WAWN WAKES UP

When Wawn woke in the teaball he was already tired.  A light had shone when he had woken previously, in the dark, at the back of the dark, in his normal situation.  Now there was no light, only the forming tea, and his thoughts about Miranda, how she had treated the cats, what hadn’t been done with the funds that had been set aside so carefully, and, most particularly, the exchange.  He wanted to be thinking of the future, in its glorious nebulosity, in its sweet buzziness.  Hadn’t Miranda said, Isn’t it at some point less that we care about ending life and more that we care about joining the dead—that’s where the action is??  The future was eternally lacking flaw, a joyous multitude partaking in a feast, the unwritten song.  He thought of it as a lover who was perfect and always absent—a cornucopia of shape and movement and sighs.  Hadn’t she said, It isn’t a macabre thought, Wawn. It’s not some absent awe or some mental health issue or whatever else your pharmaceutical mind can conjure. But think of the people you love. Aren’t most of them there??  He hadn’t had answers, he never did.  The future was for answers, he thought.  The future would deal with things.  It wasn’t that he abdicated them to another time, but that that time had already abducted them (or never relinquished them), and Wawn wasn’t an impractical man.  He knew survival had something to do with recognizing the divisions of labor, the silent castes.  Hadn’t she said, Think of who’s there! None of these stupid social barriers, these equations of money and space. These morbidities masquerading as events!?  He never knew what to think of her; even when he first met her at the party on First he thought something wasn’t right, but it was one of those situations that was impossible to resist.  It didn’t matter now.  Hadn’t she said, Wawn. It’s not happening.  What we wanted. Dreams don’t belong to the living, they’re the repository of another race.?  The future he had always thought would be like one of those weekends in the winter when you get together in the snow and play games and drink and laugh, and the dog bobs up and down like a dolphin, and everything’s like a recipe for chard and oyster mushrooms and spanish onions that you’re looking for on the internet but don’t really need.  He wanted to be thinking of the future, its technical impeccability, but there were the cats and the funds, Miranda and the exchange; and there he was, in the teaball, already tired, steeping.