wide asleep

I am fairly certain I was asleep just then.

Definitely.  I know I was asleep because I've just read 2 pages of my book propped up behind the taps while washing up 3 pans, a fork and a matching pair of mugs – Charles and Diana.  The fork required the scourer.   

Ah, that'll be me awake then!  Damn.  But the cutlery crashes and the crockery thunks like a bull on my draining board.  I can see the glint of the bulls horns, blood on its horns like dolloped jam, red eyes steaming mixing with fetid hot breath like a flame-thrower-steam-roller out for blood.  I go to close my eyes, but they weren’t open!  It’s not a bull, it’s the taps.  They glint and steam as they spew water.  I fumble with the handles, turning and turning, like the earth on its axis.  One full revolution around the sun later and they are off. 

Through screwed-up eye-lids I can see a river, as if I’m staring out of the window of an airplane.  But it’s huge and close.  I’m directly over it, near enough to feel the frothy spray from rapids over pebbles and the splashing of small fishes.  There’s no plane, I’m falling, I reach out.  Hot, hot, hot.  Too hot, this river, and there’s a teaspoon right at the bottom.  Very smooth for a riverbed, more like glass or...  Ah, I unscrew my eyes and see the white frothy bubbles in my kitchen sink.  I’m awake and finishing off the washing-up.  The spoon glows, inside it is the distortion of the yellow kitchen units.  I press it to my face and fall into it like pushing through a bubble.  The kitchen is in here, but it is too big, enlarged.  Or I have shrunk a little?  Nothing too drastic, just enough to need a chair to reach the sink.  I know this because I’m standing on a chair and reaching into the sink.  A nick on my thumb, pinking the water with my blood, each heartbeat rippling the water before I lift my hand out.  And this all seems familiar;  my parents kitchen was yellow, when I was 7 and too small to reach the sink unless I stood on a chair.  Am I finally asleep?  Is this a dream or a memory?  Reliving the time I deliberately cut my hand when washing up – “this’ll show ‘em I’m too young to wash the dishes!”  Too young or too important.   

Memory or not, I’m definitely asleep now but I’m not in the kitchen.  I’m in the bathroom, my bathroom, not one from 20 years ago or prehistoric times or whatever.  I’m looking in the bathroom mirror, tilting wildly to one side as I pee freely without lifting the seat.  Such marvellous aim, such grace,  a golden downpour a mile wide into a teacup.  Genius!  If this was a dream, I would be waking up right about now with an angry bladder fit to bursting.  But I’m still here, so I must be awake in the toilet.  Niagra Falls crashes all around me.  Ah, I’ve just flushed then.  I have wondered to the sink to examine an elephant under my chin.  Big and grey – it must be real, aren’t imaginary elephants pink?  Big and grey and loud, trumping at the buttons on my pyjamas, distressed that one hangs on its last thread.  The elephants tusk has an eye, not one for seeing with, an eye like a needle.  Its ivory needle is threaded with remarkable dexterity using its two huge front stumps-of-feet.  Over and over, the elephant dives in and out of each of the 4 holes in the button until it sits as calmly as the other buttons on my pyjama top.

The big and grey and loud elephant has disappeared - they hide in cherry-trees, don’t they?  There’s no plant-life in my bathroom, so I guess when the elephant hid in the cherry-tree it hid the cherry-tree too.

So that'll be me asleep then, face leant against the tiled wall, arse on the sink, left buttock engulfing the dripping hot tap, knees jammed against the towel rail.  Nope, not asleep. I can see myself, I’m staring at me in the mirror.  Drool dripping like the hot-tap, but cold on my neck, as cold as the wall-tiles.  Eyes black like burn-holes, embers died a while back when falling into a spoon and hunting elephants looking for loose buttons.  And so on. 

From one room to another, one preposterously uncomfortable sleeping position to another, from one large grey mammal to another, I remain utterly awake, with spatterings of unconsciousness.  Like a British summer, mostly cloudy with bright spells.  Spells of brilliant, bright-shining sleep.  Where I dream of hoovering and washing floors and folding laundry.  Damn.  That'll be me awake then!

 I wrote this in my sleep.