Missive the Thirtieth
Sleep
Like a Nosferatu.
DATELINE: Saturday, October 28, 2000 at 0155 hours CDT.
Conway, Arkansas, USA
By D. Ebenezer Baldwin Bowles
CornDancer & Company
The week of questions nears its end.
"Dysentery can go away," a bright child of God wrote from Toledo. "So can 'de blues. Trust me."
We would. He would trust her. Wasn't it all about trust relationships, as the software demanded? My domain trusts your domain; we can make music, do business.
Being connected, he knew about it. A vague knowledge, like a heavy mist in the deep night. Where does connection begin? How is it established? Does it always begin with God? Does God precede family, or do the two proceed side-by-side? Neighborhood, community, and nation: They count. They must be third, fourth, and fifth in the right order of things. Should I also include self? Are not we naturally connected to self? Six, some claim, is the number of Man.
The Group Sets a Plan for Intervention.
This wasn't about Man or self, the issue now on the table. Rather, the issue concerned the sad state of affairs of Harry David, Dylan's dear friend. At Dylan's behest, The Group called a meeting to discuss recently identified, somewhat urgent concerns about Harry David and where he might be heading.
I'll attempt a report, but guarantee nothing. My connections are about as shot as anyone's.
The chief complaint The Group gathered to consider was the death of potential. Soon after Harry David begins, the impulse comes over him like an attack of distressed photons: Quit. Move on to some other beginning. Why such a strong reluctance to run the whole race? It's not like he doesn't know the whereabouts of the finish line.
Some disloyal spy tipped him off about the meeting. Harry David snuck there, pushed an odd note under the conference room door. "On November 13, 1992, a Friday, the radio personality Rush Limbaugh said: 'How can a thinking, engaged, widely informed human being not be aware of me?' Awareness does not presume sympathy."
OK. He knows it sounds miserable, these claims of self-importance. But who's listening to the misery? It's the rampant ego that infatuates them.
The worst of the nightmares he wouldn't even commit to the page. He refused to allow it the light of day.
Another bad dream became the alternate revelation. This one was not so horrendous as the unspeakable nightmare he had censured. "It's censored, isn't it?" she inquired slyly. Could be. Depends on how formal you want to make it.
The River Water Enfolded and Nurtured Him.
Last night, near the close of a long adventure on the river, Harry David fell aft into the wake of a powerful towboat, pushin' ahead full throttle. Startled, then invigorated, he dove deeply into the dark Mississippi river. He thought: I'll drown, but his dive carried him in an opposite direction. He surfaced at the very moment his oxygen was depleted. The dive was desperate, inspired; despite the mortal threat it presented, the water enfolded and nurtured him. (No big stone in his pocket!)
How easy it would be to succumb to inertia, go inert and entropic, be like a universe coming to an end.
Should he even mention the word? Death. There. He said it, but the mere mention moved them to dangerous ground. The seriousness and gravity of it would be too much for some of them. "If I were to swim the seas of profundity day in and day out, I would drown," Sadie said with solemnity. "I come up gasping as it is. My portal opens to the cave's mouth, but it's dark and silent in there. When I hear the whispering from Psyche, I refuse to enter. Let's let Harry David go instead. He can tell us about it on the other side."
Someone supposes that he's been staying up too late, not getting enough sunshine. "He's beginning to look like a nosferatu." A committee convenes in a corner, talks about it, sends an appeal to the Ancients on Harry David's behalf, asks them to help break through the icy wall. The Ancients can hardly be bothered. Their Gods are busy forcing a fallen giant to push a huge stone up a little hill. Again and again. The event enthralls them.
Nevertheless, the Ancients dispatched a novice, Thoreau, to assist as he might.
Thoreau wrote Harry David a snippety little note about the powers of the morning and the evils of sleep. The idea was to bring Harry David into condemnation over his backsliding, then inspire him to resume daily worship of the goddess Aurora.
Is It Possible to Catch-Up on Lost Sleep?
The morning is renewal, the backslider agreed. "But do I need to be renewed? I wonder. Renewal just means I'd have to start all over again. How many fresh starts can a man take? If at all, I'll slip into a phase of reviving. I guess I could stand some revival. You've got to know, it takes a while for my system to shake off the heaviness of sustained sleep, especially now that I'm committed to catching up."
In Harry David's opinion, two-dozen hot years of prime Earth time had been sacrificed to the fast lane. The sacrifice had unbalanced certain accounts. "For one, I'm twelve or thirteen weeks in arrears to Sleep." He believed he could catch up.
"Were I graced with wooded seclusion, with freedom from the roaring of engines and the clatter of domestic harmonies, perhaps then I could adjust my schedule to rouse with the dawn," he said. "Perhaps, but very much perhaps not. I get twisted up in all this supposition. Listen. The supreme quiet of the deep night opens channels of thought and windows of perception not so readily accessible during the day. Now let me be. I'm tired of your interventions."
Harry David slipped another note 'neath the closed door. "Officials say it doesn't look like a normal rock, and it wasn't there last night."
Some days later in the privacy of his bed, surrounded by pillows, and in an instant of awareness, he pledged, very succinctly: "Finish it."
Did the pledge gain for him freedom from vain striving and undue concern?
"Finish it."
This is how I heard it. On the morning after the meeting of The Group, the old Colonel, veteran of the Boer War, succumbed to a spate of pity and wrote a letter to Harry David. Days passed before the letter could complete its journey. It arrived late in the afternoon, too, because Harry David lived at the end of the postman's route. He read it just before sundown.
The Colonel, I've been told, wrote in a bold hand: "May the trade winds of good fortune fill your sails, may the sweet bird of prosperity strafe your position with filthy lucre, may the compass of good fortune guide your unwavering trudge down the lonely path, may your enemies boil in hell (in their mother's milk!), may you live to look with scorn on your detractors as you tell them to eat s**t and die!"
Strong words, Harry David thought. I better get outta bed.
WATCH FOR MISSIVE THE THIRTY-FIRST
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