The Vogon perused them. For a moment his embittered racial soul had been touched, but he thought no--too little too late. His voice took on the quality of a cat snagging brushed nylon.
"So what you're saying is that I write poetry because underneath my mean callous heartless exterior I really just want to be loved," he said. He paused, "Is that right?"
Ford laughed a nervous laugh. "Well, I mean, yes," he said, "don't we all, deep down, you know . . . er . . ."
The Vogon stood up.
"No, well, you're completely wrong," he said, "I just write poetry to throw my mean callous heartless exterior into sharp relief. I'm going to throw you off the ship anyway. Guard! Take the prisoners to number three airlock and throw them out!"
"What?" shouted Ford.
A huge young Vogon guard stepped forward and yanked them out of their straps with his huge blubbery arms.
"You can't throw us into space," yelled Ford, "we're trying to write a book."
"Resistance is useless!" shouted the Vogon guard back at him. It was the first phrase he'd learned when he joined the Vogon Guard Corps.
The captain watched with detached amusement and then turned away.
Arthur stared round him wildly.
"I don't want to die now!" he yelled. "I've still got a headache! I don't want to go to heaven with a headache, I'd be all cross and wouldn't enjoy it!"
The guard grasped them both firmly round the neck, and bowing deferentially toward his captain's back, hoicked them both protesting out of the bridge. A steel door closed and the captain was on his own again. He hummed quietly and mused to himself, lightly fingering his notebook of verses.
"Hmmm," he said, "counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying metaphor . . ." He considered this for a moment, and then closed the book with a grim smile.
"Death's too good for them," he said.
Now there's a guy who really doesn't like commentary on his poetry, whether positive or negative!
I find myself quite alone tonight. My daughter is at her boyfriend's, and my wife and son are at my son's dance studio. The silence is strange in a house that usually contains a 10-year-old ADHD child. It's a silence that my mind wants to fill with noises. Groans from the roof. The snake hiss of cars going down the street outside. Clicks and knocks from the living room (maybe the furnace). The refrigerator cracking its knuckles.
It has been another tired day for me. Got to bed late last night, and, when I finally put my head on the pillow, I couldn't fall asleep for another hour or so. I think I finally drifted off around 12:30 a.m. And my alarm went off at 4:45 this morning. If you do the math, that's a little over four hours of sleep.
While I'm not about to be tossed into outer space like Ford and Arthur, I find myself consumed with gloomy thoughts. I try to shake them off. Christmas music (which usually lifts my spirits) doesn't do it for me. Mindless entertainment on Netflix--just finished Black Panther yesterday. I liked it, but it, also, didn't do it for me. I'm seriously thinking of having a drink tonight. However, I'd be alone and using alcohol as a coping mechanism. That doesn't seem like a healthy choice, either.
(SIDE NOTE: If you are getting tired of my complaining, let me assure you that tomorrow I will post something that will be so Pollyanna-ish that, if you are a diabetic, you may need to take extra insulin. This evening, however, I find myself drawn to ideas of space and time and poetry and turmoil.)
I remember watching my father at night when I was young. My dad worked hard every day of his lift. Nine-, ten-, eleven-, and twelve-hour days. At night, he would sit in his chair, watch sitcoms, and drink himself to sleep. (Eventually, when I was in high school, he gave up drinking.) But that is the image of my father from my childhood--worn out and smelling of Canadian Mist and 7-Up. He drank it from a blue-striped cup. I'm sure he was wrestling with his own host of worries all the time.
I have always been prone to these blue funks. That's what I called them as a kid. They were times when the world was just too much for me, and I just wanted to read The Catcher in the Rye, listen to Billy Joel albums, and watch River Phoenix films. I'm in one of these blue funks at the moment, and I'm not my father. Can't drink it away.
Blueness. I am reminded of this passage from writer Maggie Nelson:
It is easier, of course, to find dignity in one's solitude. Loneliness is solitude with a problem. Can blue solve the problem, or can it at least keep me company within it?--No, not exactly. It cannot love me that way; it has no arms. But sometimes I do feel its presence to be a sort of wink.--Here you are again, it says, and so am I.
And so is Saint Marty.
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