not enough coffee..

Thursday; January 24, 2008 7:31 AM

It's still dark outside. I have brushed my teeth, drunk my coffee (espresso, two cups). I look back at waking up in the middle of the night choking, I thought I was going to die. Took a few seconds to clear my air passages and breath. It seems I was about to vomit in my sleep. I suppose I _could_ have died. It does look improbable but it is possible. The thin, thin ice of existence which we so carelessly career upon.

The news are full of reminders of just how thin that ice is. The presenters of the Today programme play at being cynical, at asking all the sharp questions. Politicians play at being important and dodging all the answers, while the presenters still acquiesce at playing that the politicians are important. News of a Hollywood actor dead at 28 and the ripples, the strange outpour of grief and its counterpart, the sick bad jokes on the forums, on livejournal; so many people die every day who should not, every single one of them the loss of the unique way in which the forces the Universe met in that way, that one time only and never again, to paraphrase Hesse. Maybe the Princess Diana syndrome is just a way for people to concentrate their grief at our own fragility and transience. Or maybe it is just a media manipulation. Who knows. Probably a bit of both.

Outside it is getting lighter, that grey-blue light of dawn. I must go out, do my lesson. While I'm in the world, there's plenty to do, plenty plenty to do.