It’s a cool evening in June. Outside, it is raining, the moisture cleansing the city, removing built up layers of scum from the buildings, the cars, the trees, the streets. It’s nights like this when you feel that in spite of the nasty things that Man is doing to this planet, it will be alright in the end. Nature will reclaim its own. Nature will not be denied. I try not to think of the end.
It’s nights like this that I enjoy the most. I’m indulging tonight, because tomorrow I am not going to work. It is not the weekend. The weekend is too busy for indulgence.
Tomorrow will be busy. Probably more busy than if I went to work. There are things to be done– unspeakable things, so I won’t speak of them– that haven’t been done for some time and are definitely in need of doing, I were living on a farm, they would be called chores. Tomorrow I will do my chores.
I can feel the chameleon coming out in me. I can’t help it. It’s osmosis. Write great literature by reading great literature. Trouble is that if I read trash, I write trash. So you can only hope that I read great trash.
I am a Night Person. I used to be more of a night person but that has changed since I became a Slave to the Nine to Five. I now know why my brain has been stagnant all these years.
My brain comes awake when the rest of the world goes to sleep. If I go to sleep with the rest of the world, then my brain will become idle, a useless blob of gelatinous grey vegetation. Vegetable matter. Nothing matters.
After a while, the brain shuts down. It tries to generate greatness. It is stagnated. It generates trash if it generates at all. Where is the creativity? It is gone, like memories of the past. (Is it possible to have memories of the future? Are premonitions merely memories of the future?)
I remember the past. I remember my past. I remember the women of my past. But I don’t remember the future. I don’t remember my future. I don’t remember the women of my future. There is a block there, like a curtain pulled across the window, preventing me from seeing the future. Protecting me from seeing the future, perhaps.
No man should know too much about his own future. And no man should dwell too much about his own past.
But on nights like this, the brain is in free-fall. There are no bounds, and the brain travels uncontrolled through the time-space continuum, through MY time-space continuum. It is more like a time-space vacuum sometimes.
Close the door, you’re letting the heat out.
Originally written June 12, 1990.
