PAPILLONS

It might not have been wise to have had an early evening nap. However, it felt like the only thing to do with hot, heavy eyes at 4:30pm. Work was, at best, disconnected at that time, and I’d been sitting there at my desk for eight hours. I figured I’d earned 40 winks.

On went the audio version of the Psalms, off went the laptop, and down went my head to the pillow. I was asleep before the reader had got to the ‘tree planted by streams of water’.

Anyway, this, and then waking up an hour later, has resulted in a state of alertness I don’t normally associate with the hour between one and two o’clock in the morning. I’m normally a lot less lucid and a lot more snorey.

A moth flutters in the lamplight. It would be the kindest thing to switch it out and spare that little creature the torment of dangerous attraction. Or perhaps there’s something for me to learn about myself, or about human nature; designed to yearn for daylight yet perverted into preferring the artificial for the real, the night over the day. We’re all a bit blind and a bit mothy.

Meanwhile the butterflies, the papillons (as a friend reminded me today they’re called in France - pah-pee-on) get to flutter in the real sun, like Instagram influencers blessed with perfect skin and calculated travel plans. Their beautiful colours flash with silky wing beats, persuading us night-flyers that the world is all lily pads and sunshine.

Well. I’m switching off now. If learned anything from the subliminal Psalms in my sleep-state earlier, it’s that you can choose how you’re planted, whether to walk in the counsel of the wicked, to stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers, or just be planted in the river. I don’t have to be a moth, flapping and failing in this artificial plasma glow. Tomorrow is daylight. We can all be papillons.