Another Great Depression

It all started with that one damn phrase: “The only thing to fear is fear itself.” No,I say, everything, seen from a certain angle, becomes fear itself. And so everything is fearful to me. If only I could get to the office. The excuses I’ve offered! I’ve no choice but to await the labeling of an emotional disturbance and take my disability. Of course, I fear diagnosis, for my historical hysteria has not yet been identified.

It’s organic, in the gut. I fear loss of work, food, shelter. I wish I were an animal, stripped of that human fur: consciousness. Like a poor cat with all the wrong spots, my fur paints me pathetic.

And what if I never obtain disability? I’m no boy scout. How would I build fires? This is Minneapolis. I freeze to death. I will freeze in fear’s ice.

I fear that, too, the freezing, but worse, the fear while freezing. Fear envelopes me, seals me like a letter and mails me back to myself. I constantly check the mailbox for a bill, and there I am, a debt forever due.

Occasionally, I think of my future work replacement, lost in the paperwork, trying to make sense of my hundreds of organizational systems. It’s simply impossible for any replacement to understand just one of those systems. My replacement will ruin all that I’ve accomplished. I fear that more than anything, except working.

This fear, this black umbrella, is pressed into my hand and held by Franklin Delano Roosevelt himself, whose voice accompanies me everywhere, forever repeating his phrase on the radio between my ears. He even sits beside me on the couch, smug in his fearlessness. I’ve tried talking to him, but he won’t speak. He refuses to look at me. He peers midway between the floor and the ceiling, straight ahead, at some zone of fearlessness.

And in my Great Depression, what good has he done me? Where’s my New Deal? My bankrupt courage proves immune to Keynesian economics. If I had never thought, “But how can I not fear fear itself?” then none of this would have happened. I try to get rid of him, shouting, “Shove off.” I give him a push. He uses gravity to his advantage and takes on airs like a nonchalant bird.

Despite FDR’s aristocratic manner, I’ve many times tried to ignite a warm greeting, but always his hand is cold and mine becomes the tongue to his frozen fence.

And so he continues and will never stop broadcasting. I would assassinate him, lest my fear of crime. And so I ask every stranger, “Brother, can you spear a mime?”

Watch the trailer about Paul A. Toth’s latest work, Airplane Novel.

Airplane Novel is, without a doubt, the most extraordinary of all books published to date on the destruction by terrorists of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. His book tells a truly intimate inside story of the rise and fall of the Twin Towers that cuts through the hype and emotive rhetoric… Objective, clear-headed and big-picture focused, this is a book that will change the outlook of many a reader regarding the 9/11 tragedy.

—Dan Newland, international journalist for The New York Times

Paul A. Toth’s first three published novels form a nonlinear trilogy consisting of Fizz, Fishnet and Finale. Most of his published work—fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and multimedia—are available online. To access Toth’s sites, visit tothworld.com.