Lying in bed at 5 o'clock this morning, still full of cold but sensing an improvement I had what often happens when I wake up at this hour: I had an idea. When this happens I usually have to go downstairs and write it up; not with any intention of it being my next project - there are already too many of those - but just in case. The title of this blog post reflects the way my mind wanders at five in the morning. I look over to my left and register the long net curtains covering the large sliding window through which the light of dawn is just beginning to filter. It is moving slightly in the breeze. Out of the corner of my left eye I simultaneously register the black shade of the angle-poise lamp on my side of the bed. Next to me, Jeannie moves and emits a mewling sound. My gaze returns to the orange Art Deco lampshade hanging from the ceiling, almost but not quite in the centre of the room. Jeannie mewls again and I rest my hand on the particular place at the small of her back that I've always loved thinking that if she's dreaming it may reassure her. Of what I don't know. Then she breathes again and I realise it was just the passage of air through her nostrils and not a mewl at all. It has taken me about five minutes to write this but in reality, from noticing the net curtains to the imaginary mewling, it was almost instantaneous. At the same time my head was full of disconnected words that had to relation to what I was registering visually as it got lighter in the bedroom and it occurred to me that this is the way the human brain - or at least my brain - works when nothing is happening in the early hours; when we stare out of the window at nothing in particular, or when we sit without anything to look at or read while waiting at the doctor's, or for a bus. Also, the way in which sounds and images invade our brains and and connect with deeper levels of our consciousness, recalling stories or events from our past lives. In a split second, memories, thoughts and ideas occur for a fleeting moment and are gone - unless we get up and write them down.
You said...
I said...
Remember...
Remembert...
Rambert...
Ramambert... Ballet Ramambert...
Reiterate...
What?
Re-iterate
What?
To iterate again...
Iterate? Is that even a word?
Touch.
Smell.
The inside of my brain at five o'clock this morning.