Eyelids inch slowly upwards to a new dawn, and already the question insists … what is one to do?
Now, many feel as though this most basic itch is scratched.
Indeed, one is to rise, and to pull on his socks, and to see off a few slices of pearly wheat into the toaster. One is to dutifully spread butter and, perhaps, a bit of jam, to scan the morning’s gray lines of the departed day’s episodes, whereupon one is, naturally, to squawk, outraged by the past’s scandal and mollified by the morrow’s good.
And then it’s off to those four mobile walls of comfort, to a settling down in the warm embrace of charged coils nestled under beige leather seats, to an adjustment of the radio and a leisurely resume of the occasional, fatuous squawk. Here is a hum for a familiar jingle and a curse for an evil motorist (may he very well be damned!).
And soon, one has arrived, strutting into plastic space to make his daily deposit of time; to hem a frayed focus into a stream of flashing, discordant images flowing from glowing rectangles; the contemporary rhythm of attention. And one will type away, contently, dutifully, obsequiously, until the waxing day has become a waning, and then, finally, has quit.
And so it goes. And that’s just fine, for one has an object… and what is a subject to do without one of those?
And yet…
There’s something… there. It’s faint, buried, habitually unobtrusive. It resides deep down in the dark, oppressive depths of mind where the flashing light and squawk of the surface cannot, dare not, penetrate. It’s there, waiting and acquiescing and one doesn’t notice, one is busy pulling, spreading, adjusting, typing, splashing and ignoring and still, it’s there. Perhaps it will remain submerged until that final waning day, that retirement of the weary lids. Perhaps it will not surface at all, for, after all, what is the movement of the deep to the gaiety and chaos of the wave?
But maybe, just maybe, one may sense it; become curious of it. One day, perhaps, one may begin to gaze, from time to time, at that murky, frothy plane and begin to wonder what lurks beneath.
One is dutiful, one squawks in tune. And yet … why does that dark pit of the sunken unknown so gently attract the weary eye?
One may shudder and turn away; may resume the squawking and settle again into the comfort of the beige leather seat. And yet… something’s not right with the coils.
One punches mechanically into the plastic space and is flustered by the growing growl of the unexamined. It’s strange; one has answered, one has executed. And yet… what is it that rests so compellingly in the bottomless deep?
And a new day comes, and the eyelids inch upwards, and the question is there, fresh and subtle and beckoning.
What, just what, is one to do?