It's been four days since I quit sleeping. The surrounding sounds in the morning, in the daytime, in the evening, at dawn, and the way the light shifts, all are felt vividly clear.
What surprised me most is the sudden profusion of the stars. In this too bright a sky of the night in the city, the stars are falling like they do in a desert sky. Without allowing you the time to make a prayer, lights stream. And the various suns call out to you from many distant pasts, silently.
When the dawn breaks the stars disappear, and during the day the sky shows its usual blue. But then when the sun, our sun, sets, all of a sudden, begins an astronomical fiesta. The passing commuter trains, the croaking night ravens, don't bother me a bit. Over the cactus by the window, beyond the lights of the neighboring houses and apartments, the stars dance, twinkle, laugh, and the sky is pure blue.
I don't think it's a matter of my retina or the optical nerve. Nor a matter of hope, nor nostalgia. When I looked up at a white cloud in the night sky, my dead grandfather's long-forgotten words whispered to me. "Blue, you know, is so to speak the complementary color to the being."
