Vanity Blog #4: I Hope For A New Dawn

For my own part: I have never had a thought which I could not set down in words, with even more distinctness than that which I conceived it. There is however a class of fancies of exquisite delicacy which are not thoughts and to which is yet, I have found, aboslutely impossible to adapt to language.

These fancies arise in the soul--alas, how rarely--only at epics of most intense tranquility, when body and mental health are in perfection. And at those near points of time, where the confines ofwakingworld land with the world of dreams. And so I captured this fancy, where all that we see or seen is but a dream within a dream....

Edgar Allen Poe

A shot of caffeine starts my every day and breath rushes to my lungs in a fervent desire to poison my every waking gulp of life giving air. The assumption that I want to live is an age old one, and people wonder why I favor to gulp down smoke instead of the clean air of this quarantine. This is a place I know far too well and have never visited for reasons of my own. I am here for another's pain and another's tribulations. Why must I feel it all?

The shot goes straight to my heart and jump starts it from the peaceful tranquility of sleep. Another day, another coffee, for that is what has replaced blood in my veins. My fingers shake as I've had no food and only espresso, a gift from a face behind the counter that knows my name, but not that the drug he hands me will keep me going for another hour.

I had a shot this morning when I awoke. It was enough to wake my brain enough to think. Not many do that anymore. I voted too. I had to think before I could do that. So much hangs on this choice that voting without a mind is unthinkable (pun intended). And because I voted, I get another free shot. The shot that reminds me how much is riding on this. A reward for something that should be done anyway. I think about how much this choice means and what it can do for this world.

Another shot and I see you face and I fall in love all over again. The simple beauty of a smile reminds me how little I need to think about you, and how okay that is. The words to describe those thoughts do not come because they are not thoughts at all, they are feelings. I may not be good enough, but if i can make you happy I am all that I want to be. Remember that when the world ends.

An IV straight to my blood adds some more energy to the mix and I cannot see for the world moves too slow. Speak quickly so that I might be slow enough to understand. If I have one more shot the world will end and it will all be over. I have made my voice heard, a thing all people should do. I have stood for those things I believe and know to be right, and I hope that will be enough. I have loved beauty, and I can call that good. This world will not end with a bang, for it started that way. Things should never end the way they began, it is not the way. Eliot has told me so, "This is the way the world ends: not with a bang but a whimper." And so with a whimper I cast my voice out into the world. All of our whimpers together might join to make a torrent of noise louder than the bang this world began with. Let us hope a new day shall dawn.