Wake Up
“Haven’t we met before, under brighter skies above?” It was nothing more than a nod of acceptance, a vague echo of understanding and a limp, nervous handshake, yet the sub-text of a single question would echo on for days. A memory somehow came alive, even though it had still to be lived in its entirety at that point in time. That was our first conversation.
You recognised every last particle of dust as if it were your own. I told you that you were speaking nonsense, and that I should know because no one who had so far crossed my path could ever match me word for word when it came to impenetrable nonsense in my own characteristic vernacular. You took that as a challenge, and sparred and parried until dawn, keeping almost perfect rhythm with the clock’s inexorable ticking. That was our second conversation.
I told you that there was dust everywhere. Simply everywhere. I hadn’t swept for thirty-six hours - or was it thirty-six years? - because what in God’s spitting name was the point? It only came back again, blanketing twice as deadening as before. Buried alive in dust, I said. Repeat ad infinitum or until your chest caves in. Life was just so much detritus collected on every surface, trapped within four cardboard walls of nothing shining, nothing gleaming. But you were too busy to listen to my complaints. Your idle curiosity had suddenly become caught up in the task of collecting a few of the finest grains of my solitary existence on the tip of your index finger, as you ran it across the lintel of my rarely opened door. Each grain briefly glistened in the sunlight, before you let the proof sift through your fingers, brushed it forever from your palms, and turned to me with a beaming smile of victory. That was our third conversation.
You told me that you were dust too. Worthless as. Dry as. Aged as. One concentrated breath and I could blow you away forever. I huffed and I puffed, inhaled and exhaled, even sighed. You remained resolutely present. That was our fourth conversation.
I pointed to the window and to the city below, toppling haphazardly from rooftop to rooftop. We pressed our faces to the panes, decorated in various shades of carbon monoxide, and opened and closed our mouths like goldfish. We shouted down to the streets, but silently, because we didn’t really want to be discovered: “Wake up. Wake up. For the sake of all that’s unholy, wake up”. We patted ourselves on the back, told ourselves that we had tried our very best to shake up the sleeping suburbs, but in truth we were delighted that life continued to pass us by in blissful ignorance of our existence. That was our fifth conversation.
In the call of a new world, we climbed to the next floor. There was no roof over our heads any longer, just fireworks and the sky’s phosphorus glow. We choked on each and every rising and falling explosion of colour, each and every street-light. We breathed in the scene, and choked on that too. Even our own words made us choke, leaving their barely formed vowels and consonants trapped in our throats. There was a poetic justice in the way that nothing made sense when everything at last became clear, when the dust and cobwebs were carried away on the breeze. We clasped the hand of this other person whom we didn’t yet know, approached the edge of the wall, and leapt. And leapt. And leapt again. That was our sixth conversation, but it was far from being our last.
We’re still leaping, still talking. Still whispering and shouting too, with the sound of our simple-fingered, childish piano melody vying for space above the grinding urban cacophony. I haven’t quite worked it out for myself yet. I’ll get back to you when we stop, when we crash down on terra firma and cover ourselves in a thick new layer of dust. Meanwhile, there’s air to be breathed and sights to be seen.
Are we asleep? Or is this what wakefulness is like?