. What to do?

I will talk to the reverse of the same wall that you’re con­vers­ing with — because we’re not crazy, are we? — and hope that it soothes fur­rowed brows and frayed nerves until another life, some­where else, chooses dawn over dusk and bird­song over hoot­ing owl.