Sleep Is A River, Flow On Forever

So here I am. Back straight … check. Upright but not uptight in my comfy, but not too comfortable writing seat … check. Shutter lats angled for perfect sunlight … check. My guiding desk lighthouse and scented candle lit … check. Every part of my pre-writing ritual complete. Fingers at the ready. 

And … nothing! 

Nada. Zero. Doodly. Blank page still coquettishly blank. Fingers rubbing along the keyboard. Hmmm, that X looks a little dirty, must get those wipes and clean the pad … later, focus!

Still not a squiggle. Blanker than blank, now. ‘The shrieking of nothing is killing’, as Bowie says in Ashes to Ashes. Do I want an axe to break the ice?

Just axing for a friend

Will there be any more words to void the void, to mock the abyss, wave to posterity and be more than an empty name to my indifferent descendants?

Will I ever again tilt at the vast nothingness, empty the emptiness or silence the great silence? 

Thought I’d something left to say, but not this time anyway.

Actually, I knew I was in trouble when I had succumbed to yet another final scrutiny of my final Fantasy Football League table (and final day Irish Daily Star Cup final defeat — Ruairi vice-captained two-goal Harry Kane and he came in for his captain Haaland, who didn’t play).

So what can a stalled writer do? He can always go back to bed.

Another gorgeous luxury in these blessed working from home times. Snooze the blues away. Or just snooze.

Or flick on Netflix, read the dogs, walk the papers … another coffee?

Perfect for Irish ‘summers’ too. Instead of waiting for the sunny day that never comes when you expect it, or heaven forbid, count on it,  I just pop out into the garden when the sun does slink out from behind the clouds for long enough to warm me and enhance me. Reboot me.

If it lasts, so much the better. 

Spare me these summer yearnings for heatwaves, the same ones that overwhelm us freckled Irish pixie heads if they do occasionally actually arrive.

Predictably surprised again as the water shortage warnings are all over the news.

But the more usual short bursts of luminous rays charge my solar panels, and sustain me. Like those cute solar lights Anne has plaited around the garden, up high, and they come out at night like our own private Milky Way. 

I extinguish the lighthouse now, blow out the candle — inhaling that wonderful after-flame aroma — and withdraw.

Children busy and safe, wife and the world at work, I head for the cool morning bedroom, kissed by the soft waft through the opened window, and climb between those crisp sheets — fresh linen, oh, the bliss —  the door ajar for Lily the wonder dog’s guaranteed visit.

My feet touch something warm and fuzzy … it’s our new hot water bottle. Still warm from last night.

Oh the pleasure of that soft warm caress upon my left ankle. Keep your screaming pleasures and loudly proclaimed luxuries, this will do me now. 

Drowsily unwound and easily surrendering to the soft give of the mattress that cost more than the actual bed — but worth it a thousand times over — my eyes close, the better to ferment my unmediated cogitations, and distill them into purer intuition.

Soon I am everywhere and nowhere, I am vast and I am infinitesimal, I am young and I am old, I am lost and I am roaming in places that know not time nor place nor present.

And yet they do.

I am the little boy who doesn’t need to think of things like comfort and security and the kindness and care of mammy and daddy, as I lie here all snuggledy buggledy with my hot water bottie, or the soles of my feet on my younger brother’s toasty tootsies, since he always falls asleep so quickly.

And I am the codger, the discomfort dodger with his hot water bottle.

My eyes closed, I am adrift in a galaxy, in an other world where thoughts break into dreams, and words images, and pools of memories gather and connect.

And I curate my own reflections, gathering precious flecks of stardust in this interior universe to bring back with me, comprehended but never fully understood … and I think of what it must be like for a person who can’t walk, or move in the usual way on land, and being free to float and flit in the soothing sea. 

How does the amazing Joanne “No Limbs No Limits” O’Riordan, feel when her eyes are closed and she is roaming beneath the blankets or duvet without waking limits in a parallel world of unbound thought and fantasy?

And it is indeed a fantasy, for me … how can I know, how can anyone know where Joanne boldly goes when the stars are flying and she yields up the day or night-time to old John O’Dreams?

“When sleep it comes the dreams come running clear

The hawks of morning cannot reach you here

Sleep is a river, flow on forever

And for your boatman choose old John O’Dreams”

Sure I might do a bit of writing when I get up … sure no harm in trying or not trying, I suppose?