Dream


There’s a certain part of the night that the universe has reserved for me, just before 4 am. It is when the new lovers get too anxious and old lovers get too tired from the night's activities and retire for some happy reflection. The drunkards are on the floor, and the junkies are in the heavens. The over-motivated are sleeping in anticipation of the alarm still half an hour away. This time of the night, I've found, is quite lovely for a little walk. This was one of those walks.


It's not a lonely walk; I do have my songs for company. I've noticed my companion to be a woman of diverse and at times eccentric tastes. I love her for it and trust her to protect the sanctity of this walk through an adequate choice of tunes. This particular night, she chose some Leonard Cohen for me. I hold this gentleman quite close to my heart, and while I know nothing of his personal life, I can tell from his art that he would be someone I'd have liked to meet someday, had he not died when I was ten. But I digress, the song was Chelsea Hotel, and that’s all you should know.


I stumble around in a drunken slumber, and when my knees get too weak to support my overbearing thoughts, they give out. Ploof, flat on the ground. At times in life, when I find myself closest to the Earth, from whence I came, I realise how I’ve travelled nowhere, but I’m still so far from shore. I turned over to look at the stars. There were many, but I couldn’t remember a single one’s name. Odd. I decided I shall try my best to cry. It is awfully hard for me to do so, even in times of great dismay. I was equally unsuccessful tonight. I curled up into a ball and decided to listen to my beloved Cohen. 


“I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel. That’s all I don’t even think of you that often.” 


I felt a pair of arms envelope me from behind. There are many kinds of embraces- ones of greeting, ones of farewell, ones of familiarity, ones of comfort, ones of pity, ones of reassurance, ones of malice, ones of friendship, ones of love. I have had the good fortune of experiencing most of these in my life. This did not feel like any of the aforementioned. Quite an undiscernible hug.


I looked at the hands wrapped around me. Thin and soft, with an unexpectedly strong grip. A black hair band tied to the left and a greenish-blue scrunchie on the right. Her hands smelled of cocoa butter, it was an awfully familiar scent. I leaned my head into her lap and closed my eyes. It was all eerily right, the fabric of her clothes, the indents my head made on her lap, the perfume which I’d given her. 


I opened my eyes. I was aghast. This wasn’t right at all. She had the same big eyes, but there was no life flowing from them. She had the same waves, but they didn’t brush her cheeks, they crashed on her temples in a rude fashion. Now that I had noticed, her fingers started to burn my skin like searing iron. I realised what had been going on. She is just as fake as me. A ghost sent to toy with me. A divine sadism.


I should get some sleep. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

lobster

   I thought it would be hard to write this, but surprisingly, the words came out quite naturally. I wrote this less as a source of venting and more as a duty to recite a part of myself that no one else knew. A form of immortalisation, if you will. As a result, I have tried my best to keep my emotions out of the way while writing this, but you will find that some natural human sentiment leaks into a few of the words. I apologise for the same. You may read this as if it were a piece of fiction if that helps. Calls About a year ago, my girlfriend inquired me why she'd never seen me cry. "It's always me crying to you; you should also cry to me sometimes," she said.  "Well, there's not much here to make me cry, Ari", I replied.  "Well, then I'll break up with you, and you'll be in tears, and I'll finally see you cry, hah!" She had a weird sense of humour at times. "If we break up, you'll start crying first, and I'll be busy...
Read more

Farm

  “I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around--nobody big, I mean--except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff--I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy.” You know what I’d like? I’d like to have a little house on a big farm. Not a farm that grows animals or crops of any kind, just a farm for a farm’s sake. Maybe I’ll grow some fruits, nothing too showy, just whatever grabs my fancy. I’d have a cosy little spot in my bedroom where I’d sit and write my little stories all day. And I’d have three big dogs- some kind that would...
Read more

Dear diary

  I spent the day with my parents and my dog. I ate very little and very normal food. I did not talk to or meet anyone special. I did not listen to my favourite songs and did not watch my favourite movies. It was quite an uninteresting day, but I didn't mind it very much. I noticed the green in the trees more, listened ardently to people walking by, I even tried my best to throw in a joke or two every once in a while. The day was far from ideal, but let me walk you through it, since there isn’t much else to do. I assembled a couple of chairs and a makeshift wardrobe for my parents, which mostly felt good but also served as a grim reminder of how weak and scrawny my hands had become, nevertheless I finished it successfully and now a wonky wardrobe stands proudly where there once used to be space to move around. I dropped some curry on the new sofa but luckily it's in a place my mother will hopefully take a few days to find out, the curry was no good anyway. My dog bit my hand an...
Read more