O is for eyes open

C
cynic • sĭ-nĭk
     noun
     1. realist

cynical • sĭ- nĭ-kal
    adjective
     1. awake

Sentio.  There are days, however peacefully I’ve slept, however halcyon my dreams, I wake up angry at everyone and everything. The squeaky, spotty young man in the apartment below me – and his sisters and his cousins and his aunts. John Boehner and Bibi Netayahu. Barack Obama, Barbara Boxer, and the Pope.  All leaders and all followers and all the loyal (to itself) opposition. Gentiles, Jews, and Jains; Animists and Ancestor-worshippers; Protestants and Catholics; Sunnis, Shias, and Sikhs. The rich and the poor alike. Authors and actors, musicians; all artistic muckabouts and the men and women that mouth and pen their names (and draw flowers around them like teenage girls on their

S. Mallarmé by E. Manet

notebooks around the names of their boy friends). My parents and my children, and their parents and their children. There isn’t a speck of dust or a drop of water on which there aren’t creatures I don’t despise.

Other days, however restless my sleep, however dreadful my nightmares, I open my eyes to light shining into darkness, a golden sky, the sweet silver song of the lark, and I love . . . one or two or three, though when I wake up not including the young man in the apartment below, his relatives however connected; not including politicians, clerics, or plutocrats; nor “artists,” cultural critics, or their relatives or friends.  By the time I swing my feet out of bed, depending on gravity to bring them safely to the floor, there isn’t a speck of dust or a drop of water on which or in which there are not creatures I am falling out of love with.