Thirtieth Day

Let me describe how my life goes. I doze, and I always dream. Sometimes I dream of my childhood, which is both wonderful and painful; sometimes I have nightmares, but they don't trouble me. I can always wake up - I have no need to sleep long or deep or well - and when I am awake the fear goes away. In my home, in the dark, I am vulnerable to intruders, man or beast or like nothing else: insane or merely ruthless. Here I am secure if nothing else. Many of my dreams, though, do trouble me, for one reason or another. I have dreams in which I learn about myself, profound dreams, and my memory of them is empty - they get to me - but more troubling still are those that I perceive, when asleep, as quite mundane, but which I later realise were wrong in ways that should have shocked me.
This morning, for example, I dreamt that my son had died, and this did not horrify me.

I cannot doze all day, however. Still, I lie down. I am used to lying down when I am alone or have no reason to sit. I generally lie on my right at first, but I have a certain pain in my ankle that makes this uncomfortable. By twisting my body, arranging my legs just so, I can avoid it - but I am always tense when I feel I am forcing myself into this position. So I lie on my left, and I long to roll over. I measure out the minutes as best I can, keeping my discipline, and then I roll over with infinite care. I don't want my ankle to play up, I have to end my roll in the right position, and I have to execute this manoeuvre naturally in an unforced manner.

Lying on my right does not live up to its promise. Eventually I leave my bed. Then I sit on the hard floor with my back against the wall, sometimes with my arms over my knees, sometimes with my hands splayed out on the ground by my sides, the pressure through my wrists lifting my shoulders high. In this position I am a permanent shrug. I prefer to sit opposite the camera, not beneath it. I don't like the thought of being watched from behind.

I am not yet good at pacing; I can't keep it up. I stop too easily. I remain too easily seduced by the idea that actions should have purposes, and that when I am not acting to a purpose I should preserve my energy.

I would like to be more precise in my description. If I had a watch I could understand how it is possible to divide a day into dozing, two types of lying down and two types of sitting on the floor. As it is I struggle. Each time one of my meals arrives, I know I have got through another few hours.