Thursday, March 10, 2005
Really not much to say about yesterday or the day before, nothing much that's worth saying. The insomnia has ruled my life the last few days, laughing at Ambien, at any thought of sleep. I was up before dawn yesterday, in time to see the blood-orange sunrise, after not falling alseep until well after four. No writing. Hardly any sleep, and when I do sleep, there are the dreams. Last night, though, thoroughly, insensibly exhausted, I finally slept. At least eight hours, maybe closer to nine, and I feel some scrap of hope today that I can shake this off.
I'm feeling too, too Howard Hughes.
I did manage some reading yesterday — three chapters of the Tolkien biography and then "The Call of Cthulhu." I always find some small comfort in the latter. I can make-believe Lovecraft's cosmic horrors might bring some justice to this sorry human drama. Yo, George W. Bush! You want some shock and frelling awe? Just wait until the stars are right again and R'lyeh pops up from the deep, and ol' Mister Tentacles, he ain't gonna give two hoots and a holler if you're American or Iraqi, Christian or Muslim. You can all scream.
It is true, of course, even if it's not factual. Just like the rest of the universe, Homo sapiens' days are numbered. So what if it won't be towering, ancient gods awakening to devour the world. The particulars don't matter here. So, it'll be an asteroid the size of Manhatten, or a comet, or a nearby supernova, or the gargantuan black hole at the center of the Milky Way, gobbling stars like candy. It'll be nuclear war or sudden climate change, bioweapons or starvation. Extinction is inevitable, if not in your lifetime, then in someone else's. It's only a question of time. Extinction is the Great Leveler. It hardly discriminates at all. And this gives me the oddest, hardest sort of comfort.
It won't even matter that you wouldn't get your shit together and play nice like good little meat-bags while you had the chance. It won't even matter at all.
Yes, I am raving, I know. But that doesn't change a thing.
Spooky was reading me Margaret Cho's blog yesterday. There was something I wanted to quote because it bears repeating, something she wrote after viewing a clip on the web, one of the Iraqi beheading videos:
I don't know where sorrow is anymore, its presence in the world has vanished, leaving behind greed and the false claims of democracy. I mourn for the victims of Tawid and Jihad, headless and hopeless and names forgotten, their lives used as bargaining chips between corrupt governments where the gangsters rule all. I must also grieve for Tawid and Jihad, that our actions led to their inestimable anger. I beat my chest and cry out hardest of all for our country, with its government so far from its people that most of us cannot see why anyone might want to harm us, take us hostage, fly planes into our towers, kill us and die trying. Most of us don't even know why, which is the saddest fact of all.
A word to "the wise," to the topmost hairless ape-in-charge, wherever He may be: Read your history, man. The comics are always right.
2:26 PM
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