Equinox

Thursday, Mar. 20, 2003 -
Ap�sl�min ida corbalanyrtne 'ls�o rohl'daathi�m v� nen�a iroyss�rd.

When I awoke this morning, in the very first moment of awareness, my mind's voice clearly spoke this single phrase: "A bruised piece of mutton and a sow's ear."

No images, no elaboration, no explanation.

I had awakened to darkness as expected; I'm a habitual early riser. I looked at the alarm clock I never need, which was set to wake Jer only 40 minutes before he had to leave for school (the boy does not primp, and he usually eats breakfast in his car.) The clock read 2:45 am. I'm not habitually that early.

We were sleeping three in the bed, my boyfriends and I, Jer in the middle. Fortunately, it's a big bed. Custom-made. Square, eight feet wide, eight feet long. (I had to make the mattresses for it. Amazing what you can do with a staple-gun.) Four-poster, eight feet tall. Solid mahogany, cinnabar finish. I bought it at an antiques shop (but it's no antique) in Cayucas, a town four hours north of here, with a grimy, gritty strip of storefronts along the beach, and million-dollar homes climbing up the hill behind. The lady who sold it to me said it had belonged to Bert Convy, as if that should impress. I managed to dicker the price down a bit. I loved it, and I had a bedroom big enough to house it, but I didn't tell her that. She knew she was stuck with a bed of intimidating size and inconvenient shape, and I expressed misgivings and doubts all through our negotiations. I eventually got the price down to $625. Exorbitant for me, but I knew we had hit bedrock. She was a sweet old broad, but tough.

So now you know I've been sleeping in Bert Convy's bed. Still respect me?

Big as the bed is, sleeping three across can be...distracting. It's not always possible to get enough hours of uninterrupted ZZZZZs. Sometimes the Fiend leaves us and sleeps in the studio. Sometimes Jer sleeps in his own room. Sometimes I awake alone in the bed. But not this morning, at 2:45 am, with the slightly ominous (but mostly inane) echo of "a bruised piece of mutton and a sow's ear" bouncing around in my head. The furnace was off, the house was cold, and the boyfriends were snugged deep under the covers, fast and silently asleep. Neither snores, luckily enough. Deciphering the lumps in the down comforter, illuminated by a string of red chilli lights, I could see that the Fiend was spooning Jer. We had played with Jer until after midnight, which we shouldn't do on a school night, but a naked Jer is irresistible. We need to get him naked earlier, that's the solution.

(A few days ago, when watching Children of Dune, we were pleased to discover that the weeish Glaswegian* James McAvoy, who played Leto II, bears a passable resemblance to Jer, although Jer must be several inches taller than James, if the facts in McAvoy's CV are correct. McAvoy's Jer-like presence definitely made the miniseries more watchable. One day I'll have to tell you why I think a drowned Percy Bysshe Shelley resembles Jer.)

I was inescapably awake, despite having achieved only a few hours of sleep. I snuck around the room, gathering my clothes, and dressed in the sitting room, pulling on a couple of layers rather than turning on the heat. Spook, sleeping like a wild thing before the hearth, lifted his head to watch me, and swished his tailed, but all his body language spoke of languor. When I left the room, he didn't follow, but eventually his canine conscience pricked him, and he came looking for me, and settled at my feet with a satisfied grunt, a big white fluffy lump of loyalty.

I was at the computer. I had just deleted two recent entries in this diary, because on this dark morning they looked like a waste of time and space. Was it a fit of pique? Nah, but I was in a mood, definitely. I felt vaguely oppressed, vaguely intrigued, vaguely ridiculed by the words that had wakened me. My usual reaction to dreams is to forget them, after a brief appreciation of their strangeness, but this was very unlike a dream. Nothing visual, just words. My remembered dreams occur in meandering chimeric sequences, this thing came and went in a moment. An instant line out of a forgotten poem. Damn odd.

If I was the least bit mystical, I'd think it was an augury.

~

* Oh, how I've been longing for the opportunity to use the word Glaswegian! But I thought it would be in reference to this fellow.

<~>
Ap�sl�min ida corbalan� 'lse nesgla ugar�-cham sa cru ogrulho bat�oltha al�mv�sde.

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