I Prefer the Margins

A Recent Journal Entry of Mine

I have always cherished most the conversations had with someone just about waking up or just about falling asleep. There is something so amusing, so funny, and so precious when you realise you're hearing the day's first or last words from someone you love. It’s a threshold moment. Consciousness is still soft around the edges. The grip of performance is loose. They’ve not yet remembered who they’re supposed to be. The pieces of self have not yet been assembled correctly, nor have they been entirely dismantled as they would need to be for a proper sleep. For a few precious minutes, they exist before the ego has finished dressing or undressing itself.

The phone calls begin with a sleepy voice, a groan, a laugh, a voice crack, the sound of sheets shifting, and many many ill-placed silences. And somehow they are almost always the truest conversations I have. We spend so much of our lives speaking from the middle of the day, where everything is productive, coherent, and explainable. But I prefer the margins. Dawn and midnight are liminal territories.

My most favourite subjects of these encounters are my parents. There is something wonderfully childlike about them in those liminal moments. Before the years settle back onto their faces, before the silver in their hair and the lines around their eyes return. I’m reminded that no one is born old. In the early mornings and the late late nights, for a brief moment I hear the mumbles of the child that never really disappeared.