I’ve been asleep… (Patreon)

…But I’m awake now.

“If you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile.”

As the Spaniards say, “Give them your hand, and they’ll take your arm.”

Or, if you offer food to a cow (it was a mule, but pretend it was a cow so the story can continue), “If you give them a carrot, they’ll take your thumb and not know what to do with it, and they won’t let it go, until you dump a glass of brandy on their nose, and they let go.”

That last one was a me-ism.

I like stories that tell how life goes over the course of a day. Ulysses, The Mezzanine, Under The Volcano, that whole vibe. (Though I could never get into James Joyce — I have a sneaking suspicion that nobody actually likes Ulysses, and that we all just say we do to sound smart).

Or: if you wanna get all indie and interpretive about it, the first album from Balkan Beat Box (at least that’s my interpretation); if you wanna get truly high-brow, any one of the 9 seasons of 24 (I’m convinced this was more of a Buddhist nightmare, because seriously, how many times is Jack Bauer gonna save the world, and he only has one day?!)

Speaking of Buddhist parables, I guess Groundhog Day counts as a story that takes place in one day.

Anyway, I like stories like that. I dunno about y’all, but it seems that life lately has been a weird mishmash of expansion and compression, where weeks seem to take years, and where a year seems like a months, and where a couple of years seem like about 4 months, and where…

Ah, shit, as is sometimes the case, Steve Martin:

“I know we've only known each other four weeks and three days, but to me it seems like nine weeks and five days. The first day seemed like a week and the second day seemed like five days. And the third day seemed like a week again and the fourth day seemed like eight days. And the fifth day you went to see your mother and that seemed just like a day, and then you came back and later on the sixth day, in the evening, when we saw each other, that started seeming like two days, so in the evening it seemed like two days spilling over into the next day and that started seeming like four days, so at the end of the sixth day on into the seventh day, it seemed like a total of five days. And the sixth day seemed like a week and a half. I have it written down, but I can show it to you tomorrow if you want to see it.” (The Jerk, 1979)

Wait… Planes, Trains, and Automobiles… Was that one day? [Googles] Nope. 3. Still, good movie. But where was I…

Those days have been rare for me. Probably for lots of us. Those single-day periods when a lot of stuff happens. When night-owl me cons her way into waking up early (even with the sun?!); eating well and balanced throughout; getting some work done that I actually enjoy; maybe some exercise; a chore or two; not drinking toooo much; and finally wrapping it up at a respectable midnight (!), drifting off into a contented slumber, with your last thoughts being the knowledge that, of the 22,000-or-so days you’ve got, you did a pretty banging job with at least this one.

On such early mornings in the not-so-distant past, if I was lucky, I got to peek my ear outside and hear a sound like this one. Nights in that place were quiet in a “too quiet” kind of way, which is a deafening all its own. Having it broken by the clinkle of stirring beasts always brought a bit of a tear to my eye. And, provided I didn’t fool myself into returning to bed until noon, got me off on the right foot.

My overactive imagination would, at times, lead me to fantasize that the cows were coming to kill me, driven by some supernatural force. Maybe the universe would decide, on that day, that it had it out for me. Or maybe some evil witch who controlled the minds of such simple, tasty creatures had cast an insidious spell. You can spend your whole day worrying about such things. But that’s a story for another time. In the mean-whilst, they were just waking up, like me, so the playing field was still level.

Otherwise… Hmm. The month-day is still young, so to speak. Maybe I’ll start one of those stories now, myself.