it was a fitful sleep. r. asked what are you reading. a spectre haunting, on the communist manifesto. hmm, light reading, r. said. funny how time goes, growing up communism was a threatening idea we couldn't entertain. now we can, and the time is ripe as it was in 1848. it's more like the threat of democracy that makes for fitful sleep, even as it was in 1948, but that was before i was born.