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?

• The Walk­men