Epiphany

Epiphany (13th January, 2009, 9.33pm)

In the darkness of the room, I push at the boundaries of my eyes, seeking any faint glow to latch upon and feast. I have switched off all my sources, hushed the tiny pinprick irritations; the computer extension cable, the television standby, the eerie green of the speakers. I think of the food beginning to rot in the tiny, extinguished fridge, and suppress the sudden urge to laugh, gleeful in my impending destruction.

This must be what it is like to die. I do not believe, when the moment arrives, that I shall see ‘the light’. Instead, I imagine this, as I lay here on my duvet-covered bed: a soft darkness to wallow in, a slow draining of the light to nothing, a welcoming comfort.

I am seeking death in the room tonight.

To believe in ghosts you first have to have belief. Once you believe, you will see them regardless of their existence or lack thereof, because you are willing your imagination into action. This is what I am doing here in the darkness; I am trying to see beyond death. I distill hope from my belief, wishing for truth and not illusion. My mind aches to comfort me with its reward, but I push out at the boundaries, quietly, quelling my creativity.

I do not think that anybody has died in this room. This room is younger than me; the date is on the equivalent of the deeds: 1984. Non Orwell-related; no clever literary reference for the story of my experience, just a simple truth. I checked the documents, twice. Nobody has had the chance to die…

I do not wish to die here. I will seek death itself at the end of a long and happy life, I hope; a life filled with the sound of laughter and light, many miles away, in a place with more sunshine and less rain. This house is filled with noises in the night; she creaks and sways and speaks, her metal hull echoing with the sound of the river as she flows beneath, as if boat and water are having an endless, low, murmured conversation. Ladies who lunch at midnight. I strain to hear the words they speak.

The swans croak and thud outside on the pontoon, the occasional goose calls out to its mates, a late neighbour returns home, tyres crunching on the gravel track, headlights sweeping through the inevitable crack in my curtains, shattering my darkness; an intrusion.

Concentrate.

I will the boundaries, constricting in defence, to relax and expand into the renewed dark silence. I lie still as the minutes stretch and time becomes as fluid as the river, isolating each sound and tracing it back to its source. Calm prevails; a sense of clarity floods me with a sudden warmth. The tension is almost erotic. And then, slowly, they come.

The unexpected.

These are not my thoughts; they are the thoughts of an abandoned self, a weaker incarnation of who I am now. I have pushed them from my brain, exiled them, but now they feel as if I’ve called, and expect a welcome. These are the ghosts that haunt me, hovering in the night, slightly out of reach of ears and eyes. These are the echoes I blot out, behind the water and the birds, these are the things I set aside to be able to grow. I watch them drift across the ceiling, and honestly I could not tell you now whether I had closed or open eyes. I watched my ghosts parade themselves, a sadistic fashion show, draped in unfamiliar clothes; whisps of long-forgotten dreams and killed emotions.

Slowly, I understand, as the pinprick light of the rising moon seeps through the tiny slit in the blind, veiled with fear. I celebrate each ghost, pay the tribute that is required, as they pass, one by one, into the shaft of light.