Night time is the time to visit the Cicada Laundrette and meet all kinds of critter characters. Enter the twilight world of washing machines and soap suds under the watchful eye of Mr. Aardvark.
Somewhere between waking and sleeping on our journey towards the unfathomable deep, there comes a thin moment where we have one foot in the waking world and the other is in that other world where we relinquish conscious control.
Pausing here and straddled between two planets that drive one another like gears, the attentive traveler will notice a narrow door only wide enough to sidle through.
This is the border of sleep, where imagination and reality are braided together, a chasm in the crust of consciousness, venting the hot pumice of imagery into the irresistible magma of narrative.
Welcome to episode 58 of Stories from the Borders of Sleep, a podcast of curious tales created and voiced by your host Seymour Jacklin.
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The soundtrack for this week's episode is by Laura Insara from the album Musical Incense, which is available from magnitude.com so if you are ready to journey with me, then I shall begin the Cicada Laundrette By Seymour Japan Night time was the time to visit the Cicada Launderette.
During the day you would hardly notice it at all, but at night it was lit up like a thousand fireflies and the glow of the interior would draw things to it.
Approaching the light, one would soon be in range of the sounds of the place too, the churning and squealing of the washers and the more ponderous chug of the dryers.
Inside, it was always warm and a little bit humid, and when all the dryers were going, the windows and tiled walls would get a film of condensation, threads, fur and feathers.
Let us take care of it.
Speak to us now about your laundering needs, said the peeling decal on the windows.
On entering you would see the washers were lined up along the left wall with a veneer of uniformity.
They were all the same marine blue colour, like a row of siblings lined up for a group shot.
The the family resemblance was definitely there, but number four more often than not touted an out of order sign.
Number two leant drunkenly towards its missing foot and at any given moment they were in A different attitude of open mouthed anticipation, running or spitting out a multicoloured mass of freshly washed laundry.
The dryers took up the right hand wall.