Sometimes I lay awake at night and remember things from the past that seem so long ago that they really didn’t happen to me. Maybe in some other life they did. Everything used to have this glow around it that I can still faintly see sometimes when I walk around the beach in the very small hours of the morning. Out there, past the ships and the songs of the great whales, there is a glowing horizon of sorts. And like the past, and my memory of it, that glow lies somewhere far beyond the vastness of that water. Perhaps where the sun hides right before it decides to give that motivational speech it loves so much. Right before my body gives out and I’m forced to close my eyes for a change.
There used to be a grocery store near where I used to live. I’d go there and lie in the middle of the parking lot late at night and watch the sky. It was strange because it was this massive parking lot in a strip mall and no one was around. No cars, no lights, no people. There’s something eerie about lying down in a place where, during the day, hundreds of people are usually running about. It’s like being a completely wild creature that’s wandered into civilization the one time that people aren’t there. I once fell asleep in that parking lot. I woke up underneath a Toyota 4-Runner. I was dreaming about a land beyond thunder dome. It was a-okay.
The downside to being in the parking lot at night was the bugs. They’ll eat you alive. There’s no escaping the bugs. One day they will rule the world. There’s nothing you can do about it. It would be best for you to make friends with the bugs, or you could end up in a giant killing jar with the bugs on the other side drinking martinis and yelling at you: “The scientist warned you, you idiot� they’ll say. And they’d be right. But you won’t hear them of course. You’ll be trapped inside a giant jar. We’ll all be trapped in giant jars. But that’s not important right now.
The upside is this: just lie down in the middle of an empty parking lot at night right before a thunderstorm hits. You feel like some easily squashed bug and you realize there is something larger that’s looming out there. A force that remains patient and silent. An entity that waits to teach a lesson that we have yet to grasp. It is much better to just lie there and let it roll over you like some immense army of unquestionable wonder.
You may find all of this strange but your options become severely limited when sleeping is as difficult as riding a miniature motorbike up Mount Everest. Someone once told me that I couldn’t sleep because of hypertension. Maybe. I always thought there was something I was supposed to see that I could only see in the dark. Maybe it was myself. Maybe it was to tell the rest of the world how fucking horrible late-night television really is.
I used to be a non-believer. To tell you the truth I would probably still be a non-believer if it hadn’t been for this guy that happened upon me one night in the parking lot. I was watching the sky when this odd fellow pushing a shopping cart walks by me and says “Knowing nothing is power�, and just kept on going. I have thought about that statement for years.
Knowing nothing is power because internal recognition defies external influence. Like a ship lost on an ocean with many other ships, is it better to remain under the power of your own sails or lash your ship to other ships because you’ve come to the conclusion that you might never find land again?
For nine years I haven’t been able to figure out what he meant. And maybe that’s the whole point.
There is one thing I do know for sure. There ain’t nothing like Fruit Chews in the rain. Except for maybe two tubs of Cool Whip, the Bud girls, and a log cabin trapped under 400 feet of snow. Mmmmmmm, Cool Whip.
Perhaps he simply meant that knowing nothing is far easier than knowing something. If you know nothing then you’ve got a pretty good idea where you stand. On the other hand, if you know something then you have to spend the rest of your life trying to know everything (because that’s the goal of knowing). One day it leads to everything and you discover your wife in bed with another woman, some dirty hippie guy, and a llama.
How often do guys pushing shopping carts say things like that? Usually they’re saying things like “This is the shopping cart guy to Uridium 15, come in Uridium 15…â€? But this guys says: Knowing nothing is power. Maybe he was talking about humility. Maybe it’s just that simple.
Sleep is elusive and in the absence of nourishing rest this is how I pass my time. Remembering how to forget and memorizing how to remember.
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