Sunday Night Dream

I dream I'm sleeping in a long, very dark attic, all heavy, dark timber, like something out of Anselm Kiefer. I wake up, and there's something darker still fluttering against the shadow background. It never resolves itself into anything other than a dusty frenzy of wingbeats and grey haze, but, as I wake up in reality, I know that it was death beating its wings over me in the dark.

It's one of those dreams that leaves you a bit flustered and off-centre, the dream imagery having plugged into your emotional engine and convinced you, through your physical fear and upset, that everything in the dream was real. So you lie there in the dark with your heart bumping, with the sweat drying on your chest hairs, and you try and make things out in the deep darkness of your room.

I turned the radio on, and 'Something Understood', Radio 4's late night Sunday meditation programme, was about mortality. Of course. So I drowse-listen to the poetry and prose about finding the meaning of your life, feeling ever-sadder and more despondent. They play Kurt Weill's September Song, and I promise myself that tomorrow, and from now on, I will live my life as if it weren't a rehearsal; and I promise myself that I will reconcile myself to the ironically amusing nature of my useless, pointless passion, and that I will move on, tomorrow, and find the depth and meaning somewhere else.

Come Monday, I slip back into the same emotional traps, the same petty habits and trivial tramlines.

Tomorrow. Try again tomorrow.

;-)