Tuesday, August 15, 2017

THE OGRE

A most extraordinary experience last night--or rather, very early this morning. I thought to be awoken by a tap on the shoulder and, upon opening my eyes, to have been confronted, ultra close-up, with the huge, untidily bearded face of a hideous, angry ogre. The experience must have been a dream, of course, but it felt nothing like a dream--more like a three-dimensional hologram, disconnected from any dream narrative. It was so frightening that I yelled aloud, "Oh, my God," waking Ellie in the bed next to me.

What could be the explanation for this apparition? If not for the untidy beard and the scraggly grey hair, I might have said Trump--who is as scary an apparition as haunts the world right now. I think I share the persistent sense of impending doom with many of my fellow Americans. It's not necessarily the doom of nuclear war, though that is indeed a frightening possibility. It's more the sense of everything around us spinning out of control in the social-political world, in the incompetent hands of an ill-mannered, bellicose ogre.

It was perhaps this creature who came to visit me in the early hours.

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