Caracas Chronicles

Insomnia’s always been a problem for me, but lately it’s been especially bad. My rhythm’s all out of whack. I find myself waking up at weird hours, sometimes in a total state. This afternoon I napped to try to catch up on some of the sleep I didn’t get the night before due to the nap I had to take a day earlier to make up from the bad night I’d had before that (repeat ad infinitum.)

This afternoon, I woke up in a cold sweat and bolted upright, freaked the hell out…

"What was that?!" my wife asked, seeing me pant.

"I had the weirdest dream," I said, trying to collect myself.

"I knew they were getting ready. I knew the weapons were in place. I knew they’d been working themselves up to it for a long time and yeah, I could feel it. I knew violence was about to start. For real this time. I knew the gap between all the crazy, violent rhetoric and the relative tolerance on the ground was about to be erased, once and for all. I knew it was just about to start, I could feel it…but no matter how much I tried to tell people about it, all they wanted to talk about was Juanes calling the guy a sunovabitch."

No, I don’t really believe my dreams are premonitory. But I do feel that this weird cloud that’s been hanging over us for years, this disconnect, the neverending jodedera gleefully carried on right on the cliff-edge…well…I can’t decide. Is it the cause of mental illness, or its outcome?

Bit of both, I suspect…