Life in the Slow Lane

Some nights the darkest parts of the room are darker than usual. It’s impossible to get to sleep because every time you try, the hollow quality of the black patches fool rationality and so it’s safer to remain awake. Aware. Alert.

On this particular evening there were sounds. A one time beep that had remarkable conviction, eventually theorised as the end of the dishwasher cycle. Heavy rain that blew in every hour, almost on the hour. Car doors. And an indescribable noise on the roof that also acted as an alarm whenever I was on the edge of slumber.

This is the feeling of staying in a home of someone else in a place you don’t feel at peace. Albany has that quality, or should I say, sense. A sense that very dark things have happened there, and linger now.

There was nothing to do but lay awake with the mind. The body staggered along – it’s obliged to follow the mind, while the soul was eager to be elsewhere. Surviving nights like these feels like a notch on the belt.

There was no where to be but here.

Here at 2:01am in a house I don’t usually stay in a town I don’t like to visit there is a lonely feeling that only the dark side of the moon could hold tonight. A place darker and more mysterious than here. Only extra darkness can swallow the alert black that is to be afraid and unfamiliar. That is to be here, tonight.