3.30 am. the early hours of on a can't sleep, dark and icy morning... a Victorian lunatic asylum, which is now called a ‘psychiatric unit’, somewhere in the northwest of England.
a time when - so it is said - your metabolism is at its lowest ebb. that is why secret police all over the world choose this time to knock on your door.
“ANNA MY LOVE,
IT’S TIME NOW, I’M SURE –
THERE, HEAR THE KNOck –
THIS TIME IT’S OUR DOOR”
(From ‘Anna, my Love’ by Harvey Andrews)
it is a time when 'time' itself seems to stand still, to congeal, and you see yourself as a fly stuck on one of those old fashioned 'fly papers' - you know you should get out of here but you can't move: you are trapped in sticky time.
not like those other occasions when time is greasy and slippery and skids past you, too quickly... you want to grab it, hold it back, but you can't.
it is a time when banshees howl at your windows, and all the securities you thought you knew slowly dissolve, like cubes of ice in a tumbler of whisky, and you realise that you are truly alone...
alone on a piece of rock whirling through space, gradually cooling - until it becomes so cold that it can no longer support life, but it still goes on spinning purposelessly into the void.
and the cold glacial winds of outer space tear across a scarred landscape where your house once stood... but now there is nothing.
nothingness is hard to imagine, but it waits, crouching in the dark just outside the circle of our campfire's light… and when the fire slowly dies, and then goes out – it swallows us
but soon, morning will come, and, as the sun warms this side of our rock, another day begins...
1 comment:
Dear God, George, I hope Sam visits again soon. At least he managed to cheer you up.
I mean, I know all about that 3 am feeling. Good Lord, I used to get it every night when I was married to my second wife - I think it was her perpetual snoring - but that's perfectly normal, old boy. Everything looks better when the sun comes up, you know. I think its time you got out of there - took yourself off to the Jolly Pervert for a pint and a, well.....you know....something to cheer you up. Or, maybe even pay Carol a visit down the council estate. It would do you the world of good, old boy. Much better than languishing in that dreary place.
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