Notes from Dark Morning
My sleep cycle is off kilter. Usually I go to sleep at 9 pm, wake up at 5 am. Eight hours. But the night before last some things happened that caused me to only get three hours sleep. This in turn caused me to go to bed last night at 7 and wake up at midnight. I tried to go back to sleep, but spent the next two hours trying to get back to sleep. Finally I gave it up, got up, fixed my coffee, and came in here to my studio.
At 2 am, when I first came in here, there was still a steady flow of traffic outside. Light, but steady. But after awhile the traffic slowed to a trickle, with long silences on the highway. The paper hadn't arrived yet, so I turned on the computer. I checked my email and saw that a friend had sent me this link. Seems military operations have already started in Iran. Someone else sent me a link to this Greg Palast article, Dan Rather: Tased and Confused. After reading that, I started browsing the news sites, read various stories, and watched some videos, including John Cusack's interview with Naomi Wolf about her new book Shock Doctrine. Then I went to Infowars, Propaganda Matrix, What Really Happened, and other websites I check every day, and after that started checking out various blogs, including my friend Brian Roper’s File 23. Then I wandered over to Metafilter where I found a link to a story about the old Greater Southwest Airport in Fort Worth. I figured this would interest Brian who shares my interest in the old, vanishing places of Fort Worth, so I sent the link to him.
Finally, I went to Boing-Boing where boy genius Cory Doctorow has linked to one of those “skeptical thinker” sites which attempt to prove that no conspiracy ever happened in history. This particular “skeptical thinker” has put together a list of Stupidest Conspiracy Theories which mostly consists of the obvious crazy ones that no one takes seriously (Stephen King killed John Lennon, for instance) mixed with a few that should be taken seriously, such as the dangers of aspartame, flouride, and vaccines, or the use of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast as a study in psychological warfare (see my article Television and the Hive Mind). Elsewhere on his site he denigrates various researchers, such as Jeff Wells and my friend Adam Gorightly, and declares that there is not one fact in Oliver Stone’s JFK. What a fucking idiot.
I stopped reading and started listening to KCLW-AM in Hamilton, Texas, which at this hour plays continuous music. As I sat in my dimly-lit studio, looking out at the empty highway, enjoying the music, sipping coffee, my mind went back to the article about the Greater Southwest Airport. It always fascinated me, this big lavish airport that was so much better than Love Field in Dallas, but due to political squabbles was rarely used and eventually fell to ruin. It was the strangest place. Last time I saw it was in 1977 when a friend and I went there. We made some black-and-white 16mm film footage of the decaying art deco buildings and cracked, weed-grown parking lots and runways. The footage was transferred to videotape several years later. I should dig it out and look at it. Nothing at all remains of the airport now. It was demolished and the land put to some other use.
Around 4:30 I got hungry. Seems my eating cycle is as off-kilter as my sleep cycle. I didn’t want to wake up my wife by banging around in the kitchen, so I went across the street to the Tiger Mart.
What a pleasure it is to move around in the world at that hour. It’s so quiet, and the air so soft, and you can cross the street at a leisurely pace because there’s no traffic. Inside the store, there was only one other customer, leaning on the counter talking to the clerk. I bought a sausage-egg-and-cheese biscuit. As I walked back across the street to my apartment, I saw the moon was full.
I’ve been writing for about 40 minutes. The paper has now arrived, and outside the traffic is gradually increasing. But it’s still dark outside. Dark Morning, good old Dark Morning. Usually at this hour I’m just getting up, but today, despite four cups of coffee, I’m starting to feel sleepy …
At 2 am, when I first came in here, there was still a steady flow of traffic outside. Light, but steady. But after awhile the traffic slowed to a trickle, with long silences on the highway. The paper hadn't arrived yet, so I turned on the computer. I checked my email and saw that a friend had sent me this link. Seems military operations have already started in Iran. Someone else sent me a link to this Greg Palast article, Dan Rather: Tased and Confused. After reading that, I started browsing the news sites, read various stories, and watched some videos, including John Cusack's interview with Naomi Wolf about her new book Shock Doctrine. Then I went to Infowars, Propaganda Matrix, What Really Happened, and other websites I check every day, and after that started checking out various blogs, including my friend Brian Roper’s File 23. Then I wandered over to Metafilter where I found a link to a story about the old Greater Southwest Airport in Fort Worth. I figured this would interest Brian who shares my interest in the old, vanishing places of Fort Worth, so I sent the link to him.
Finally, I went to Boing-Boing where boy genius Cory Doctorow has linked to one of those “skeptical thinker” sites which attempt to prove that no conspiracy ever happened in history. This particular “skeptical thinker” has put together a list of Stupidest Conspiracy Theories which mostly consists of the obvious crazy ones that no one takes seriously (Stephen King killed John Lennon, for instance) mixed with a few that should be taken seriously, such as the dangers of aspartame, flouride, and vaccines, or the use of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast as a study in psychological warfare (see my article Television and the Hive Mind). Elsewhere on his site he denigrates various researchers, such as Jeff Wells and my friend Adam Gorightly, and declares that there is not one fact in Oliver Stone’s JFK. What a fucking idiot.
I stopped reading and started listening to KCLW-AM in Hamilton, Texas, which at this hour plays continuous music. As I sat in my dimly-lit studio, looking out at the empty highway, enjoying the music, sipping coffee, my mind went back to the article about the Greater Southwest Airport. It always fascinated me, this big lavish airport that was so much better than Love Field in Dallas, but due to political squabbles was rarely used and eventually fell to ruin. It was the strangest place. Last time I saw it was in 1977 when a friend and I went there. We made some black-and-white 16mm film footage of the decaying art deco buildings and cracked, weed-grown parking lots and runways. The footage was transferred to videotape several years later. I should dig it out and look at it. Nothing at all remains of the airport now. It was demolished and the land put to some other use.
Around 4:30 I got hungry. Seems my eating cycle is as off-kilter as my sleep cycle. I didn’t want to wake up my wife by banging around in the kitchen, so I went across the street to the Tiger Mart.
What a pleasure it is to move around in the world at that hour. It’s so quiet, and the air so soft, and you can cross the street at a leisurely pace because there’s no traffic. Inside the store, there was only one other customer, leaning on the counter talking to the clerk. I bought a sausage-egg-and-cheese biscuit. As I walked back across the street to my apartment, I saw the moon was full.
I’ve been writing for about 40 minutes. The paper has now arrived, and outside the traffic is gradually increasing. But it’s still dark outside. Dark Morning, good old Dark Morning. Usually at this hour I’m just getting up, but today, despite four cups of coffee, I’m starting to feel sleepy …
posted by Mack White at 5:46 AM
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