Holy shit! The mind is a terrible thing. I don't want one any more. Mine turned on me in the night and wouldn't let me sleep. Worse, it kept telling me things about my life, mostly about what is left of it. It was a terrorist torturing me until I could not stand it any more.
"You are not important any more," it kept saying. "You've done everything you are going to do of any importance. What was that again? Oh, right. Too bad. I guess you will leave your blog behind, eh? Ho, ho. That's good. You are feeble now. You have no energy. Illness and death are surely coming for you soon. You can't even sleep. You are muddled and schlep through your days. You are not current. Your clothes are wrong no matter what you wear. Nothing you do is age appropriate. Your younger colleagues are tired of you being in charge. They laugh at you behind your back less and less. They are becoming more obvious. You live alone. How's that? Who do you think is going to want to help you when you need it? You are shrinking. You are pitiful."
Etc.
I had to get up. It was four o'clock.
I had left my laptop at work by accident. I plugged in an old computer. It would not come on. I tried another even older one. It could barely handle the internet. I had too much time to think between loading pages. I couldn't shake the thing. It was all true, I thought. I went to the mirror in the bathroom to see. I still looked pretty much the same. That wasn't terrible, but it wasn't terrific, either.
I guess I know what triggered this. The political landscape has changed a bit at the factory lately, and I have made some missteps. I don't have the ass I had a year ago, and it is showing. Today I have back to back to back to back meetings, and I will need to face that in each of them. It requires some recalculating. There are many who would like to leave me for dead.
And then there is the coming birthday that I do not wish to face. It is just a number, right?
I've seen people wearing that number before.
I am tired and aching. I've had a pot of coffee and my head is throbbing. I want to go back to bed. I want opium. Something. Anything to give me pleasant dreams.
ReplyDeleteMy medicine man just got a bit of opium. I hope he shares.
Baudelaire. Yup.
To a Contemporary
J'ai plus de souvenirs que si j' avais mille ans.
Memories rich as Proust's or Baudelaire's are yours,
You think; snarled ravelings of doubt at evenings scents
Of women, dazed with pleasure, whose white legs and arms
Once coiled with languor around you; arguments
With undistinguished friends, their bigotries each year
More fixed. Lamps in the mist that light strange faces fill
Your nights; your fingers drum upon the table as you stare,
Uncertain, at the foor. Un vieux boudoir? Impossible!
You frequently compare yourself to those whose memories
Are cruel, contemptible, like naked bone.
Yet, is there anything in this rank richness warm
Or permanent? At ever climax, trapped, alone,
You seem to be a helpless passenger that drifts
On some frail boat; and with oblivious ease,
As from a distance, watch yourself
Disintegrate in foaming seas.
Weldon Kees.
Sometimes it is best to simply join in and sink together in the gloom of Poetry.
I don't want Proust's memories. Or Baudelaire's. But I will take their opium if I have the chance.
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