“Like Autumn leaves his sense fell from him. An empty glass of himself shatters somewhere within. His thoughts – like a hundred moths trapped in a lampshade, banging and burning on through endless nights. Forever awake he lies shaking and starving . . .”
Happy nights produce hungover days. That, coupled with a long wait in a cheerful drive thru for cheap food I never ordered, and then tripled with an even longer wait in traffic, is almost too much for my marginally sane mind to bear. The whole word seems bent against me. It’s like trying to sleep (alone) through your roommate’s sex-fest, or wrecking your car mere minutes after filling the tank. It’s like that little scab on the roof of your mouth that would heal if you could only stop . . . wait, wait, hasn’t someone used that one before?
To cope with all these petty, relentless, insipid twists of fate I turn the music up louder, ignoring my corresponding headache, and almost feel better until the CD skips. Now, this is that part in the movies where the main character imagines himself jerking the car heedlessly into a nearby semi, causing a magnificent display of chaos and disproportionate explosions in the process, only to wake up and find it’s conveniently only a dream. When I attempt the vision it eludes me – I don’t even have the patience to fantasize properly. And even if I did, I’m sure it wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying as seeing it on the big screen.
But this is real life, and real life is much more complex, finalistic, and, at times, admittedly even more beautiful. I have never seen a sunset radiate with all the aggressive pixilation of film, but I have seen many more intimate moments whose mere recollection fills me with a greater warmth than any such sunset could hope to instill. So if I have to trade the grandeur for the reality it’s a price I’ll have to pay in resignation. And here, in the presence of these immediate frustrations, I harbor no vain hope that it will all make sense in two hours’ time. And I try not to question whether or not it ever will . . .
“. . . praying for someone to turn off the light!”
– Zac de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine, “Born of a Broken Man”
