Warwick Slavik’s Morning Ritual.

Jesse S. Mitchell

Warwick Slavik has ennui.  The old hollowed out boredom.  The eyesight-drunkenness of too much incandescence, the shadows cannot be seen, the nuances blurred. 

He stares at his reflection.  It is from a glut of passion, that we suffer so much ecstasy, all the cruel effects, the anticlimax of each morning, the demystification of sensation.  All cognitive reasoning distorted, vague, what was sound becomes unsound, what was found becomes unfound, lost, confused, overjoyed, but anesthetized.  A painful stab of daylight that contracts the pupil.  Greek theogony, yawning void births darkness. 

But around his eyes, past the delirium, past the habitual, he can focus finally and with a last gasp, planetary glimpse, he can see all of wide-eyed creation.  From where he is, he can see to the very end of time. And to the beginning, too.  Nebulae and novae, scratching life from out of exploding cosmos, plowing open fields of quasar quiver, implosion and convulsion.

Finding this vision a love enough for life, enough excitement to bewilder, Warwick Slavik picks up his toothbrush and continues getting ready for work.