On April 26th, 372 B.C. Plato was the first man to inflict injury upon his own dreams.
Not the forms casting shadows in his cave, his literal dreams.
At 6:35 a.m. the impish snarl of a water organ crept into his Utopia of an
all-you-can-eat gyro cart overturned at the corner of his street and roused him
back to consciousness. The ingenious design of his Clepsydra quite obviously complete,
Aristotle came running with the awkward stride of a sleepwalking adolescent
to see what his master had done. When he arrived he saw flying,
two pots of water, an air-compressing submersible chamber and one water organ reed.
Aristotle quickly collected the shattered pieces and noted
that this broken pottery was more real than time itself.
On September 21st, 712 A.D. a small village just outside the boundaries of
Chang'an, China came dangerously close to taking the life of the palace
astronomer/inventor/sleepyhead. Crowding around the door of Yi Xing, the
townspeople tore their robes and wailed for him to put a stop to the
incessant clanging. Xing, who had apparently overslept and was still
clinging to morsels of fading dreams about his young mistress, stuffed his
face into his pillow, muttering eureka, after first having chucked the
two clay pots, handful of stones and plate-sized gong out the front door,
much to the amusement of the assembly of drooping eyelids and torn pajamas.
In the year 1235 A.D. tortured residents of Baghdad began associating their
daily and nightly times for prayer with the ringing of their eardrums from
uninvited chimes.
In 1493 St. Mark's Clock-tower polluted the once-pure Venetian air with
hourly reminders that we are all yet one hour closer to our inevitable death
and the priests of the day called it humility.
Levi Hutchins of New Hampshire turned to a pine cabinet, brass clock and
mechanical gears in 1787, and for the first time gave himself the ability to
choose when he would hate the morning.
In 1847, French inventor Antoine Redier began making money off of people's
early morning auditory masochism.
Lew Wallace, the morning after completing his masterpiece novel "Ben Hur,"
awoke with a fiendish beeping in his ear and proceeded to invent the paradox
of the snooze button.
In Spring of 1942 the war in Europe raged and all U.S. alarm clock production ceased.
In the Spring of 1943 well-rested factory men, confronted by their foreman
upon arrival at 9:15, erupted the words "my alarm clock is broken,"
forever placing the excuse in the deep pockets of slackers
world-wide.
To all of these respected men of our history
Who have thought with their hands to create
The foundation of a society drowning in Starbucks,
I wish to express my sincerest ingratitude.
I lie awake in bed at night,
Licking the bitter taste of reality from my cheeks,
In the company of Plato, Lew Wallace and Yi Xing,
Wondering what dreams will be stolen from me.