Wakefulness

Age 68 — uninterrupted sleep an ancient scroll, last week I woke up at two AM, breath racing from running up three flights of stairs to avoid the spectral tsunami soaking floors one and two, looking down at the havoc outside, cars swirling like small pieces of kelp tossed by surf, people running from that insatiably line-dancing wall of saltwater — these images were not random, like some dreams, but decade old simulacra stacked like bowls on my back shelf of memory. Relics of televised helicopter footage, 2011 tsunami flowing over Sukiuso, Japan, stealing our after-dinner glow, transfixing us and our hosts, Hamish and Abby in Dunedin, New Zealand, and two days ago, my eyes opened at 3:42 AM, my brain straining at how I would rescue my oldest from the dystopian universe of the Upside Down, a believable fantasy freak-show put forth by our current streaming service, and of course, there’s the occasional pipe dream of involuntary infidelity with the blond coed in reverse cowgirl. When you’re 60, the future is as uncertain as avocados ripening, worries legion, and true rest elusive. Kids healthy? Climate change? Sea-level rise? Runaway inflation? a complete night’s sleep an endangered species that went extinct sometime in the last century. But sometimes I just have to pee.

Gary D. Grossman
MacQueen’s Quinterly #18, 2023