The Happiness Fades

“No! Get in the lifeboat! I must stay with the ship! I must stay with the ship! I must …”

I was ripped straight from my dream into consciousness by a searing pain shooting through my body. It was as though a witch doctor in the darkest jungle could see my dream and at the moment of climax stuck a long, sharp needle into the head of a small rag doll with thin, black-rimmed glasses and crooked teeth.

It turned out to be the alarm clock, bellowing through the apartment like a squadron of police cars in a tin can. I realized, as I crossed the room to shut it off, that I had absolutely nothing to do today. It was 6:45 a.m.. I sat on the bed for a minute and tried to figure why the alarm would sound if there was nothing to do. We have an agreement, my alarm clock and I, to always heed each other’s schedules. If I have plans he must always be exactly on time. No plans and he gets the day off. Free to sleep in, take a long breakfast, go out with friends. He doesn’t complain and his union doesn’t give me any trouble about it. Some alarm clocks never get a day off. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Day after day after day. My clock should consider himself lucky.

Nothing came to mind that needed doing so I decided to write a nasty letter to my clock’s union representative and went back to sleep. I thought long and hard about that fateful day in April, 1912, hoping I could pick up the dream where I left off. What seemed a split second later I was stabbed in the head again. It was 10:17 a.m.. I was immediately seized by an overwhelming sensation of guilt. I must have slept through something. I got up and made my way to the bathroom.

The phone rang. I answered it.

“Hello.”

“What are you doing?” It was Rose. Her voice muddied by disappointment and disgust.

“Just got up.”

“Of course you have. I want to tell you something.”

“Hey, was I supposed to be somewhere today?”

“Yes, but I’ve been and come back already. Listen to me now, we have to break up.”

“Again?”

“Yes, for good. I’m sorry. It’s over.” No drama, no empathy, just facts.

“But doesn’t love blossom in the spring?

“Only in France … and certain Shakespearean plays.”

“Julius Caesar?”

“No, he gets killed in the spring … ‘Beware the ides of March.’”

“But it’s June.”

“You never could get anything right.”

“I keep having this dream …”

“The Titanic?”

“How did you know?”

“You’ve mentioned it.”

“No.”

“I’m sure you have. How else would I know?”

“Do you have a small rag doll with thin, black-rimmed glasses and crooked teeth?”

“Go back to bed. You’ll feel better after you’ve had your usual 12 hours of sleep.”

“No. I want to make this work.”

“It can’t. We’ve tried three times.” Silence. What was there to say?

“Please?”

“No. Goodbye.”

She hung up. I dialed Clyde.

“We broke up again,” I said.

“What did you expect?”

“So this is what I think: The Titanic sank due to poor construction, right?”

“This is your theory.”

“The builders were in too much of a hurry. So I had this huge love for Rose and I became over-confident. In my haste to find something terrific and successful, I paid too little attention to the structure and foundation of the relationship.”

“Okay …”

“Like the Titanic my relationship with Rose was doomed from the start. In a way, then, she did have a small rag doll with thin, black-rimmed glasses and crooked teeth - but all along it was me who was sticking the needle into it!”

“I’ve heard what you said and thought hard about it and there’s only one solution.” Dramatic pause. “IHOP.”

Puzzling. Bemused, garbled prescription: the unease that comes with satisfaction and happiness. Perhaps it’s a course in realization. The thoughts of hither thither and yon and craving ice cream repeatedly. The thought of candy in a store and CD’s on crack. Or racks. And racks of fish just lined up for attention and wanting to be squeezed and loved and thought of as just the right thing at just the oh so right time. It was a war zone at first then clearing like a jungle making way to desert unnoticeable and graceful in its own cosmic way. Like night and day in grand view but more than that. Ice cream … the thought keeps returning. A persistent nag and whine in the recesses of mental libraries of cross-references and subplots. The littlest nags multiply, re-referenced in my neurotic caverns by over-worked librarians working without pay and longing for the acceptance of their peers. A place to fit in and do the job better. Not fit but resize. Redefine and start again. It's a curious spur to wait for the phone day in and day in again. The same thing repeated every day but never the same twice. A micro-chaos living in the supreme mediocrity. Normality redefined for the middle man of American super-culture. That was my relationship with Rose.

When the drum is no longer a voice but an accompaniment, art no longer exists but as an ancient relic hardly deserving of the time it takes to spell the word. When maturity is bad and betrays old age - 40 never looked so big. And when the day is over does it make more sense? Living in such a hyper-enlightened state for another day. Did it take its toll or did it pay us? Bigger? Better? Faster? More? Four brunettes are somewhere smiling thinking maybe something on which they spent time has withstood the test of modern time and proven its historicity. When did history become shorter than the life expectancy? The loneliest time smells of plastic and heat. The humidity of sorrow has saturated the air and required hourly showers. The culture accepts the change and calls it growth. The dominant culture which is impervious to destruction. Decadence rears its head only to be acknowledged, assimilated, and marginalized. The true history of man reflects its power but is forgotten in the shortest generation. Speed is the answer now. The million dollar (final) answer. The one that brings everything to you before you know what it is and whether the fourth mortgage will cover the new paneling. Is Chinese food good for you? Can saturated fat prolong your life? It will if you haven't eaten in ten days. When people across the globe starve not for attention like us but for nutrition. Something to make their blood flow clean. Something to make their blood flow. Something to make their blood. That is my relationship with Rose.

It ran its course and it died. It was forgotten in the shortest generation because the next fact had arrived. The facts became less and less reliable. Assumption had been covertly - unwittingly - exchanged. The worst enemy is the absence of one. Idle hands and so forth. We become what we hate most though we have no idea. We complain in the face of affluence. Health becomes illness and joy becomes boredom in the light of continual entertainment. The opposites disappear leaving us without choice. The lights all blink and tell us where to go and where to get off and where to get on. The joy is sucked out by the rushing wind of a passing investment consultant and we stand hands on our hearts gazing at the stripes of a tired old flag and wonder what the string of letters coming from our tongues actually spells. Life? Liberty, etc? Is this some sort of crossword? The phone has still not rung, by the way, and the day is getting longer. I reflect (I confess - I really do reflect) on those isolated moments of complete bliss when the whole world was in order and nothing bad had ever happened ... ever? what like yesterday? And I wonder about the philosophy of sugar and the physics of peanut butter and why the happy times flee. The sky is still there - it's just another color. It would be as bright in Asia. But they remember last week and the pain we caused for them. We forget and happily dismiss. They remember and patiently plan. The end will come swiftly and unexpectedly like a plane crash on the evening news. One day we bring home bacon for tomorrow's breakfast and the next morning we can't eat it because the east coast as suddenly melted away. Iowa will understand what they've been missing in oceanic tides and water sports. Hang ten ... hang twenty - it makes no difference - the trials were a mockery anyhow. The justice of fools sentences us all regardless of standing. We speak and get shouted over or we rest silently collecting information to spread at un-downloadable speeds across the world. Selling email to the enemy and trading mp3's illegally because the billionaires at the multimedia conglomerate can't buy the cocaine they need. The happiness fades. I misunderstood my relationship with Rose.

Optimism lives on but only behind the curtain that seems to get pulled back each evening around 8:00 on your favorite network. Of course now it's all about streaming, direcTV, and satellite privacy invasions. Sex sells and prime time networks creep up on bankruptcy. If I had a new toy to sell I wouldn't advertise on Dora The Explorer I'd put it out on True Blood and The Family Guy. Now if I was selling cigarettes I'd put it out on Dora. It's audience analysis ... even the seminaries teach audience analysis because its not what you want to say its what others want to hear. And others want to know that they can do whatever they please. Hence satellite TV. Hence America. In the wake of Big Brother and Survivor why not just install 8 billion TV cameras across the country? We could call it LiberTV. We could watch the death of a culture and the chaos of controlled freedom. The happiness fades. There never was a relationship with Rose.