this time when the dream spilled you caught it
​
The night clings to you -
each breath inhaling the inexhaustible darkness.
Sequestered thoughts unfurl in black as you wait
for the quiet
to speak.

No?
Safe.
You are alone.

Slowly,
tentatively,
you open.

Gently at first then faster and faster as irrepressible dreams unravel -
their size and shape rhapsodical uncontainable in your astriferous mind. You spill over - 
each hope each reach larger than the last out of your control you attempt to catch to put back but this time

no.
(follow your lead)
Stars and dust and us – all one.
Your pulse in time with tide, a world too wide to hide
hopes
uniquely
yours.

‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on’:
You are a slice of sky.
Your thoughts the verse of universe.

ACT

Curtain up.

Let us take an act as an entity. The stage is set, the play begins. The stage is set? What is our stage? Need it be a wooden box? In some ways we are always acting. ‘All the world’s a stage’ for sure (Fig. 4), but also is it? Sometimes we are consciously acting, consciously creating ourselves to be someone perhaps even just slightly removed from our self.

The other day I bought a pale yellow puffer. I think part of me wanted to be the girl in the pale yellow puffer. I also have a pale yellow bike and pale yellow converse. Perhaps I just want to be the girl in pale yellow.

But is the girl in the pale yellow puffer also a part of me and not necessarily someone else’s part I play? Are we just made up of a million parts that we play each day?

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

‘Why did you act that way’ would suggest so. ‘Who do you want to be’ would also agree.

If I were to ask you to draw a stick man inside three squares, would you draw the stick man and then the squares, or the squares and then fit in the man inside (Fig. 1,2,3)? Do we see a girl in a yellow puffer and decide we want to be her or do we see a yellow puffer and decide we want to become a girl in a yellow puffer. Or maybe we just like pale pastels. Maybe we just like the way they make us feel.

But need we decide whether we are playing many parts or not? It is fun to be a part of someone else and it is fun to be a part of ourselves in each fleeting moment.

Curtain down.