Rise and Fall

“Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you've felt that way.”    

(Charles Bukowski)

I fall asleep easily, wake hours later at two or three, then can't sleep until dawn.  But with the time change, dawn is past the getting up time.  Body and brain now ready for sleeping, I rise muddle headed.  This hangs on me for the rest of the hideous day.  They've increased the speed of the assembly line at the factory, and complicated the process to boot.  "Profits are down," they say.  "We must increase productivity if people aren't to lose their jobs.  You can help everyone here."  So the capitalists make a socialist appeal.

So the workers work harder and the foremen work longer and. . . the cheese stands alone.

At home, bills must be paid, tax information collected.  I eat, sit, fall asleep.  Some nights, some weekends, I try to make "art."

But I have an idea for a story about Lonesomeville and the Cripple Factory.  A series of stories.  They are outlined in my head.  They loosely tie together like the stories in "Winesburg, Ohio."

And I'm afraid they will never get the chance to be written.

I am dizzy and need to hurry.  I've taken to calling ahead, asking someone to open my office door.  Jesus, I say, I'm running late.  I'd never survive working for real, working seven days a week in Mexico or China or India.  No, I'd be locked up, beaten, thrown under some prison.  The leisure class float on a sea of stolen life, on workers' sacrifice.  They've even convinced the workers that they don't like unions.

No shit.  Why wouldn't a kid choose to be a drug dealer instead?