Flotsam

It must have been at the beginning of time that someone decided we are to amble during the day and sleep during the night. What an arbitrary decision this must have been. Night is as propitious a time for work as any other. Is it the darkness that thwarts us? Come on now. There is always infra-red. I have a flash light in my car, wake up. Wake up and let’s talk. Let’s tell scary stories. Night, devoid of stifling heats and gnawing sunburns, what a discarded gemstone. I wish the day capsized, like an overturned cockroach jiggling its legs in desperation. And I want the night exalted, redeemed like a reinstated queen.

I suppose that if night and day were inverted I would switch to being up all day instead of being up all night. I like to be awake when everyone is asleep. An owl watching the comatose, reading their minds, scribbling about them, stealing their souls. Night is the time to make things happen. A time for lonely hours in the dark room, smoke and mirrors under red lights. The trays sway with fragrant chemicals and I see myself in their spume. Or is it my ghost? Flat, monochrome people reach out for me. I lay them down and smooth them out and with my own hand kill them on dry land. I watch the life pressed out of them. The photos bleed in black and white.

The drugged light of sunrise blinds me and in this infinite space where there is only me and the security guard I bump into him and gasp with surprise. “Have you been in here all night,” he asks childishly. “Oh, no... Just came by to get something from my locker.” He looks at me, bloodshot-eyed and tortured me, and believes me. He sees nothing.

Tonight is for popsicles, Coke, cold rice and strawberry jam. My addictions are benign. I am not even eccentric. Impossibly banal, that is what I am. If I did not like to stay up nights I would not even have a blog. Tonight is for Fleetwood Mac. So many nights are. I watch your videos and sift these years that passed by us. They settle like white, light, high-gluten Canadian flour. Everything has to be sifted, doesn’t it? We want things sanitized. So we keep the pure stuff and throw away the husk. Say I were to sit in the sifter and tell you to shake. If nothing would seep through, would it mean that I am all husk? Would I get thrown away?