Fruitless Fields

First, I hope I am posting this in the right place.

The other day something strange happened to me.

I woke up.

And I don't mean I stopped making alpha wave jags and my eyelids flew open and the dream I was dreaming vanished like morning dew in an incinerator. I mean (naturally, obviously) that I was shaving. Shaving in front of the mirror. And as happens I cut myself shaving, and then, then it was that I woke up.

It was as the blood rolled down from the tiny nick in my lip, through the hair on my chin and down, down, down to the bottom of the floor, to land a surprisingly vulgar virgin dewdrop near my bare foot. It took me a few seconds to realize I was awake, but I think the first clue was the way the world seemed to slow. The drop fell from my chin so slowly I could mark and measure its progress inch by inch with a bit of concentration. And then, then it reached the ground. And stopped. What force must the ground possess, to stop the arbiter of dreams!

Naturally.

Obviously.

And you think, posh. Naturally, obviously, I am insane. The only other possibility is that I am speaking nonsense, but I tell you, the world indeed stopped for that one insignificant moment. But no, no, the uneducated, filth proletariat protests, you said the world slowed! You, sir, are a liar and a fraud (says the prole)! In the words of Willy Wonka, "You lose! Good day sir!"

But that's beside the point, you see, because I am neither insane nor a babbling fool.

You see, in that one moment, as the dribble of blood found its way inexorably to my bathroom floor, I realized something you're afraid to but could if you wanted. What you'd be afraid to admit if you knew. What would keep you up, night after night, until you died from lack of sleep.

In this moment...this stupid, worthless fucking second in my worthless fucking life...this piece of shit waste of energy day....in this preparation for my banal, unsatisfying job followed by some unchanging, static round of mutual complaints and greviances and small talk with my friends, sipping stale beer and smoking asbestos cigarettes, and then a few minutes spent in front of the TV screen with my wife, and in bed with my wife, and fucking my wife (or perhaps not, if it's a really lousy day). In this moment with the whole random, cruel, boring, meaningless world stretched out before me...

I am alive.

And for once I know what that means.