Some Sentimental Tosh About The Moon

The sky is beautifully clear tonight. Dark blue and pink. The city lights spread out before the window, like the images in my head.

Days, trees bursting with green, bees floating, seagulls whirling like paper.

The distant hum of traffic in the background.

The world spins.

On Sunday morning I woke up in a dream, and realised I was dreaming.

I climbed out of my window, and jumped - because I knew I could fly. And I could! And the feeling of freedom, of immensity, the mystery was all-encompassing.

The world outside was the same, but orange and flickering, like I had walked into a painting.

And life was there, and life was a dream. The scene changed, and I walked through another, and another.

But part of me knew I was asleep, which made the colours all that more vibrant.

It all faded when I woke, like smoke on the wind.

But it spread out all around me in my bed as I heard the car disappearing down the hill. And I felt, a feeling of awe, I guess.

Awe at the fact that I'd been lucid dreaming.

Awe at the fact that it was another day, and I, Josh Hawthorne, was alive.

But we can't fly here. Here we stay still. Cut off from reality in our little boxes. Dreaming that we are characters in a play.

What are we really?

My back garden looks out onto a field. Sometimes, being unemployed and an insomniac, I go out in the middle of the night and I sit.

I look up at the sky. The silent field where the stars spread out like perfume.

And the moon oversees it all, painting it silver. And I look up and feel so small.

Who am I?

It's funny. So sentimental. How many crap writers have written about the moon?

So I go inside, and see what's on sky movies, and go to bed.

Because the gap can never be bridged - between ourselves and others, between our dreams and reality.

Reality is so boring, so humdrum, so normal, that we simply take it for granted. Pulling back the curtain's a bit too scary.

So let's block it out, and earn money, and work in jobs which we hate, and go out and get drunk at the weekend, and have sex, and talk shit about nothing.

Because if we tried to jump out the window in real life, we'd break our legs.