jetlag

Speaking as someone who enjoys perhaps too much the comforts of militarily regulated sleep-time, it is hard to find beauty in jetlag. It can’t even reasonably be said that you are seeing in 3am Singapore a wholly undiscovered sight – nights are the same at any time, especially when viewed dimly from your bedroom window in dreadful ennui. The real excitement and energy are invariably in the day, where things are said, friends met, movies watched, relationships advanced, confessions spilled. The day sees troubles too, of course, problems that require undue time and effort, walls that do not yield easily or quickly even to earnest endeavour – but at least these are walls that can and must in the end give way. Who could will Time forward? It creeps steadily – frustratingly immune to caprice or persuasion – nevertheless spending your energy, penalising you equally for activity or passivity. Time yields eventually, but smugly and on its own terms. You fancy you have waited it out but surely the reverse is true, if your consciousness ebbs away even as the first eager rays burst out of the sky. You will awake again to the same crimson sun, already setting. The days are short even in summer.