When I was six years old,
my brother slept on the couch.
And sometimes,
I would sleep beside him.

I would creep into the gray night,
and whisper scratchily toward him:
"Clyyyde!"
"Hmm?"
"...Wanna play Download?"

I had picked up the word from some adult,
and had absolutely no idea
what it meant.

But this is how it worked:
I would lay on the floor beside him,
and as soon as I said
in my deepest six-year-old voice,
"DOWNLOAAD!"
we would pretend to dream.

When we 'woke up',
we would have to tell each other about it in detail.
That way, we could have tons of dreams
in one night.

Mine were always lands made out of food.
Because I was fat.

I don't remember his.
Probably 'cause they were stupid.

I'm so glad I still have the chance to play
at least one last time.

In this room at four a.m. where the universe sometimes meets, I cram some thinking time into the stillness that does not occur at any other part of the day. A wall clock scratchily taps its one-tone metronome in a time signature discomforting to noisy thinkers.

My quiet contemplation is possessed with a version of unkindness, arising out of unsteady dreams. In the most recent frame; invading forces stay out of sight to threaten as the unknown enemy. We burn candles for those who plead the safety of our dwelling. But suspicion becomes our ally and neighbours are offered no solace.

I notice a small moth as it circles a candle avidly craving the feast of light. I think of those who have struggled with a near-death experience. I’m told the dying enter a beautiful light when called to begin passage from this world to the next. Does the small moth feel the same sense of awe as it prepares to feed the candle?

The lifeless screens of television and computer, (sometimes channeling the universe into this quiet room) hold their square black mouths agape, but offer nothing more than mute obedience. The only living pixel in this room is worshipped by the fervent wing of a moth: and is unaware of being a metaphor.

I hear at distance, the first bus for the morning passing by, it is mostly empty of the silent ones it will carry later in the day. I wonder how many of today’s travellers will have been awake at this time, pondering fate and future in the shelter of an urban meditation.

The early hours of the morning, I’m told, are when most passengers depart for the next world as they sip or gasp a last breath.

Slipping by and above me, some adventurous souls are carried by a hot-air balloon: the rushing light and sound of the gas-flame is a jet of life which heats and sustains the commercial moon as it drifts by in close orbit. The balloon then changes metaphor and mimics sunrise.

Perhaps moth and balloon and empty screens are pre-cursors for all that is to come today: all that is furtive, all that is futile, all that pretends omniscience, all that is agape, all that is sufficient for those of us who assume we will live on and on and on. And for those of us who repeat each day secure, content and satisfied: completely taken by all the fuss and noise of living for successfulness.


MChallis 2005/2014