Now way past the middle of the night, that unfamiliar fragrance is in the air again. Some nocturnal flower that isn't quite jasmine, or maybe is some variety of jasmine I've never encountered before. It is alluring and frustrating, making me imagine some mysterious garden nearby that I can't find. I keep thinking that if I go to sleep maybe I'll dream my way into it.
But such things don't exist for me. They are fantasies, always out there on the periphery of sense, where nothing really is. They are like the essence of dissatisfaction distilled into desire. Maybe that ethereal fragrance floating on the mundane night air is psychoactive. Maybe it's gotten into my brain and is changing me. Perhaps I'll turn into Tom o'Bedlam and be summoned ten leagues beyond the wide world's end by a knight of ghosts and shadows. Tom said "Methinks it is no journey." I think it's another one of those damned adventures I don't want.