Point of View: The Least I Can Do

Do you ever dream of being in a car that’s heading backward at a great rate of speed as, with one hand on the wheel, you crane your neck around so you can steer correctly while madly pumping the brakes to no avail? 

You don’t? That’s good. I think it’s because I’m fretting too much about the direction this country’s heading in. Happily, I can weather such phantasms; they don’t keep me up long. Soon I’m comatose again. 

Come to think of it, it might have been a dream of Mary’s, one that she passed on to me, for she is the one who usually frets, while awake, and often abed, about the direction this country’s headed in. 

You’d think that if dreams somehow compensate for our waking thoughts she’d be blessed with many beatific visions at night, though her worries for the world seem to abide. With her, though I wish it did, sleep does not always knit up the ravelled sleave of care as it mostly does — save for the occasional ghastly nightmare, as above — with me.

Speaking of ravelled sleaves, there are a few among my cashmere sweaters, though I continue to wear them, a Puritan in the end who loves to look down his nose at vanity. At modernity too. Content to have the world pass him by. Thank you very much. Pass on by world, pass on by. Still no cellphone, still no online banking, still no Facebook (72 notifications notwithstanding), still no streaming, still forgetting my password. . . .

Still I cannot entirely shake free, being enough of a Puritan in the end not to stay engaged, and to listen attentively as Mary reads to me each morning from the paper.

She, by the way, slept very well last night, the first time in days. Perhaps it was her dream I dreamt. . . . “Take a load off Mary, take a load for free. . . .” 

It’s the least I can do.