I have slept eighteen or more of the last fourty-eight hours. But I return to bed.

Two cups of coffee. A sweet German pastry filled with god knows what, just a filling in time. My life is a pudding knot.

The third cup of coffee is staring at me. I reject it. I am back on my bed. I’m tired. Tired of me. Tired of you. Tired of everything I can possibly think of with my tired mind.

Just then – what? The Grateful Dead? Who turned on The Grateful Dead in my head?

I never liked the Grateful Dead. I hesitate saying I hate them because I really don’t even know them. I’m too old to play that childish hater game.

“I will survive”. A chorus. Repeatedly. “I will survive”. Even in that perfectly awful “harmony “.

This? This comes in my mind as I consider the bleakness of the glaring sky that hurts my eyes. The roar of endless ambulance sirens ringing my ears. The chopping of the medical helicopter slicing my cranium. The hum of traffic and the gas station car wash swish and spray like a Spring cloudburst. Rain and gloom that I can no long tolerate. This.

This. From – of all things, the “Grateful” Dead. “I will survive” on a loop in my big fat fleshy bald, jowl drooping head.

Hippies. This cruel moment I get hippies. Hippies instead of some deity. Fucking hippies. It’s like the new Burning-bush. I’m Moses but I don’t want to cross the Sinai. I wish no one to follow me.

This just thrust upon me. Hippies. Make it stop.

This is more than irony. This is more than absurd.