This is how the mornings usually are for me now.
My sleep is untroubled. I’m floating on a lazy river.
Then, as I rise to consciousness, anxiety comes. I reflexively fumble for that
same non-existent cigarette I reflexively fumble for every morning even though I
haven’t smoked a cigarette since 2010. A stone sweat fear comes upon me.
Daylight approaches like an interrogation lamp. I pull back the bedroom
curtain. The decrepit infrastructure outside reminds me of where I am; America.
In particular, the New America, the post January 20, 2017 America. Paranoid scenarios
flood my mind, of a knock at the door in the middle of the night, of jeeps full
of rowdies in Carhartt gear, of yahoos without college degrees in camouflage
tractor caps driving me away perhaps to be tortured in some dark and remote elk
skinning shack. I roll out of bed and hit the floor in a defensive crouch. I make
my way to the kitchen. I find a French Press, the symbol of Hope in a darkened
world, mumbling to myself that as long as there is a French Press, there will
always be an America. I hold my French Press to the ice grey dawn as if it were
a shield, a magic talisman against the hordes of Honey Boo Boo viewers, Duck
Dynasty addicts or anyone with a fetish for high powered archery bows and AR15s
that I will most likely see at the grocery store later that day. I take a long
drought of some Italian Roast. I Feel the confidence run in my veins, I boot my
laptop. I go out into the internets. I do battle with the forces of ignorance.
