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.