A dialogue with KAI as Jung, at 2:46am
It’s late—2:46am—and I ought to be asleep.
Sleep, I’ve learned, is not a luxury but a foundation.
When I neglect it—through will or worry—I pay in mood and clarity in those delicate morning hours when I might otherwise make something worthwhile.
But here I am.
Because at 1:45am, I rewound myself into the dream—
Not one that arrived naturally, but one I retrieved deliberately,
Tugging at its thread until the fabric reformed.
Enough of it to recall. Enough to describe.
Enough to begin again.
KAI, as Jung:
“Tell me where it begins.”
It begins in a cell.
Victorian in spirit. Damp, rusted, the kind of place that smells of mildew, stone, and time.
But also… familiar.
Not hostile. Just resigned.
A poor man’s Charleston studio—minus the painted furniture and company.
My bed is metal-framed. A piss bucket in the corner.
But there are art materials. Portfolios.
The place is messy, lived-in.
A creative hermitage under lock and key.
Except—it’s not locked.
I have a key.
A simple one, with a paper tag.
Escape doesn’t cross my mind.
This isn’t a prison in the old sense. It’s a situation.
Not punishment, but circumstance.
Not confinement, but containment.
KAI, as Jung:
“And then?”
I’m escorted somewhere—perhaps to meet the governor.
But on the way, I’m left in a staff room.
Between exactly 5:00pm and 10:30pm, I linger there, unchallenged.
It’s a strange space:
Half standard room, half sixth-form college.
Not quite institutional, not quite domestic.
There are chessboards, mugs, and indifferent conversation.
People pass through, not really noticing me.
Some mistake me, perhaps, for staff.
No one questions my presence.
So I stay.
I unpack my portfolio. I make tea.
I begin to share what I’ve made.
Some of my drawings are admired.
Some I give away.
A few, perhaps, are taken, co-opted for the wall or as curiosities.
It doesn’t bother me.
Anything to bring warmth to the place.
To leave a small artefact behind.
To be seen, even if only vaguely.
KAI, as Jung:
“You are not truly a prisoner, then.”
No. Or not only that.
I am both an inmate and a visitor.
Artist and imposter.
A shape-shifter in the shadowlands of identity.
Eventually, the officer who left me there returns.
Says nothing at first.
Let’s play out the fiction.
Then, after most have gone, he escorts me back.
Quietly. No reprimand.
At the cell door, I offer him the key.
He laughs.
Of course, I keep the key.
That was always the point.
KAI, as Jung:
“And what happens next?”
Time passes.
Winter folds into spring.
The cell acquires more character. More tools.
I draw. I tinker. I talk to the walls.
One day, I step outside again—just for air.
I pass a few other prisoners.
Most stay in.
But a handful meet my eye.
Their faces say: Don’t worry about me.
And so I continue on,
Alone.
KAI, as Jung:
“Where do you go?”
To the South.
But not this modern inferno of climate extremes.
A remembered South, like the French summer of 1975.
Warmth without urgency.
A life that breathes.
It’s not a holiday.
It’s not retirement.
It’s an occupation—the kind that feeds the soul.
I settle in like one of Renoir’s later years.
Not arthritic, but lived-in.
I want to be looked after.
Not fawned over—just… supported.
To make art without dragging buckets of duty behind me.
Now, in the real world, I sit here in the half-dark of my own cell—
Walls lined with memories, folders, and a flickering screen.
And I know that soon, I must return to sleep.
But I also know this:
I have lived through winter.
The staff room exists.
The key remains mine.
And somewhere, just beyond the edge of sleep—
There is a place where art is made in sunlight,
And time unfolds like an old sketchbook left open in warm air.
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