Voice, vapor

There is a groan of daylight, and the murmur of condensation. Of dancing ghosts in the air. I reach out for one but as soon as my fingers twitch they are gone. A small rip in the paper-smooth walls of sleep gapes. I peer in and my eyes open -- a right hand over my left wrist tugging me awake. 

My right hand.

Invisible moisture in the air holds images: a boy chokes with laughter, head on the table in dream city, mouth full with rice. A still silent slot in a loud bar. Intrepid eyes made of delight and pickled notions stare, perpendicular.  

To sort out the stares of square intensity from shapeless frolic is when one looks fixedly in abandon of reason, in search of purpose. 

Past and present melt into a muddy pool, my reflection runny. 
  
I part my lips but I am trapped in a bad dream where I try to speak but have no voice. Silent screams evaporate in view of a darker future.

Continuing resistance to theories of an afterlife

I was brought up in a committedly agnostic household, as the firstborn of two polar opposites who placed religious belief somewhere on par with the provision of warmth and joy on Christmas day and the Chinese New Year.

The warmth understood, but never felt. The joy percept, but never recept.

Born as the sun went down, I grew familiar with darkness. I recall being reduced to tears in an attempt to dislodge my modestly held notion that a reclusive god might dwell somewhere in the universe. I was ten years old at the time. I harboured clandestine religious sentiments, and I begun to regard them with the sort of pity more commonly reserved for those diagnosed with a degenerative disease.

In my teens the sentiments took form. I attended church, led worship sessions and prayed constantly. That feeling of being displaced trudged on but I paid no mind, there was a physical awakening with all the singing and reading of Bible verses. I could put my finger on it, and that's all that mattered. Parents began to worry, Mum called me "obsessive" - I'd be desolate if I had to miss a sermon.

I was not particularly swayed by my parents' attitudes, or anyone else's. But in my early-twenties I underwent a crisis of faithlessness. My feelings of doubt had their origins in listening to Led Zeppelin, were further developed in the presence of non-fiction pages and became overwhelming with an introduction to natural disasters which killed hundreds.

I have begun to face up to the full scale of my ambivalence regarding doctrinaire principles which I had inculcated in childhood. I have never since wavered in my certainty that God did not exist. I am simply liberated by the thought that there might be a way to engage in morality and mortality without having to subscribe to its supernatural content.

Blue.

My earliest memory is of falling. Through a greying cloud awaiting complete puncture. I can’t remember how I felt at the time, but it must have been somewhat nice.

I trawl the same cloud for identity.

Sometimes the bed is familiar. Sometimes I must start from childhood and work my mind through bed after bed, beds in the homes of relatives, beds slept in while passing by, beds I've only imagined. I turn my head, expecting to see dark blue sheets - but that had past, and in my mind that was some time ago. With this minor epiphany, the furniture hurries back to its normal position, the cloud darkens. The books grow thicker and their dog-eared pages unfold, creases smooth out. An outdated identity, cut from nostalgic fabric, dissolves unseen.

I have woken up in other beds, with other stings at their flanks. A time-lapse video of involuntary attachment unfurls, watched some time ago carelessly and remembered in metaphor. A crumple of bright color, deliberate like a flower. The petals unfold, neat and charming – only to be released to the ground.

I have woken up the first morning, intact. The bed moves and with every slight movement it aches from a lifetime of agony. Clouds pressed into my back. In a blue bed on the other side of the dream, velveteen, I opened foggy eyes. I filled and drank a glass of faith, forgetting where I was.

I burrow my feet into blue - a smooth, clean movement like a letter sliding into an envelope. The feeling is an electric fire which starts at the feet and climbs a tree of nerves to reach the brain.

But the blue is fading, replaced by the strange feeling that comes with waking up before your alarm.