14th January, 2022

This is for the nocturnals. Those who wish they would have gardens and cityscapes to walk into and wander instead of gathering the energy of removing the duvet, putting on their slippers, walking all the way to the kitchen, opening the fridge, look at it and then shut it because of how the boxes and piles of veggies are added layers on your retinas. Decide on a bottle of cold water, the iciness charges these arteries and shivers power up the brainstem. Enjoy the cold, and then walk all the way back. All the way back. Wishing they would have the energy to walk out the door and breathe.

 

You're back in bed. The weight of the night settles in. We can always tell what time it should be, seeing the gravity of the darkness that settles in the fairy-lit bedroom. It feels like it's 1:30 but it's only 12:45, wow so much extra time to do nothing! This is the winter when the night is our friend and a jester as it draws the sunrise farther and farther away, snatching the chance for us to smile at our own sinking dark circles, the chance to say 'yeah I stayed up to watch the sunrise'.

 

In fact, you've already seen it, it is another layer of muralistic tissue, another lense that switches out from the one of the fridge, the one of your room, the one of the carousels and spreadsheets of shows and movies and songs. You stopped staying awake for the sunrise long ago.

 

Every song feels wrong. Just at that point in time, when silence is too quiet, when every song you would prefer to duet with the weight of a sleeping world doesn't quite match the mood and tone and feeling. Scroll scroll scroll, where is it, I swear I had it somewhere here. 200, 300, 1000, it has to be here somewhere...

 

If you could sleep while walking at dawn, you would. Your eyes are already shut as you walk at sunrise, if only to say you went for a walk. If only to show how destructive and constructive you can be simultaneously, this is the unencumbered paradox. Finishing a thesis as the world sleeps, meeting all the deadlines at the rosy promises of hot food steaming in the night air, the silence, the silence, the silence.

 

Silence. Not peace, because dreams are a violence of daylight. Not quiet, because no one has gags or tongues wriggling on the floor.

 

The weight of the night settles in. Twirl your body with the music that sets in. Toss your head to the side like the tired philosopher kid that we all try to emulate from the movies; the rebellious, haunted goth kid from every coming of age movie. Except rebellion is now neon and black nail polish, straight As, failing, procrastination, perfection, proving them all wrong. We all saw ourselves in the underdog, and so the underdog grew like abandoned roots left to rot to the wide and creeping branches of a banyan tree. Vines drip down, moss holds the trunk. We all became our own reflections of rebellion and picked up a few mental illnesses along the way. No one leaves this life unscathed and suddenly I could see colours wrapped around mom, dad. Colours around us were already there, we just learnt their hues and decorated our walls with their brushes very late in our lives. No one leaves this life unscathed.

 

Just because it never crossed across the bridge of your voice does not mean that it disappeared.

 

-        Nothing needs invocation to be felt.