A Novel
Start Date: 24 Oct 2025
[Foreword: Early in the morning today, a bird came to me. It was exotic and it flew away before I could completely figure it out. Now I must paint this abstract bird before the image and impressions of it escapes from me completely. Many such cases before, can't afford to make another mistake cuz I need to get this one through]
Prologue.
At one point, as I was trying to fall asleep, the noises coming from the outside, from the streets were no longer a nuisance-clamour but a disinhibited symphony. "I am getting carried away and being irrational": this thought was late to occur to me. About two hours ago, when I was desperate to fall asleep, even the slightest of noise felt like morbid disruption to me; so I did end up framing the noises outside as a clamour of nuisance. It is because I really need to wake up stupidly early in the morning after, and each passing minute of wakeness reminded me, like a throbbing abscess: "you are slowly passing down on this slope, the minutes are lubricants and the final ledge is where you fall to wake up or are inclined to wake up. But there's no waking involved but only the nauseous realisation that you have to tend to your business now, completely unrested. If Hypnos had indeed taken pity on you, this slope would have morphed into a panorama, where time passes gliding with sojourns and colouration, it makes sandwiches with your rapid eye movements and when the bastard alarm goes off, or your body appreciates the sated duration of sleep, and you wake up, there's a satisfaction in your eyes, for they were already fed". Two hours later I have abandoned that idea and prepared myself for the worst case. And now that I am listening to the noises again, they are far sparser than any clamour or symphony could ever be. There were: occasionally spiking metallic tinges, brisk footsteps sometimes, dogs barking sporadically, neighbours on the opposite road getting excited, foghorns coming from faraway, and others. These could have made a symphony, but the condition would be: the silence is the canvas where the sounds are elements. But now, in my reconciled state of mind, I was disillusioned to see the truth: silence is both the canvas and the element, and the noises are embellishing granules, leaving their mark only in places, to assert that: creatures have been here, in the continuum of creation.
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Portraits of Leo VI / Hollowance