Awake! Oh Sleeper ...

It is hard to believe that November 30th of 2006 was the last time I entered something into this storehouse of random cyber thoughts. I have the option of dispensing with pure drivel in the way of excuses or simply confessing, as if I needed to anyway!, that much has happened since I last posted an idea of mine on this blog. I am trying hard to avoid the temptation of chronologically outlining a series of, what would be to you -oh reader!, meaningless events. What is it to you? Yours is but to read and chuckle, peruse and ponder, inhale an idea and exhale a judgment. So, I will simply just start again. Tabula rasa! Clean slate ... here we go.

I woke up this morning when my clock radio went off. Normally I will just take in the news, drift in an out and on occasion will vanish off into a dream which I later realize was in someway connected with the goings on in the news and I am brokenhearted that my ESP has seen better days. This morning ... well, this morning I reached over with my index finger and promptly turned the news off. Click! Silencio. I then reach over and grab the most recent book I am struggling my way through - they are all a struggle you realize, any book worth reading will make your thoughts wrestle against each other. I pull my hand back and begin my descent into Reading Lolita in Tehran - a memoir about a group of Iranian university students that meet in secret with a renegade professor of literature, forced into retirement, to discuss Western literature. The book is titled such because the first work of literature they choose to dive into is none other than Vladamir Nabokov's Lolita. I read Lolita last month in preparation for this read. You wouldn't know this, however, since I kept this is secret from you!

Half way through a paragraph that described the hell of a totalitarian state where armed thugs patrol the streets ready to pounce on even the slightest hint of disregard for Islamic norms, I realize that my little act of turning off the radio was something of a freedom most of the world is incapable of experiencing. I thought of the irony of it all. Here I awake to a country with a free press, freedom of speech, a constitution protecting the civil rights of its citizens and I turn off the radio to read a book about a group of women who lust for their weekly gathering to discuss books that collect dust on most bookshelves in America. Surely there is something wrong with this picture. I thought this morning of how much criticism the current administration is getting in United States. I thought of how President Bush is referred to often as the worst President this country has ever seen. I thought too of how happy I am to live in a country where we can say these things without fear of reprisal. The Fourth of July is right around the corner. I have made myself a note to return to this entry and remind myself of these thoughts I took in today.

Well, enough of this self-imposed guilt. I want a cup of coffee.