Night Journey

Dreamt a perfect piece of writing; so brilliant, it brings me out of sleep to locate my notepad, slip out of the bedroom, sit by a lamp, record the words.

The words stay in sleep, they don’t follow me, even onto the shallowest shores of wakefulness. A few images drift; a wooden spoon, a metallic blue Fifties Cadillac. It’s 5am, I return to sleep.

The experience repeats, at 8am, only the images differ, only I stay awake this time. We can all write perfection in our sleep.

As the kettle boils, I puzzle out a connection between spoon and car. A wooden spoon stirs up butter, sugar, flour, eggs, creates a latent cake. Cake and Cadillac, both celebratory symbols, some logic is evident.

Dreams, like puzzles, I regard, partly, as prompters of self-centred insularity, so I don’t tend to dwell on either too much. A reaction, maybe, to being a writer, pulling every experience through a quizzical mind: equilibrium is essential, some time in which to mend the net.

Sit with coffee. Rain falls in such quantity it could make an island of us.