gain, I am trying but failing. Or I am perceived to be failing. Or I
perceive myself to be failing. Or I perceive others to perceive me to be
failing. Whichever the case, I am unable to shake an all-pervasive sense of
failure. The future is uncertain. That is one thing I have believed to be
completely true for a long time. That belief was not pessimistic, though,
because absolute uncertainty (I believe) does not necessarily imply that the
outcome will be a bad one. Now -- or lately, or for some time, perhaps a
couple of years -- I have sensed the coming, uncertain future to be hiding a
disaster. I put no specifics on the word when I say "disaster". A personal
disaster; a natural disaster; an inability to meet a goal or deadlines; a
cataclysm of cosmic proportions: beyond the hazy curtain of this unknown
future, I can barely discern the shape of this disaster-to-come. Perhaps it
is my failure to collect facts and extrapolate the future that is my own
personal disaster. Perhaps, around the next corner I will run right into a
tree or walk off a cliff.I exist in a continuous state of UP-time. No longer are my days interspersed with unconsciousness. Dragged through semi-wakefulness for what must now be several years, I doubt my senses. The vision before me, obscured by numbed senses, may only be a shadow of what I used to fear.
When I was very young, I had recurrent nightmares. One major theme of the
dreams was the presence of an enormous, hulking, hairy, bipedal beast that
stood just out of sight. Out of the corner of my eye I would see its back,
covered with dark brown fur, just as it rounded a corner. Or I would sense
it standing in the darkness behind doors. In one dream, the thing was in the
backyard, behind a fence. My mother insisted on going outside to see what
was out there. I pleaded with her to come back inside. When she turned
towards the house, I could see the thing moving between the panels of the
fence. The ending of all of these dreams was the vision of this thing
walking away from me, its head always about to turn and face me. I would
always wake up before I could see its face. I imagined the face: eyes
glaring, watery, red, bloodshot. The center of the face was a gaping hole
with no nose or upper jaw -- just a black, gristly pit. And then the teeth on
the lower jaw, a dry guttural groaning emanating from its cavernous throat...
R10(7)