The Edge

I love the swirl of thoughts that float in and out of my head when I’m on the verge of sleep, when plans for tomorrow meld into abstract images of rollercoaster carriages that hurtle along tracks in a honey sea of green and purple and orange, then emerge as a line of four-winged pelicans, souring over white-capped mountains that gyrate and continually change shape; I love the sensation of sliding down a wall of words, none of them true or false or right or wrong, slipping through snippets of conversation overheard on the train to work, on a bus to Mongolia, in the mouth of a giant ant as it speaks into a microphone to a crowd of nude business men in bowler hats; I love the way my shopping list of unfinished tasks unfurls into a list of street names, then to a roadmap that becomes three-dimensional and I am sailing a boat through narrow canals, through foreign lands and over vast oceans of broiling waters that are home to saucepan-wielding pirates and old men; I love the sounds in my head as the tick of the clock on my bedside table morphs into the drum beat of a hungry African elephant who plays on a timpani while he sucks at a banana milkshake frothing inside it; I love it when the words in the book I am reading begin to float off the page and reform into long lines of dancing dogs who hold onto each others’ tails with anteater tongues that stretch for metres like sticky toffee; and I love that moment of recognition, that last sliver of organised thought, when the conscious mind with all its pretences lets go of the day and gives over to the night and all things real.

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