Where to go from here?
This is probably going to be difficult, and I don't know how to make it through it. I have sat down several time to write this post, and each time, I have had to stop, a certain self-induced fuzzy feeling overtaking my sentience and making it impossible to continue. I have vowed to myself that aq1) This would be IT for this blog. This would, complete or otherwise, quantify my grief, at least in this arena. and b7l) If I cannot finish this, then this is ALL you get. At least here, in this setting. There will be another blog. There will be a beginning to what has ended. And this post may constitute a novel, more so than an entry. It all depends on how cohesive I can fit the pieces of a shattered mind; historically I have done well enough to keep us alive and put food on the table. We shall see how well that translates to the world of blog posting HAH!
As I walked through the yard, earlier; tiy rivulets of sweat tickling behind my ear and into my beard, I spotted the rigid and brittle stalk of a poke berry plant. Ah, the mysterious and yet oh so common poke weed. How many times I have LONGED to consume its poisonous leaf; that enigma of the south; to feel, or at least believe, in the panacea of it's magical liver healing leaf. But fear has time again driven me back. There the crisp and moist stalk grow; and goes untouched for fear that those blood maroon veins there impart death to those who consume it...
And that is just it. I am not a hardliner any more. For a while, I was a hardliner believer that I would be consumed rapidly by death, in Christina's wake; as some sort of penitence to being consumed in her stead. (That part I never got, and still don't . The better is taken, and the remnant of the things it helped create and sustain remain. Namely, me. he second law of thermodynamics is immutable, perhaps...) As a hardliner, I truly believed that the inner sanctum of faith I had left was ultimately the sublimation to death itself. AS I earlier stated, in penitence to the fact of my remainder here on this planet. Following her death, recently, I would have readily consumed of that prof-erred leaf, on the OFF chance that the contents were detrimental to that physical system which sustains me. It would only be just, when I could believe in those things. For there is a failure of rectification here; rain falls on the good and the evil. That is how I explain her death. At the same time, if you juxtapose that with justice, then rain does not fall on the good, and there is an intrinsic fault in the system I invest in. A little help here?
But I digress. I am NOT a hardliner anymore. I do not believe it is my lot to immediately follow her into death. I have thought long and hard on this. After all, I often wondered how her very WILL could have let her loose life into the unknown, knowing that the very fate and the faces of her beautiful children and thier happiness and peace resided in her safe keeping. Later I had to come to the conclusion that I lived under a delusion instituted by wishful thinking and Hollywood. We have been preyed upon by a necessary illusion. That through strength of will, want, or love, we can prolong or even change that which the physical world deals to us. And we cannot. No one has loved anyone as I love her. It changed nothing...
I am not a hardliner. I do not deserve death, any more than she did. I take that back. I deserve it one thousand million times more than she did. Every cross word or evil action I have ever had that she had to deal with makes me deserving of demise. And I WILL have it. But compared to me, she did not. But the fact remains, here I sit in this dirty house, basqueing in the chill of the AC, ignoring so many pressing duties, dealing with my insignificant head trauma, and she sits on my shelf in one of her teapots she loved so much; an urn, and to me a shrine, and she experiences nothing. She does not know the darkness that has engulfed her ashes, and she does not know the light each morning as I open that vessel, to tell her good morning, and to think dreamily about bringing her sentience somehow into each new day... But I digress...
I noticed the plant. I noticed the warmth, and the trees, and somewhere, in the back of my mind, I knew of pleasure. Some kind of awakening is happening.
Recently, an acquaintance told me of a man that tried to commit suicide. This man went to a hotel, put a gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger. I laughed with my acquaintance about this man's pathetic attempt to take his life. But I am convinced I was laughing for different reasons. I have been there. I have felt the pathos; the void. I have seen that elephant far too many times. As one who wanted to live, I have seen death approaching and as one who wanted to die, I have seen the ponderous march of life keep rattling on. I laughed at this poor pathetic man because of the silly way in which he tried to kill himself . A hotel room? A gun to the mouth? If I was THAT conventional and predictable, I told myself, perhaps I would muck it up too. No, if I were to do it, I would steal an airplane, jump out of it with a silk chute, and land in the Congo and hunt down some ethnic cleansing bastard and kill him and as many of his followers as my hands and life would allow. Because, you know, if you are to die, assume God's role, and become the arbiter of who is to live and to die, right? Set it all right. Accolades in Heaven, just like a good Muslim. I guess I couldn't do that either. I guess, when it came down to it, I would end up in that hotel room, with that gun, that cold and oily metal pressed against my palate...
I notice the plant. I have the cold and smooth metal of a gun held loosely in my left hand. I begin to pull the trigger; I want to see that milky mist of shattered chlorophyll and plant blood dissolve through the air. For some reason, I have always and would like that. I stop and think; I would like to parboil and eat those leaves. I would like to just once know what they are. So much I don't know. PART 1
No comments:
Post a Comment