Sleep is the Only Elegance

24 minutes past midnight. Not even half an hour into the new day. What absurdities shall we call up as we lie here on the edges of sleep, about to cast off these sentences of cells for a while? Sleep frees everything, even if that freeing is an illusion - a freedom even created by that illusion - at least then it is a kind of nepenthe, even if the effects of that nepenthe are to be remembered. We sleep not to forget sorrow but to forget entropy. This is the solace of the ill, or at least of the convalescing. Sleep is a freedom and a luxury. I remember recovering from the flu seven years ago and the ecstasies of sleep in the three months it took me to recover. I remember the sleep while the flu was in its full throes too- I didn't eat for eight days in a studio flat that had run out of electricity. White snow and freezing days and a continual dream of a medieval magician balancing temperatures with his right hand. Sleep now is like a coma. The blackout curtains cut off my dreams, and in that forgetting I recover sorrow. perhaps I shall throw the curtains wide open. Sleep in the night and remember sleeping. Sleep is, after all, the only elegance.