A dreamer’s guide to the sacred clock

Another triple hitter at the Boneyard office this week, as three authors continue to splutter straight from brain to paper, thus making up the triangle that connects Omagh, Tucson, and Iowa.

Written by Mark McCausland, illustrated by Chris Coll

I serve as the ‘merry go round operator’s handbook’, Howe Gelb is the ‘spilled milk’, and Pieta Brown is the ‘glue’. Make sense? Good.

Now then…

I. PURGATORY

It was the future. I was sitting at the bar pondering my existence, when the familiar man sitting next to me leaned over, and told me he would be 81-years-old if he were still alive.

I struggled to grasp if he meant that he was dead already. Maybe we all were. And now we eek out our thyme in this purgatory.

I looked at the man-made clock and it was the same time it had been for hours. I had a sudden dread that I was running late for something. But late for what, exactly? My own funeral?

Then, reality attacked me. I didn’t realise I was dreaming until I wasn’t.

In that moment of semi-sleep, I was trying to decipher which part of me was still in dreamland.

I had one foot in, and one foot out. But which was which?

Which was weirder?

I opted against reality, and slunk back into slumber. I wanted to find that guy again and finish my pint. But it was to no avail: I couldn’t find the bar, the scenery had changed, and it was a different year.

I was in a crowd of people now… lost.

They were walking one way, and I was walking the other.

I was trying frantically to get somewhere.

Or, maybe get away from where they were all going.

But I couldn’t get through the sea of bodies.

Then I heard it.

It was quiet at first, barely a whisper, then it was rising from the ground and echoing around me until it was all I could hear.

Suddenly I was alone on the empty cobbled street, apart from one other ghost.

And there I saw the shadow of a gypsy lady.

She was singing an ancient song that hadn’t been written yet.

It was the greatest sound I ever heard. I knew I was dreaming because nothing on earth could possibly create such magnificence.

And so, I decided to wake and capture its beauty. Before it slipped from time, forever.

II. THE SACRED CLOCK

The man made clock is a source of agreement between the peoples of a calendared planet.

Poorly pontificating pendulum precision is perchance seen as peppered perversity opposing the protocol of punctuality.

Like Gypsy time… NDN time… Tucson time… all of these relaxing ticks of the clock’s tocks.

Only the fabulously wealthy, in terms of the extreme geographical hot zones, can afford to be late.

Those that are merely rich by economical standards, who’ve allowed the lottery of birth to place them in notoriously freezing climates, understand the point of being prompt as a matter of survival against the elements.

But, there is another clock to best behold: ‘the sacred clock’.

It knows when it’s time to be born. When it’s the correct moment to die. It doesn’t need to shout out it’s authenticity in competition with something as vulnerable as the man-made clock.

If you were to get up close enough to that piece of majestic time mechanism, it will not reveal in the tiniest of perceivable print in any discernible language that it is ‘made in China… America.. or… the ‘Congo’.

No sir.

The wee print emblazoned on its face, microscopic to the human eye, states, unequivocally, with whispered declaration: ‘Arrival means you’re right on time’.

III. PINK NOISE

People are always thinking in dreams. In any crowd, you can see them dreaming. And if you stop, you can even hear them dreaming.

Oceans of dreams.

Eye-opening dreams. Early memory dreams.

Longing for escape dreams. One last beer dreams. Closing dreams.

Where did my true love go dreams.

But the ones that always stop me in my tracks are the longing for home dreams.

I stop and map the faces of the ones that dream of home. So many colours and lines.

Photographic dialogues.

And these home dreams are the ones I often start my ancient songs with.

Sometimes, to transmit, I’ll even stand in the shadows, and sing one or two for someone out walking alone in the dawn or the dusk.

Today, I’ve been out since dawn.

I woke up so early when the stars were still in the sky and went straight out to sing.

I started not far from Fealty’s.

I was lucky enough to catch one last dreamer weaving home with the pink noise of sunrise.

The sunrise felt slow and I wanted it to last forever.

So, I sang the ‘nothing on earth could possibly create such magnificence’ song. And he stopped.

The man on the cobbled street trying to get home before morning stopped and turned.

I could see him looking for me.

I could hear him starting to catch the melody as he shook his head and wandered off…which is the only sacred stitch I needed to make sure forever would last forever.

Now, back to dreaming of home…