Tag Archives: night

Lay-by

I’m awake – or am I? My ears are buzzing, vibrating. It’s like some ghost has grabbed my head and delivers a flow of uncanny energy to my skull.

The desert is dark and statuesque through the windscreen and cold-misted panes.

Suddenly, I’m somersaulting into the air, through the gold roof. I’m spinning. The ears buzz, buzz. Then, whoosh, like retracting tape measure, I’m sucked back in, still shaking, back in my sleeping bag on the down-folded rear seats.

God, I must be tired.

I clunk open the door, swivel into my trousers, and pull on shoes. The road is silent. My pee hisses onto the sparse vegetation of the verge, arced stream briefly refracting the light of stars.

What is it – maybe 2am? Breakfast time. Granola – same as dinner. I shake out a big handful and let it filter out between forefinger and thumb into my upturned mouth. Brushing the crumbs off on my thigh, I settle into the driving seat, and turn the ignition. Engine softly wakes, and headlights illuminate the upcoming stretch of highway.

Starstruck statue

Dew gleaming on cold, lichen-encrusted stone, beading on grey-green strands. The white, almost crooked mass of Traquair House frames the view beyond a wine-glass lawn populated only by nocturnal moles, mounding.

As I look skywards, neck craning, a sense of spinning, imbalance, as if I too am rotating around the North Star. Whirling like a dervish wearing a white nightie. Or Wee Willie Winkie freezing his bollocks off in the frost.

Breathing in the smell of frozen, fresh earth, silage and the friendly, misting breath of pensive cattle.

The taste of a hip-flask mouthful of whisky to keep the cylinders firing throughout this midnight walk, and the touch of your hand, cramped, gloveless into my coat pocket, while the outsiders fend for themselves.

Sometimes when we touch, wondering if both have the same sense of energetic presence, or does that exist only in my flesh or mind, or experienced entirely separately and differently? In the teen years, how much of that experience was actually hyperventilation, or even cramp?

And yet, states of relaxation flow and perhaps exchange and synchronise.

The road occasionally hums, as headlights veer side to side, illuminating valley slopes and woodlands, dipping as cars approach head to head.

Astral body

I had the book Discover Astral Projection, and also Osho’s Book of the Secrets where he talks of tantric practices involving the “third eye”. In the yellow painted basement room at W-burn, alone in my single bed. The moss-green satin curtains, hand-made by Zelda before the split, masked out the orange of street lamps and some of the cold.

Lying on my back, attention between eyebrows, breathing, waiting for that golden shower of energy descending from the crown to the heart at the point of sleep. From there, would be conscious control of dreams, and astral exploration.

Of course, in one sense it was all about sex. What lonely guy wouldn’t want a second chance in the non-material world? I’m not judging it, but just note the ulterior motive was often there in these spiritual trips of one kind or another.

Once, drifting off in the relaxed, aware, unusual sleep quality it induced, I heard sudden knocking at the window. Adrenalin shocked my whole system into alert readiness.

“Hello?” 

I opened the curtains, then stumbled round to the door. Nobody there.

Pulling on clothes, I dragged my midnight way down the dark streets to Vanessa’s house, and knocked. Her husband came to the door, clearly roused from bed.

“Is Vanessa OK? Is everything all right with the baby? I thought she might have gone to hospital, or need help.”