06.24.07

Tidal Pool

Posted in Personal at 3:02 pm by Moody

The words, the motions, the ideas, the constancy, persistence, enigma, ambivalence, frustration. These days. The attempt at working through them like a bookworm, devouring the book of my life but not reading even a single word of it. Surviving it. Pushing on it and pulling it. Climate forcing introduced by industrial dreams of success. The news is about what’s happening, but what’s happening is only the news. The television is not a teleological agent, tireless self-promoter though it be. Orange soda. Iraq. Cigarettes. France. Politics. Certified Organic. Hypermiling. The Sudan. Sex. Celebrity. Debt. The I.S.S. Distress and soma. Mission to Mars. Love. Lessig. Light. Sicko. Laughter. It’s the economy, stupid. Things that get better. Things that exist as things in the world. Palpable as architecture. Mnemonic like the mere mentioning. Breathless. Taxed. The taxonomic epidural taxidermy of the pachyderm in the corner. Diaries and logorrhea; talkin’ shit to no one. Punitive endeavors of minutes. Seconds as informants, rats and snitches. Every hour a trial. Endless testimony. Boredom. Ennui. The sickness unto death. Cancerous outbreaks of wistfulness attacking the brain, the throat, the liver, the heart. Clinical diagnosticians of the unconscious mind paid per diem sine die under the black sun. Protons do not decay. I repeat: protons do not decay.

I awoke in the warm morning light after having gotten a decent night’s sleep, on a weekend with two days off. Our family is safe for now, however broke we may be right now. Life goes on, and because of who we are we persist in learning from it all. We talk, we struggle, we tussle in the sheets on a night like any other and in the end we know we’ll be all right. We want to be all right. Just life. Just what you have when it’s all said and done, like everybody else. And the recent documentaries and pages turned linger in me. The Web pages perused and sites stumbled line the blood vessels of my brain. And I love harder, like flapping my arms in the harnessed makeshift wings I yoked myself with the day I committed to learning to fly. I run faster down that long slope toward the shore of the morrow. Age is gravity, you know, and I am Mercury. I am Prometheus. I refuse to be Sisyphus. I fucking refuse.

Time will run out, I know. Eventually, the earthquake will come, or the disease or tragedy. Life is unpredictable. Chaos is the result of there being so many rules, so many systems independently operating, that the unpredictable predictably follows. Human life is the ongoing attempt to circumvent the worst, circumnavigate the accident prone world by land, sea, sky and mind. Some do it for love, some for money, some for the love of money, some for discovery, some for thrills, some for the thrill of discovery, some for pleasure, some for pain, some for….

Some just want to know why.

I’m fighting to come to an understanding that I can’t even name. And if there’s a hope to be had it’s found in seeing that beautiful smile, in hearing the open-mouthed laughter, in seeing the tears dry and their stains fade, in feeling a live breath close by and soft with peace, in smelling the invisible glow of healthy skin in the dark of night, in trusting that vulnerability will be answered with kindness and not being disappointed… not again. And all the words can fall away like flakes of dead skin until I’m wholly new again, standing wordless beneath the blaze of the sun and moon and all the stars that drift across my hemisphere singing out the light of their universal story. I will stand there, silent. I will appreciate it silently. I will lay me down again by her side and sleep without dreams, the most vulnerable animal, heartbeat pulsing in my neck for any satellite to spy on, and know that I have all I ever needed in what was there before ever I started looking, knowing I found it only when I was ready.

This is how I learn. This is how I understand. It’s an imperfect process. Nothing guarantees its success. Life goes on for some and not others. Hopes come and go like patients at an E.R. while doubts dispense drugs and gloves to the nurses and surgeons. Who knows if in the morning of the following day the doctor will discharge the patient? And if I am wheeled outside through those sliding glass doors into the parking lot where someone waits with the car door held open, who can say how the world will have been transformed for me? How long will it take for me to realize what happened along the way while I lay in state? Will it even matter then?

What matters is what’s happening now. I see clearly enough where it will wind up. Life is a slow spiral from form built to form destroyed. We sparkle like stars across the endless screen — fathomless black and never backlit — of this tangled, conglomerate history we create out of radiant contrails, silk strands and piano wire.

There is dirt under my nails and a couple cameras in the closet. Mountains rise and hills roll to the restless sea. Clouds form and glow and cast shadows, dissipate and fade away. Trees slowly bend and wave in the breeze. The sun shines through the window of this room. Numbers pile up against me. My bare feet sweat on the carpet of the warm floor. My brow glistens. People move about. People I knew and loved are still out there somewhere, living their lives. Cars race by on the freeway, each with at least one story. Birds sing. Children scream and laugh. Chores wait. Water runs. Music flows. She loves me. I write. I wonder about it all. I marvel at it all. I know where it ends. The understanding is there. Life is here. Protons do not decay. Here in this tidal pool, there is space and time to understand. Life goes on. Right now.

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