must be the season of The Bitch. hail Eris.
it is a season of Death. it’s been one month and one week since Love died, and in a little less than a month, it will have been one year since my beautiful Grandmother passed away into the stark night.
i’ve been thinking about death, and i’ve got a bottle of cheap Canadian whiskey to prove it.
i mentioned earlier that i’d be watching 3 hours about Death on PBS tonight. the first show was about caregiving; the second, about Hospice. i couldn’t have had a worse time, unless i’d had a copy of Magnolia to watch. i sobbed. multiple times.
the frailty of human life… the short, sweet, tender existence we all get… the Common Bond: we all are born (duh), and we all must die (oh… shit.). being born isn’t too hard for us, only for our poor Mothers. but we all must die at some point. every one of us. at some point, which is rarely, if ever, known.
i thought of the relationship i tried to have with my mother, and how it failed, and how she could be dead right now, and i don’t know (or, frankly, care). i thought of all the dear friends i have lost along the way. i thought of my sweet Uncle Stephen, who was perhaps the most handsome man ever built, maybe the finality of god’s design, who was amazing and passionate and once played drums in Lily Tomlin’s stage band, even though he wasn’t a musician (he was an artist, and a wonderful one at that)… the reason i must end up in SF if it kills me; to hang with his friends, to take up the bloodthrone in his own domain, in his wake.
i thought of all the people of the world, and how we will all be long gone in just a few short decades, to be replaced maybe by a subtler breed, perhaps lacking in some ways, perhaps just the opposite. more likely, a little of both.
and in my immediate surroundings, i thought of how dearly i wanted to take someone off of my Trillian buddy list and be done, for good, with the pain of having known such a scant love so briefly. i’m still undecided, but i know it must happen if i am to be free, truly free, again. there is only one thing that could keep me in her world now, and she’s made it dreadfully clear that it will not obtain anyway. ah, stupid youth; how it is truly wasted on the young.
the short roads, the painful steps, the things that bring us together momentarily, and the things that drive us apart in the end. it all comes back to one thing: Death is upon us all.
if only i had…
if only there could have been…
if only they knew…
if only the strings been cut.
if only.
there are so few ways to liberate the soul, and so few who are willing to take the plunge. and so many who die by taking another, more twistful tack, that leads them not unto the Arms of Love, and Joy, and Enrapturement, and Ecstacy; but yet delivers them into despair. i know, for i have long been down both of these Roads now.
i consigned myself to drink tonight, and to celebrate the more oft-travelled road of my brethren, because they have suffered much more than i; and because as my penance i now wish to suffer also; to take upon my breast that which has been Theirs. to swallow the Discord that they might be freer of their cruel, self-hating desires by a single atom, if only on account of having been pushed farther into Nirvana by one more body amongst their lot.
the desolation of us, who stand six and a half billion abreast, yet know no haven, no respite.
if i could, i would eat your poison for you, my love. i would take the spear myself. i would do anything that one might suffer less.
let it be that all who have hearts to feel, feel Love; let them bask in the sunlight beside the Arcadian stream of the ancient Greeks for a while, while musicians transform their laments into song and carry them off to another place.
let every one of us touch another tonight. or tomorrow. as long as it happens well enough before our final scene to make a difference in someone else’s journey through the inky black night of Life’s nowhere-road, on the way to our Reunion with the Stars.
i wait on the cusp for no hands while i drink myself into softness for the night.
i have thought about ending it all, here tonight, with my beloved Bottle and my terrible prose. in my foolishness, i have decided that i won’t. not until i can think of, for my final essay, a cleverer title than Amiri Baraka’s (LeRoi Jones’) Preface to a 20-volume Suicide Note anyway.
