I can’t really think how to begin all this again, and we’re all in one of those times of infinite compression: like a superterrestrially dense onion… a Plutonian onion, perhaps? How do you begin to pull back the skin, sorting through the layers?

My eyes are pretty heavy; there are early wake-ups these days, but that is more blessing than curse, for mornings involve coffee with my wife and child (!), sometimes a trip to Bishop’s, and a gentle ride up the historic 101 to work, past the half-naked surfers and bungalow-restaurants colored as they are with that California 1950s-tinge. Plus, there is something essential, something that echoes from the core, about waking while it is dark and seeing the gradual ascension of light on the world.

“these are their stories” the TV tells me, and it is pretty captivating, despite my dual belief that it is damn hollow. I think that I would prefer to pull the Pygmy Marmoset right out of Iryna’s dream, or to drink in cool clouds of ocean-stung air, but sometimes the journey from couch to dream is a difficult one. I would make it for the little monkey, I would. If I could.

“You can’t stop someone from walking into their own hell” the TV says, and Vincent D’Onofrio cocks his head in that prescient manner, and then we slip into a series of advertisements that are all distilled sound and color, evolved through several decades of the survival of the fittest. It is amusing and fitting… is TV hell?

I don’t really think so, but I won’t chance it. I will follow my wife’s voice, to bed, and perhaps to that adorable little simian that waits for us on the other side of sleep.