Months of Fridays

The problem with a having a job a monkey can do is that occasionally, as the severely conscientious citizen of the world that I find myself to be, I begin to feel terribly guilty about the skyrocketing monkey unemployment rate--the natural progression of which is wondering whether or not I should walk out and recommend that nice chimpanzee we saw in OKC. He looked almost as bored as I am. But then, watching grass grow might be slightly more intellectually stimulating than what I do, and quite a bit less stressful around the beginning of the month.

My job, in ascending levels of frustration with few notable exceptions, is like this:

Reports.
Customers.
Coworkers.

And then I go to school, home, restaurants, grocery stores, et. al.; with the same blank expression I have seen for years and never understood til now. I do not think about politics anymore. I do not stop to stare at trees. I do not feel my old righeous outrage. I am numb, dead, tired, disconnected, apathetic about all the world except for what I can see. I count calories religiously, I remedy my hostility with a gym membership, I lay myself down in a coffin of light and for exactly nine minutes there is silence and I stare into that place where worlds existed out of time, pristine streams of consciousness flowed with new ideas, fresh buds of thought lay unopened on tree limbs, but now there are no worlds, no streams, no trees. There is a great gathering void.

And this, I think, is the worst thing I could have imagined when I could still imagine.

A Dream I Had in Feverish Sleep

I was in an empty room with a very bright light coming straight down, cutting my cheekbones into lovely sad triangles. A book lay on a pedestal before me. In plain gold text gleaming on the brown cover, it read:

AN AUTONOMIC AUTONOMOUS AUTOBIOGRAPHY
BY: JESIKA JONES-ELLIS-BARENBERG-WEISENFELS

The book had many pages. I flipped through. All were blank save one. It was written in smooth swollen script, with quill in ink:

All my life they said to me, "You will not do well in this circumstance." I looked at them and said, "I will." Always, I failed. They said, "But you can do anything." And looking back, I see. They were always right.

I shut the book, turned old, and died.