In the cold, darkness of a poorly insulated house, the light from the power button of our wireless printer pulsates like the beating of a elderly heart. It sits there on the desk with as much dust as any antique and the same amount of judgement as it fills the room with light and then returns me to a resting room.
It repeats this action: light that fills the ceiling like some projection of a mid-summer dream and then darkness where I sense the calmness and verisimilitude of dignified reality. Then as I get used to the darkness the joy of the ceiling light comes back, only to return me to the now petulant darkness. Then light! Oh such light that lasts an instant and shows me all the things in my messy room I thought I'd lost. Now darkness! Wretched terrible darkness and light!...
I can't take it anymore and I go for its life blood! I turn the overhead light on and the room fills with the dirty yellow light from the single room light above me. Half asleep, I rummage around the back of the printer for its jugular.
It's difficult to find and for a moment, I wonder if there even is one? Have I killed this agonizingly beautiful creature which pulsates vacillating light and darkness as part of its waking dream? Does it think of my snores as a paltry annoyance and wish it could turn me off as I sleep beneath it's heart beat and am bothered by its perturbing yet necessary life?
As the 1/2 second ends that I think all of this, I find its chord and it turns out it's just a printer and inanimate object after all. I rip it's chord from its backside and shout, "you're dead now you flickering bastard!"
Yet as I go to sleep, the thoughts of my friend the printer haunt me and I think of how it's been doing that for years now and never have I unplugged it. Yet in the end, darkness is truth and I tend to sleep better without light, however small or bright.
I drift off to sleep with the dead things all around me. Sweet sleep at last.
