Page 143 - NyghtVision Magazine Volume 4 #3

Or did I? Could it has been so much a part of my being in the world that I simply took it for
granted? Even the brief chill of an afternoon shower couldn't still my uneasiness. Miserably hu-
mid, the wetness mating my hair to the back of my neck and the blackness of my shirt it pressed
against my back, I sought refuge under a nearby tree. It was to no avail.

Long the shadows of the evening restlessly stirred about my study. My conversation with
Jim remained disquieting. Relentlessly introspective, it is deeply troubling for me to recognize
that there was something about myself that I had missed or blindly did not see. There was no rest
for me, despite the fact that when long the shadows of the nyght settle around my world, I find
peace and calm. Well, as much peace and calm as is possible for me. There is a certain solace in
darkness. For me at least. The pain of the razor of light dissipates and I can remove the glasses
that separate me from the world. I am alone with my thoughts. Alone with my aloneness.
But not tonyght.

I placed Princess, my phone, in her place next to me on the couch. I opened My Compan-
ion, the tablet that has now become an every present appendage, and, consumed with uneasiness,
I opened "The Beauty of Sadness" and began to read. Not the whole thing. Just the last paragraph.
"To keep the sadness alive and so to breathe life into beauty, I must create. Incessantly. Endlessly.
To keep the sadness alive. To nurture and sustain the beauty." From somewhere in the far and
darkened distance, Thoth, my cat, bounded into the room and sat at my feet. "Clear your lap or
else," his collected sounds said to me. I placed My Companion on the little table where she rests
and Thoth bounded into my lap.
"What's up, Old Man?" I asked.

He rolled to his left and brought his face up the length of my hand.

"I see," I said. "If I had any thoughts about getting an answer from you, those thoughts are
now gone." Thoth brought his head up, his lone eye glowing as the evening sun caught the edges
of his iris. "Ironic, is it not?" I said to him - a reference to the fact that both he and I suffer a meas-
ure of blindness in the same eye. "So, tell me, Old Man, what do you think of all these conversa-
tions about sadness?" As though telling me that he had no patience for deep conversation this
nyght, he chirped a simple sound that usually means he isn't interested in further conversation.
Sleep is at hand. Then he put his head down on my chest and was soundly asleep.
"The only way to hold on to the moment is to cherish it, worship it, create within it, and,
finally, to mourn each moment, until I am no more." I looked away as soon as I finished reading
these words. A velvet burgundy seemed everywhere around me. The last moments of the day were
about to pass into yesterday. "I believe," I said to Thoth who was so deeply asleep that he couldn't
hear a word I was saying, "that says it all. I am done with this."

But I knew better. I always do.... And yet I turned to other matters perhaps in the vain
hope that I would eventually tire and sleep would find me. Tomorrow all this would be gone.
Except the nyght reached its middle and I was still at work. Frustrated, I closed My Compan-
ion, stretched out on the coach, set the timer on the TV and immersed myself in an old movie.
Eventually, I would have to fall asleep.
.....As I sat up om the couch that doubles as my bed, I took a deep breath. My head moved

Summer 2014 | 143