It's a story about a quiet girl, and I don't want to give too much away ...
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 43 of Stories from the Borders of Sleep, a hopefully increasingly regular podcast of curious Tales from Borders BordersOfSleep.com featuring original stories by your host Seymour Jatkin.
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The soundtrack for this week's episode is by Dmitry Krashnikov from his album Legend, and that's available from magnitude.com so if you are ready to journey with me, then I shall begin Chippy and Angus by Seymour Jacklin Chippy was shy, but Angus loved her.
He loved her untamable hair.
While most people thought she ought to take better care of her appearance, she was a serious girl, at least in the company of others.
If she were ever caught smiling or laughing, it was for some, breaking rays in her own thoughts, which she was always contemplating.
Her family knew her as an odd one, that is to say, her mother and her cousins.
Her employers knew her as a hard worker who never seemed to either like or dislike her work.
Angus didn't really know her very well, but he wanted to.
Their courtship was delicate.
As a maid in service at the big house, Chippy didn't have time or permission for romance.
Indeed, she had little interest in it in any case.
But Angus had a plan.
The waiter, Chippy, was sure if he could first win over the housekeeper, Mrs.
Dearness.
So he came by with a brace of rabbits for Mrs.