Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones:
The Council Chamber
(1892)

"…wake me up, please, however exhausted I might seem."

I have often felt as though I was riding in a rattly old jalopy through these EndDays. So much annoying noise. Windows dusty and obscuring. Engine, largely unmuffled. Seats, supremely uncomfortable. The irrelevance alone rendered the drive disquieting, even though I have learned plenty about myself during the journey. I can’t honestly claim that my time has been in any way wasted, just because I found my time spent exhausting. I feel as though I might have been forever deafened and, perhaps, even rendered somewhat more stupid for the experience. I gained hopefully useless-for-reuse skills. With good fortune, or just only slightly more than positive fortune coming, I might never need to resort to the sorts of learning I was forced to absorb, if only by the sorry context. Our orange one will be gone, and whatever follows his dog act of a performance couldn’t possibly be worse. Even if the next conveyance comes without windows or doors, it won’t be able to help but serve as a giant step up. I find myself suffering from RattleFatigue.

What I wouldn’t give for a single serious press conference. What I wouldn’t contribute to witness just one day without distressing headlines. Our incumbent has committed the only worse crime than living in our heads, though, Lord knows, he certainly accomplished that. He forced us to live in his head. A crueler or more unusual punishment had never before existed. Few of us deserved it. Even fewer appreciated it. His tenure has been similar to some pest infestation. Ants or wasps took up residence in our kitchens and set about ruining every damned meal we’ve attempted since. Many of us have been off our feed for months, going on years, incapable of enjoying creating or consuming a nutritious meal given the alarming circumstances. He smiles with his usual Happy Meal face while the rest of us realize that we’re unsurprisingly not really all that hungry again. We’re rattled, and we’re tired: RattleFatigue.

Living on the continuous defensive ain’t no way to live. Crouched, preparing to be peppered with some fresh insult, never was living. Aching for an ending undermines life’s purpose, which was supposed to be discovered and savored rather than continually ditched in favor of something, anything different, which steadfastly refused to manifest. His tenure has been a huge waste of resources and time. I guess somebody managed to make some money out of the abomination, as if that might justify the remarkable waste involved in each increasingly meager accomplishment. He will be remembered as at best hapless and, at worst, malignant. He’s trending toward being remembered as worse than we could have imagined when, and we imagined plenty terrible things then. The only scale on which he rated exceptional was the one that gauges annoyances. On that one, he has been stellar, as “eugue” as he characterizes his every act that actually measures minuscule. He was never once not a fool.

He keeps railing on about how he should be elected President a third time, or, a fourth, in his telling, because he insists that election he lost was actually a win. Of course, it’s presently illegal for anyone to be President more than twice. (He seems to aspire only to illegal goals.) Nobody I know could stomach his third attempt to prompt Armageddon, which has apparently been the underlying purpose behind both of his terms. If not, then he’s done a lousy job of pretending he hasn’t, but then he’s the incumbent who’s known for managing to always do a supremely lousy job. No surprises. Between bankrupting his own businesses, which were apparently mustered solely to break laws, and attempting to bankrupt the world, he’s been extremely busy simply fucking up everything he’s touched. Excuse me if I’m feeling a tad tuckered after witnessing these abominations. Nothing’s quite as exhausting as a fresh abomination delivered every blesséd morning.

Though I know this time was never refundable, I have still ached to move through it more quickly than my usual saunter. I had sincerely hoped to savor these days. I shouldn’t complain, or so I was raised. I know I am supposed to take whatever’s dealt without feeling particularly put upon, for I was taught by people who had themselves been trained in accepting disappointment as their due. They believed that they were nobody special and that life owed them nothing in particular, but that they would most likely always owe more than they owned. Their dream was to somehow achieve an uneasy equilibrium, and they largely succeeded. I have no idea how they managed to keep themselves sane as they aged, and maybe they didn’t. Perhaps they just came from a crazy time, one unfamiliar with the modern marvels we had grown far too accustomed to having. For them, almost everything constituted gravy, for they were born into a world that owed them not a single explanation. Their offspring heard stories of widespread destitution, but never personally experienced that until after they’d grown accustomed to better. To experience worse proved exhausting then, just when we had held so little in reserve. If I am asleep and this amounts to a dream, wake me up, please, however exhausted I might seem.

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