nightwalking

'The nightwalker, on a terrace in the garden, unaccompanied, hardly aware of it, half hopes to overhear - that haunting thing. Something that hovers, maybe hovers only just beyond the rim. A thing that he has not thought of yet, that no one ever heard.'

David Gascoyne, 'Night Thoughts', in Selected Poems (Enitharmon: London, 1994), p. 230.


The workload verges on madness at this time of the year - I seldom leave the office before midnight. Never in a hurry, I live up to the (bad) reputation of being a 'my pace' person, existing in the interstices, oblivious to the stringent routines of clock time and of other people.

Walking the deserted streets after the last train has this eerie but strangely appeasing effect. In limbo, when real silence and the nothingness of the world dawn on you and everything falls into place. You fear nothing, can fear nothing, because all the chitter-chatter of the day and its petty concerns weigh nothing, nothing against the immensity of this silence, against this indifference of the stars.

Of the silence that most fear and muffle with all sorts of noise and errands, I have made a home. Between worlds, nor day nor night, nowhere - everywhere. A most uncomfortable place to be, but a home. Where you can hear your own footsteps on the ground, your own small, very small heartbeat - and the earth's. Incommensurable.