October and the temperature never dropped below 80 inside. Summer and late Fall seemed to have exchanged places. What is happening to the weather? If I could imagine something fantastic, I could dream and fall asleep again. But I lie here awake, no covers, at four o'clock in dark morning.
Fantastic. Who can conjure fantastic? I remember times when I could go back to sleep by starting to dream, some wild setting, usually involving a woman in a very short skirt, erotic play and a boundless sense of possibilities, space to leap through. I would drift off. Tension eased. I was a rope gone slack. I embraced her. She stroked me. We flew, we... well we did lots of things best described in paperback. Details escape me now. I can't get to sleep and remember the good old dreams.
Nothing in my body relaxes. Nothing distends. I feel trapped, no escape plan, no tunnel. A series of tension provoking aggravations flit through my head like a plague of locusts. I lay wide awake plotting the solution to world hunger. I fret about forcing a neighbor to pay back veterinary money we shelled out because his Rottweiler tried to eat our Maltese. I wonder why the art teacher down the street doesn't return phone calls when I only asked if any of her students might want work illustrating one of my books. I regret friendship with the brittle, brilliant neighbor who won't speak to me after three years because I took her picture, knowing too late that terrified her. I haven't worked in six months and worry what we'll do for money if industry never reinvents jobs. I wonder what heavens will crash down on our aspirations if war erupts full force. I worry that I worry too much. I wonder if I'm a ring bearer without a ring to cast into the fires of Mount Doom and save the world.
Questions won't let me sleep. When will we ever have enough money to render this house livable and affordable by me and my partner when we're old and funny looking? What beast ate the promise of my guaranteed old age? Where are the simple pleasures of a small child in the house? What happened to the promise of contentment following hard work? Why are all the cowards quartered in our political houses peering around for dishonorable beds to hide in? Why is ordinary conversation a pointless gossip column? Why has everyone forgotten what could really be achieved?
Life's Purpose seems to have descended into the singular goal of money making or a flight to the fanciful illusion of eternal headpatting dispensed by a cosmic grandparent. Once there was a shared hunger for fineness in expression, keen probing of the Universal watchworks, a tested art of prediction, a blending of wish and hidden thought in art that illuminated the confluence of human footpaths. Hope awoke every morning, invigorated by an evolved need for social unity, embellished by insight into human nature and the laws of nature. We imagined the marriage of Eros and Rationality, universal ecstasy, joy in the farming of sunlight gathered in the bosom of ultimate destiny.
This claptrap is a poor choice of gibberish, you say; what acidhead thought up this garbage? But it wasn't a deception to believe in the ascent of humankind as family. Everyone could be cared for. Everyone could be a contributing fountain of thought and returned affection. For a time, it seemed, everyone around me, young people at least, thought we were going somewhere as a race. Now the race seems all downhill. At decision points we pick the evil of two lessers. Art is made of bits and bytes. Command and control, the very ability to think, all seem degraded.
So here I am, strapped down by worry. I have a tourniquet around my head. It keeps me awake. It throttles dreams. I am unable even to bleed.
Well, no one likes a complainer, even if he uses big words. What can I make of this anxious stream of ideas that will distill it into something with a happy ending? If we can't live in hope, at least we can have a happy ending. Now I understand why the youth market for adventurous fantasy is big. Adults are buying those books.
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