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“Open your eyes!” a voice from the pulpit commands. My eyes are open. It’s my heart that is sealed. I generally avoid people. Half the population is in therapy or on mood pills. The other half exists only in digital form. You blame the obvious villains: drygulchers, media skanks, big-money political donors. You should blame the incoherence of the dream. Hundreds, maybe thousands, wander along flag-draped Main Street in a daze, blinking away tears and trying to recall why they came.
I was mansplaining oblivion to a room of schoolgirls, and all while God attended an out-of-town gala. Afterwards, we gathered beneath the Doomsday Clock, a full-scale nuclear exchange more imminent than ever. My whole life has been lived in the shadow of the clock tower, at the very edge of midnight, dry tinder crackling underfoot. I want back the hours spent seeking cover and then hugging a wall or crouching under a desk in terror. When the traveler returned, he was grim-faced, silent. It’s been inadvisable, if not illegal, to pop a balloon in Montreal since.
