SUNRISE WITH YOU
by Dan Hornan
'It's only a dream, it's only a dream,' my friend repeats from his side of the apartment. If only he could know the weight of his words. For that is precisely what I am running from. Running from a dream. But in this dream it is me who does the chasing. I'm looking for a concept, something unreal. My thoughts are reduced to a cold mechanism, a flurry of actions which will lead inexorably to emotion.
'It's alright, I'm okay now. It's alright, go back to sleep,' I reply. Such lies. I cannot sleep knowing that I will return to a false reality where I am the captor and emotion is my innocent victim, my prize. I am tired. Tired of trying to make for myself a new destiny when I know that fate, ultimately, will choose.
My eyes are firmly open. I think of sunrise. Sunrise with you. I am afraid of forgetting those moments though I know that they are written indelibly into me. Sometimes I long to forget, but I have come to the understanding that tragic beauty is better than living a false reality - so my nightmares remind me. All other moments seem intangible in comparison.
I had taken a psychotrope. A stimulant which if consumed in large enough quantities can induce visions. I used to think that it made the moments of less real value. That what you felt was not really part of you but a synthesised world. Now I am beginning to realise the true meaning of that phrase.
I once believed I was in love when on a psychotrope. But when I saw her a few days later I was not - I had not been in love for many years. At first I was angry with the psychotrope - how could it deceive me like that? How could it tease me with manna I longed to consume? After further thought I became glad. Glad because I knew once again that I was capable of love. Glad because I knew that it was real, if only for a few moments.
With you, love was not the question - only tragedy. Beautiful tragedy. Anyway, we were both high and it was not the first time. I can't remember if you kissed me. I only know that we did not hold hands - we barely touched at all. I remember the yellowness of your hair as you came towards me and how we sat together on a comfort blanket a few metres from the circle of stones.
And I remember that I had wanted to speak. To talk with you at great length about matters of importance. But although my speech was pressured I could not release my deepest thoughts. My ideas were flighty - so many words. Yet somehow my lips were blocked. I felt like Helfgott on lithium. Somewhere there was music and there were thoughts, but they seemed entangled - twisted upon each other until they became imprisoned in a speechless agony. The agony of twisted dreams.
But in a moment you transformed me. From jaw-grinding wreck to silken-lined vessel of youth. For one moment it was all worthwhile - the moment of sunrise, the moment you spoke your mind.
'My mind has been on one thing all this time,’ you stated. 'Finding you.' Your voice was the sun - a great mass creating its own gravity. 'But now I've found you I don't know what to do.' The sun floats free in space, weightless and bright. It rises above the circle of stones, the gift of a new day.
The following night I tried to meet you again. I was lost - lost among the people and the music and the thoughts. I had reckoned it was not possible to lose myself and I had not even tried my hardest. The night wore on and the people stomped for joy in the sodden dregs of a field. Eventually, their faces began to change. At first they seemed old, older than the stones in the circle. And their bodies were all worn out - tired of drudging through the earth. But you, the sun, gave them new light. Even in the darkness. Their troubled faces were transformed - a metamorphosis complete in your image.
About this time I started to doubt your presence. How could you be there in all those people? And I knew that it was a trick of the mind. But this time I was not angry with the psychotrope. I knew that my will was so determined it had need to search for a part of the sun, however small, in each one of them. I knew that my vision had become focused. That I could mould each person into an image of you.
And about this time I started to hear you call my name. This I could not control - a single syllable amongst a vast array of words. I ran to people knowing they were not you. I tried to speak to them but from every direction you called out to me. They seemed distant - nothing seemed real anymore, not even my own consciousness. And then I knew what I sought was unreal - a false warmth stolen from the rising sun. The start of my nightmares.
I returned to the stone circle and watched the watery sun rise above the greying hills. The circle was full of people yet even the stones appeared disheartened. The promise of another day, a week, a year of unreality did not appeal. The sky was overcast with fear - fear of its own cold mechanism. Fear that there would never be another sunrise. Sunrise with you.
