Strange how home has become a border region between myself and what I usually am. All my habits and mannerisms are tested against my roots. Funny how this experience is limited to a couple of weeks that lay between the times during which I am a resident. Moonlight descends onto my bed and I given the chance to compare myself to what I have been several times before. I scrutinize my grades and talk to all of those who have been raised in similar circumstances; measurements are made between those who I suppose to have similar potentials. I compare myself at work with myself at leisure. There are few differences, if any at all; confidence ensues my past and the present is nothing measurable against that. A space opens up in which thoughts only borne in lieu of leisure raises their heads. Here, we are in a sense equal. I get to brag and I get to be put in my place; a double-movement felt at once and holistically.
I get to spend those sun-washed evenings in the bed of another person. Regardless of the cold, I lay and feel myself at perfect ease. My vision obscured by the tangled threads of another’s hair, greasy. In the midst of an Other’s wardrobe; the techniques they dawn when faced with a scruple. I awake and feel no need to arise. Perfectly at ease in this stranger’s light. A light that I enjoy at least semi-vicariously. Children hollering outside the window, the cigarette smoke curling up around the windowsill; a stillness that is felt only in-between periods when things matter. It is a glorious inconsequentiality, borne out of temporality. Felt briefly and intensely: a holiday.
I forget the day of the week. Time rears it’s ugly head only when I am asked to account for my plans. Thankfully, this is only retroactive, and rarely does an appointment have more to do than potential, rather than pretence. Lithely, I stay awake into the still early hours of the day. There are few prices to pay. Time spent sleeping and awake are one and the same. Dreams invade daylight; there is no price to pay.
I awake in a friend’s bedroom; there is nothing to do other than appease a hungry stomach. We arise and finish our first meal by the time the sun sets. The only other thing to do is have a meal with other people. Condemnations run rife throughout; each of us benignly displaying each other’s learning’s from the past months. Innocuous. I try and make a point, and regardless of how firmly I make it I realize that this is all but leisure. A vivid, and well-deserved, leisure that is bought with work. Words trickle and intertwine. A glorious and elegant fact is created. Perfect through its paltry importance.
I feel a shift in momentum occur. I see myself reflected in my works and simultaneously see myself changing my attitudes in that reflection. I behave haphazardly whilst enjoying the pleasures that I craved a few weeks ago. I have too much wine and finally can exploit my unknown presence; I make enemies with the artists and befriend the musicians. I play up polyrhythms. I exist in an otherwise tenuous space.
A smile curls up around my lips; for such overpowering beauty is, thankfully, temporary. Borne out of temporality; a strange nether region, dank with myth and mythos. Moonlight casts hard shadows. My dreams run in and throughout the day. Winter solstice; when night runs the longest.
