"Ad infinitum, ad infinitum, ad infinitum," the clock seemed to chime as I walked into the cold New England night.  Too many noises, too little noises, the wrong noises—whatever it was sleep eluded me like a side-stepping thief tonight, this harbinger for the oncoming days of winter.  It was still clement enough to take an early morning walk but my breath, as it took form in the air, seemed to warn of an unforgiving cold. 

So little separates us in the night.  A passing leaf in the wind assumes consciousness, the self teeters on the edge of that permanent annihilation.  The sound of my footsteps connecting with the pavement is suddenly encroached upon by a quick, crisp, scraping on the sidewalk up ahead.  I apprehensively look around for the creator but see nothing.  I keep walking and a dog appears from an alleyway.  The noise stops and his eyes quickly connect with mine; dog's eyes are so mystical in the night—illuminated by some unknown source they shine like ghostly lamps.  I stop too, to make sure he doesn't get frightened.  I wonder if my eyes look as eerie as his.  I open them wide to elicit any transformation.  Meditatively, magnificently, he raises his lofty muzzle into the night's flesh and vigorously pulls in the misty air.  He probably smells the dew, the smoke, and other things.  I don't know.  With a casual glance ahead he resumes whatever course he had temporarily ceased, as do I. 

I walk into the New England night like a reaper, a reaper of death, life, revenge, creation.  I walk inebriated by the soma of self in the early morn.  A single ego alive amid the quiet stillness of a deadening night.  Around me minds voyage through the unconscious demise of sleep.  Poe’s fiendish little slices are carved from the fertile minds, sampling their inevitable future of darkness.  I chuckle at this moribund thought as it too steals away into the shadows like a passing leaf. 

Whatever was will be, but here, now, engulfed in this resonating chamber of shadow is the potentiality of a vital day gone the cycle of time.  And I too—existing, acting, resounding—follow this cycle, but here, now, I slash the body of this leprous, murderous night with my insubordinate, intransigent consciousness, and laugh.  To know the dust but spit on it with contempt is finer than walking over it unconsciously, not sensing the disaster that awaits the next day, the next hour. Annihilation abounds and creeps along the cornices of sculpted walls, grotesque gargoyles, and sidewalks hewn from ancient stone.  Posted plaques in the citadel’s confines tell great tales of ancient denizens, asleep as well, forever.  Harps and lyres echo melodiously from another side of time boasting of nostalgic gatherings and forbidden loves.  But beyond the confines of this North American burg, out there in the night, scintillating, permeating the darkness, are the memories of those silly, chattering Greeks. Aristotle ashamedly used to sneak out, squat, and take shits on the sidewalk of the Lyceum on nights just like this.  

These Dionysian ruminations of memories forgotten—forever—confound me.  With all the energy of an existential insomniac I raise my snout to that stillness, that silence, that New England autumn night, and laugh hilariously with such resound that lights flip and flutter and egos entangled by the death of sleep achieve brief vitality and peer out, while the clock tolls three, to spy on me—Alexander’s dream of Tyrian victory.