Launch

There's a level of commitment that no one understands who hasn't sacrificed
to make real change. This morning I was rudely awoken by the doorbell only
when I dragged myself up no one was there, still the event left me paranoid
and haunted, which is not helped by today's overcast gloom and cold damp wind,
especially after a summery yesterday bright with light and warm breezes. I want to go back
into some cave. There's nothing here this morning that doesn't create visions
of the metaphorical rope, only of course for me it's never hanging that tempts, it's that launch
into open air off a cliff or highway bypass, wheels whining at high speed
till you leave the road and float flying in silent air till the inevitable pancake
at the end of any ballistic arc. I'd go ballistic for a good death. That I've always seen
my own end involving Death's black car is what makes me a committed driver.
Everybody loves you when you're dead. This ghastly morn not even tea
can wake me from this nightmare of rude daybreak. At some point you stop asking
for help because you don't feel heard. That's all I ever needed, to just feel listened to,
like I've been heard and seen. But how many have given up their jobs and lives
and daily round to pop in the car and drive a state or two away to help a friend?
I have. Most will not. It's a form of acceptable inadequacy to say I wish I could help
but circumstances prevent me. In my worst moments of self-drowning I scathe excuses.
Heaven is a place where everyone does however they can for each other. Hell is where
you have to do it all on your own, which means tasks never end. Although it's true
that doing things alone when the sky is bright makes solitude a balm. It depends
what you're doing. Fly-fishing is better than sorting through the detritus of mildewed family
snapshot albums where half the people are dead and nothing is labeled clearly.
When's the last time I wrote you a letter out of desperation?
It must have been recently, although the days have soaked together. Every day seems
like every other and none of them are tolerable, so it becomes an endless hell
with no relief in the wrong kind of solitude. Does anybody hear? Is anybody there?
Does anybody care? I'm resorting to quotations now. Depression seems callow
when it's yours while in a song or a Russian novel it's profound and universal.
That's because a million people have listened to Yesenin and Doestoevsky and Cohen
while your own less spectacular plaints generate not even an echo. The knock on the door
of a stranger is more meaningful when it's fiction. Your own life will mean more to others
when you're dead. Comparisons are inevitable. That's just the human thirst for lust and memory
again overruling the impulse towards commitment. Few can be bothered.
It feels unfair, which is probably just hubris. When I gave up my own life to care
day to day for my ailing parents till they died it was never quite sensible to most.
In theory it's praiseworthy but bedpans and ostomy bags don't empty themselves.
Life is kept at a distance to make it more seemly and less severe. But life is messy.
Deep waters don't exist till your diving pushes the river bottom away and down.
Or you smack up against the physical laws. Whoever designed this place made no
account for dreams. Responding to nightmare with absurdity is self-defense.
See how I fly. Look, there's the guardrail. It breaks imperceptibly, tissue paper in the wind,
and for awhile all you can see is sky.