Fifteen Days

XV

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But, ah, my foes, and, oh, my friends-
it gives a lovely light.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay “First Fig”



Back in the days when our Deities were into things like smiting and vengeance, insomnia must have been deemed a curse visited upon us for some act of faithlessness or sordid transgression. Beyond the obvious physical side effects-which I am tired of harping on after…well, nearly a year of serious insomnia-I have decided that it is the loss of regular dreaming that is the worst aspect. I have always had vivid, complex dreams. They spanned the spectrum from intensely sexual, to outright nightmares, with a vein of pure chocolaty weirdness running throughout. Now my dreams are sporadic, often laced with the anxiety of upcoming brain surgery. Funny how I always think of it that way, not surgery but Brain Surgery…I should find a piece of Frankenstein music to run through my head to accompany it. My dreams have become fermented, distilled, and I seem to receive them in bursts, as if the signal from my sub-conscious has been degraded. Yet they are all the more potent for that.

Although I feel positive about the surgery, in my heart I know I’ll be okay. Still, I cannot deny that there is a nasty little Hobgoblin of fear capering inside me, gnashing his teeth and bellowing every possible bad outcome or complication that could happen. Including death. The worst part is that the little fucker is right. All of those things could happen. In my life I have seen lightning strike twice, I have come to understand that we live in a miraculous universe whose symbol in our language really should be SURPRISE. But the Goblin wants too much power; he wants me afraid and whimpering. Tell the truth, I want to shut him up with a pipe wrench. He knows as well as I do that what we broadcast to the universe is reflected back in kind. I will not allow such self sabotage. La Vie Devant Moi!

I am afraid that I will not be same person afterwards. More to the point, I am afraid that it will affect my relationship to words. There are studies that note some cognitive effects Chiari Malformation. Among the symptoms is one commonly called Word Drop; in daily life the inability to remember a specific word might seem a relatively benign symptom, easily worked around. But for a poet it is a torment, like a mental version of the fabled Chinese water torture. This began a few months ago along with episodes of what other Chiarians describe as BrainFog, as apt a description as any other I’ve run across.
“What,” the Goblin gurgles, “will it be like after someone with a scalpel has been poking around in your brain?” I think the Goblin needs more iron in his diet…perhaps a tire-iron.

Caution:
The following rant contains vulgarity and overt corporate prejudice.

A note to the advertising vultures at Excedrin:
Fuck you. Every time I see one of your wretched television commercials where some shill is exhorting the public that your pain pills will cure any headache, I want to come to your office and make you eat those words. Here on the web, for few to see, I swear that you are full of shit. You think that junk works on any headache? Bring it on. I’ve got a headache for you assholes.

[This includes the makers of Lunesta. Screw you guys too.]

Back when the Chiari first reared its horned head up from the valleys of my brain I saw a therapist a few times. It helped, I was scared shitless, angry at not being able to work and generally twisted up. During one of our sessions when we were addressing my anger and growing misanthropy, she asked me what I would change if I could change one thing about my fellow humans. It was a cheap shot, I felt at first. It seemed like such an obvious psycho-headshrinker trick that I was a little annoyed. Then I stopped and realized it really was a good question. It helped strip the problem down to something I could manage. For instance how do you make a litterbug really See the stupid, nihilistic, self-destructiveness of their actions? How do you get to the meat of such heartlessness? I told her she’d have to wait for an answer. What I finally came up with is simple, and certainly not a complete answer. So what. I decided that I would make Empathy a primary motivator, a mandatory reaction in all humans, linked to our most primal survival instincts.
And yet that is already the case. We are all dependent on each other in ways we refuse to accept or examine. I dream of people waking up and realizing it. Though it is hard to make the leap to real empathy, we must or remain alone despite lovers, family or friends. I spend a lot of time Dumpster Diving, at least I used to, and I learned that the homeless and abject, the seedy and the strange, are no different than anyone else. Except I have found they are far more likely to have real empathy for the troubles of others.
The next time some old geezer stumbles up to you with vomit and vodka on his breath give him the benefit of the doubt and give her a chance as well as a few quarters. Acknowledge their humanity, even if they turn out to be an asshole.
Like the man said—I love humanity, it is just people that I can’t stand.

The days are moving faster.
The time until curtain call seems too short now that I am waiting in the wings.
It is snowing. I want to have a snowball fight and I wonder if I will be able to again.
Oh, but I will find out…in fifteen days.
—End Transmission—
Dawn McKenzie