If not for the chemotherapy session scheduled for a little later this morning, I would return to bed in an attempt to sink into unconsciousness. Whether my body would permit it, though, is a matter for debate. Discomfort rudely interrupts the pursuit of the numbing pleasure of sleep. Regardless, cancer treatments insist on precedence over recuperation from…whatever it was/is that wrecked an otherwise tolerable evening. I retreated from the real world at around 7:00 p.m., in the hope of exchanging distress for a sense of well-being or, at least, anesthetic insensitivity. Like wishes against rocks—dashed by reality. Ten hours later, after a few failed efforts sleep—and many quiet curses flung at cancer and chemotherapy and the deterioration and decay that accompanies them—I crept out of bed. Now, an hour after feeding the cat and forcing myself to swallow a handful of pills (with a chaser of cold water, Ensure, and lukewarm espresso), I sit at my desk, whining. I do not like to whine. Whining is behavior unbecoming an old man who should, instead, stand in brave defiance of his challenges. Whimpering is beneath the dignity of a man with so many years under his belt. Yet here I am, grousing in pitiful self-indulgence. My middle name, which begins with the letter “S,” should be Sniveling.
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The last time I left a record at the end of a calendar year was just one year ago today. I mentioned chemo and cancer in that post, just as I have today. And I included an incomplete snippet of dystopian political fiction, reflecting my sour outlook and dull grey mood, triggered in large part by the unbelievable reality that was just beginning to unfold. Had I been thinking more clearly, I might have written about anticipating a simultaneous event: a nuclear explosion so massive that every star in every galaxy—and all the planets surrounding them—would be vaporized in less than one billionth of a second. Hindsight, though, force-fed by enormous tanks filled with unimaginable volumes of monstrous truth, is better than a pair of eyeglasses capable of focusing on reality billions of years into the future.
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Today, again, is the very last time any of us will experience a once-in-a-lifetime event: December 31, 2025. Some of the more advanced time-travelers among us Earthlings—the Aussies and Kiwis and the like—are just minutes away from leaving 2025 behind. They will find themselves at a different point in time—a completely different year—from us for a period of many hours. Time will be split into two distinct moments, at the very same time. Schrödinger’s clock will leave me confused, confounded, and dazed, as if I had consumed mushrooms grown in a universe so far away I can see it through a telescope but cannot reach without first encountering a singularity within my own mind. By then, though, the Hubble Telescope will be outdated and feeble; an obsolete piece of the past reflecting a crystal clear image of the future. Remember that? Those were the days, my friend, we thought would never end. But the tavern is closing and the regulars will be hailed for public vindictiveness without a permit.
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The incoming new calendar year will serve as a platform for more seriousness than has been the case with the past year. I intend to refrain from posting so much stream-of-insanity content, opting instead to express myself in more somber and serious and solemn ways. But, no matter how hard I try, I cannot seem to keep intricate threads of invasive dark humor from hiding among the thickets of light and airy gravitas. Like a trampoline, but with tiny filaments of razor wire threaded into its cloth.
