Joker Awakens

Joker’s peaceful sleep is over. His thoughts come slow and groggy. Yet he thinks:

Like a dead slug I lay in the bed this morning, tired of snoring, sucked out of the last dream that had me in its thrall. Contemplating the hard work of opening my eyes, I realize that sleep has once again deserted me. What a tease.

With the strength of Hercules I pry them open, seeing nothing but a fuzz-hazed screen that temporarily hides my pillow. When they re-adjust to the morning’s light I will be able to see, with great clarity, the Harry Potter designs that illustrate the pillow case. This used to make me smile, when the idea was fresh and new. The idea, like most, has come and gone, with it the novelty.

There’s nothing that I have to do this morning, after I muster the will to rise. Brew up a batch of coffee. The morning constitutional. The hard chore of turning the computer on. Making sure everything is where it was when I went to bed last night. Turning on some music, a safety net to keep the reality of emptiness from consuming me. Or maybe it’s the emptiness of reality that shoots me down. Either way, Jon Thor can sew together the spider web coil that buffers and saves. I’ll want to go back to sleep.

But she’s gone, gone, lost in the exchange for wakefulness and life. Gone for a chance to make more memories that seem so integral and seem so important but are forgotten as surely as the strange faces that have marched before me all my days. Gone to seduce someone else, leaving only a note telling me she’ll back tomorrow night. “Enjoy your day.”

Eyes now open, sleepy crusted corners, I swim through the chaos and illusion until I find my mind. Your mind. Our mind. THE mind. I know what I am nothing more than an infinitesimally small conduit of this holy ghost mind. The only power I have is the ability to hunt it down and find it every morning. I take it back by force, but I do take it back. I make myself forget that it’s not mine for a little while. Yeah, it slips away sometimes. But I’m usually able to retrieve it before anyone notices. If there’s no one there to see, I’m content to let it roam.

My breath must reek. My mouth is dry and it tastes like something took a shit in there last night. Not that I would know what shit tastes like, but you get the general idea. The contributors to this ungodly stench: the Black and Mild “Wine” flavored pipe tobacco cigar I smoked before I went to bed. The detritus of pepperoni that cleaved to my gums after devouring an entire package, coated with mustard, before retiring (too lazy to brush my teeth) . And then there was the foul odor of the good, long hit of weed that helped me fall asleep. All in all, it added up to a smell that conjured the deep cesspools of the ninth circle of hell, guano and scum floating on it’s surface.

And yet, I debate whether or not I’m going to brush my teeth this morning. Another aspect of the morning routine I’ve abandoned of late, having developed a taste for the sickening flavor that coats the inside of my mouth. Maybe I’ll go all day without brushing, see just how many variations I can make on the original by the addition of various foodstuffs.

Foodstuffs…that reminds me. My belly is stuffed to the gills with a potpourri of vittles that I gorged myself on earlier in the evening. I was in the tight grip of a serious case of the “munchies” before Thor banged his mallet on my cranium. Can I even remember all the shit I ate? Flamin’ Hot Cheetos…Barbecue flavor Wavy Lays…Orange sherbet…Sunflower seeds…practically an entire Supreme pizza…so much food that I feared, even as I ate it, that I might very well vomit it all back out. Even as this notion threatened to manifest itself into reality I took another bite…I wondered what else was in the house I could eat.

So it was, I fell on the bed. I felt like a beached whale about 8 hours ago. Surely I gained 10 pounds. 10 pounds worth of calories I sure as hell didn’t work off in the middle of the night. So this morning, as I wake, I’m still that beached whale, smashing his sunk impression into the mattress.

And so it is, I lie here, still breathing. Another chance to do something worth remembering tomorrow. So much time to do it between the horns of the day. Inspiration to be found in all that I am, in all that we experience together. Choices to be made. Worlds of consciousness to explore and map out. Intoxicating words I can use to describe them. Concepts not yet discovered by mankind, ideas that could usher the world into a new age.

And so I lie here, still breathing. Wondering if ANYTHING is worth remembering tomorrow, still grasping at the moment before me. Time changes it’s tune with regularity, and right now he moves with the speed and precision of a NASCAR driver. It moves along, passes inspiration right by, careless of experience past, present or future. Any choices to be made, I realize, are so trivial, so inconsequential, they barely pull at the fabric. I’ve bombarded my consciousness with atomic bongs, I’ve given up trying to describe it all. I know, deep in my being, that I have nothing whatsoever to offer the world, nothing even to offer myself.

New age? Ha. Same old shit. Another generation begging someone to pull the plug and make way for the whippersnappers.

So Joker turns over, tries to find sleep again.

Fails.