Watching American Beauty

 

Several times a year I am reawoken like this.

I am strapped to a chair and a madman thrusts

mortality in my face.  He tells me I am going to

die.  He screams at me that I am not doing well

enough, that I am sitting comfortably.  My mind

does leaps.  For an hour in the cinema, perhaps a

little more, I see grand visions of all that I am going to

 do.  My novel takes shape, determination sets as

steel in my bloodstream.  I sit silently in the hush at the end,

unable to talk in the tumult of my mind.  I promise

 myself that this is the revolution.  The turning point.

 

And then I get tired; the buzz fades, I go to bed.

I wake late with washing to do.

 

Nathan Hobby 2/2/2000