Tarred

Maybe it’s the light, or I could just be getting old(er); (in any case, I’m pretty sure it’s not the “day-after-the-day-after” cannabis hangover I’ve observed ever since I was in 10th grade and trying to get out of bed and off to homeroom period at Central District Catholic High School in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, PA, since, after all, I’ve not indulged that appetite of mine since “Black Friday,” aka “Buy Nothing Day”), or, maybe there’s no other explanation than just I’m a lazy post-Thanksgiving bum, but whatever the cause, I sure have been a sleepyhead today, so much so that I almost gave it up on the ride home and took the bus—and I would have were it in sight—but even though I did pedal all the way from Bothell, I turned the cranks slower and slower and could have lain my head down on my handlebars and snoozed were they more padded or had I a pillow.

The good news, if you can call it that, was that the bus ride out to school this morning was a virtual dreamland for me; I’m reading the Robert Pinsky translation of Dante’s Inferno, and after finishing the seventh canto that describes the torments of spenders and hoarders (“Each pushes a weight against his chest, and howls/At his opponent each time that they clash”), I dozed off, and with visions of Washington Mutual executives and CEOs of international mortgage insurance companies squaring off against one another in Hell dancing in my head, I soon found myself just several blocks from school and had to rise up and stretch my arms overhead and slap my cheeks to wake myself up in time for my stop.

Clearly though, and although I managed to be perky in the classroom, I never really have woken up completely today and am only trying to get through the next few hours before I can lay my head down and start over tomorrow.