Hokey Pokey

I remember staying up late with girls night after night.  I don't remember being exhausted.  Now I go to bed early and every morning, I feel exhausted.  There isn't enough data there to really draw meaningful conclusions, but that shouldn't stop us.  We're artists almost.  We're not like other people.

I must choose between two conclusions.  One is that I was a sort of youth vampire sucking energy from the bodies and souls of my willing recruits.  Each morning after, I would get up with what might be fatigue from lack of sleep, but never anything like exhaustion.  I was eager and happy.  A cup of coffee and some time with my journal and I was ready to see what might happen next.

I like that one.

The other, though, is that it is not lack of sleep that exhausts us, but the deadening routine and oppression that our current lives now demand.  That's the royal us like Jeremy Irons uses as the Pope in "The Borgias."  We dread the coming day, the monotony and tyranny.

We were happier in New Mexico and still happy for quite a while afterwards.  Only recently, within the last week, I think, has the exhaustion returned.  It wear us down so that on the weekends we can't do more than sit and stare.  Shoes remain un-bought, art left unmade.  All we want is to sit in a dark room with a whiskey in hand and something good to watch.  It is a sad state of affairs.

But wait.  My logic doesn't hold.  The two things are not mutually exclusive.  They overlap a bit, I think.  Would being a youth vampire counteract the daily drudgery that we experience now?

I won't know, I fear.  That is an experiment that can't be conducted on demand.  Willing recruits are more difficult to find these days.

It is summery, and I want to make some ice cream.  I want to grill and play gin rummy while listening to a transistor radio or records on a real hi-fi.  That is what summer is.  Like the Hokey Pokey, that's what it's all about.