There is a wooden shack in a square meadow which is the only break in the surrounding forest. The trees there have perfectly straight trunks and are packed so tightly that nothing can fit between them. Their sinewy branches wind together. No wind ever disturbs them. Tree stumps sit at the forest’s boundary, which grow back into fully-formed trees when I turn my back. The shack is built from these trees, as is the neat pile of firewood that abuts one wall of this cabin where I live. This firewood is the only source of light during the night here, whose darkness is thick and viscous. A creek emerges from the undergrowth; it is the only way out of the meadow, but runs too quickly for me to swim upstream. I think I have tried this many times. It travels in a straight line over the horizon, bordered by a wall of forest on either side. Downstream it disappears into the ground and I do not know where, or if, it reappears. The waters are brilliantly clear, like flowing glass or air and I can stare straight down into the depths. I cannot see the bottom: the water becomes too dark to see any further.
I sit by the river and watch where the sky and the water touch. Nothing ever changes there and I do not expect it to. But I still watch. Even though it flows quickly, the stream makes no sound at all. Not even splashes from stones heaved into it cause any noise. This is because the trees in the forest absorb any sound made. The meadow is surrounded on all sides by the forest and so nothing escapes. They are especially hungry for my voice and they tempt me with this silence, push me to fill it with something. I know that if I do, I will never get back whatever it is that I say, the trees and this meadow will keep it forever. This silence can be terrifying: time is indistinct and the spaces between things feel emptier than they should. But I acclimatise again and the thought of a noise breaking the stillness is repulsive. The only hint of sound here is the barely-perceptible whispering of the trees at night. They call to me and tell me to open the cabin’s door and step outside into the dark.
When I am not staring upstream I walk around the edge of the meadow along the same path. I can feel that it is pleased; any work, it doesn’t matter what, makes it happy. This feeling sours when I daydream, which I do often. I can’t picture his face or remember his name but I try to and sometimes if I think hard enough I can feel him with me, just as I do right now. He paces this path with me.
Night falls quickly and without warning. Darkness spills over the tops of the trees and displaces the light hiding beneath them. I run from my path to the wooden shack as the night churns behind me and swallows the long grass and the small trees of the orchard. It reaches for me. The bare wooden fence surrounding the shack is submerged, a grand cataract who fills the meadow with night. Eventually the whole meadow is filled and I make it into the shack only moments before being drowned and I deny it ownership for one more day.
Wood has been stockpiled and arranged in a stone fireplace. I can feel cool night air in my lungs and that I am breathing heavily. My hands tremble as I light the fire, which fills the cabin with wisps of smoke and taciturn light. I lie on the floor and stare into the fire and chase these daydreams, try to picture his face and sometimes I can almost see him, it is achingly close and I can feel a cold disapproval from outside, the trees tell me to step outside and leave these glimpses of somewhere else behind forever. When staring into the fire frustrates me, I lie prone and peek between the wall’s coarse panels. Even though the shack is full of gaps and cracks and during the day light steals inside in rough lines crossing the floor, the night seems to respect the four walls and roof. It swirls outside, not far from my head, and I watch it and am hypnotised. Beyond the wall everything is invisible. The light from the fire disappears as soon as it leaves the cabin.
The trees begin to whisper to one another; all points of conversation cross this cabin, which is precisely in the middle of the meadow. Once it knows that I will not step outside, not tonight, the meadow puts me to sleep. The trees whisper and fill me with an overwhelming tiredness that conquers me in seconds. It is not every night that the trees murmur like this and take me somewhere without dreams. Other nights the soporific eddies and whorls of the darkness swim in my mind. I wake up with a sensation of rushing, as if surfacing from deep under the sea, and daytime has already arrived. I never see the dawn. The light always returns before I regain consciousness. I stand, stretch a little and set off to watch the stream or pace and daydream. The air smells clear and still, as if anticipation hid somewhere. I can’t see what the anticipation would be for: nothing changes here and each day is dedicated to preparing for each night. There is no sun, only a bright sky without clouds. The forest and the night, the clockwork world without time, up here in this meadow.