This is a story about a stenography machine, and an unusual group of people who meet in a basement .... http://www.bordersofsleep.com
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 49 of Stories from the Borders of Sleep, a semi regular podcast of curious tales from bordersofsleep.com featuring original stories by your host Seymour Jacqueline.
You can visit bordersofsleep.com for more information, to leave feedback or to support the podcast through Buy Me a Coffee and you can also find us on Facebook where it would be lovely to meet and interact with you.
I enjoy hearing from listeners and I always try to respond to messages, so however you might like to get in touch, please feel free to do that.
The lovely piano soundtrack on this week's episode is by Chad Lawson from his album Song of a Prayer, and that, as usual, is available from magnitude.com so if you're ready to journey with me, then I shall begin Monday Mechanical Club by Seymour Jacklin I'm willing Maud not to be so nervous.
She's sitting up as straight and rigid as a bowling pin, with her head bowed and her hands cupped on either side of the black stenography machine in her lap.
It's about the same size and as glossy as a cat.
Her comportment is tender towards it, but the analogy ends there.
I look around the windowless basement.
The chairs are drawn up just to the edge of the pool of light cast by a bare light bulb above.
It dangles from the low ceiling of a basement that hints of extending much further into the darkness.
On all four sides, the floor is composited of concrete and dust.
The lone bulb glares back at me in miniature from the polished black shoes of Briony.
On my left, her ankles poke out in dark green stockings that complement the olive green of her velvet skirt.
You never see that colour worn today, let alone the fabric or cut of clothing.
The members of the Mechanical Club dress for the part in antiquated threads.
On Briony's left, Hands lounges back in his chair with his legs in sharply creased black trousers straight out in front of him and terminating in ribbed black socks and formal black Oxford shoes, perhaps a hundred years old, yet pristine and as new.
His enormous hands are folded at the waist and the single light casts his vein into monochrome relief.