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light and sound
July 04, 2006
i was mellowing. i had been drinking, but had let up just before the fireworks began so i could take a friend home. i had poured out the rest of my lone star, gone out and stood in the light rain with her and fagan and the other people that had set up camp chairs on the corner on the hill looking into the city. i had watched the fireworks with them, the sounds of symphony just ephemeral whispers in the distance.
occasionally, as the patch of sky above the city lit with phosphorous and magnesium, the atmosphere itself lit from horizon to horizon with millions of volts of electriity arcing across the night, as if god was trying to keep the fireworks show in some kind of perspective.
when man's attempts to light the night faded as smoke trails in the city's glow, we went back to the party, found my keys, headed home.
and once again, the parties over, the light and sound dying down, i knew my place. maybe different this time, maybe for different reasons, i could tell myself, but i knew, i know, better. it's the same. five, ten, twenty years have made no difference.
i dropped my friend off, and the rain was still light on the windshield. i drove westward on oltorf towards home, only wanting dim lights and cool couch under me, cradling me against everything else.
at congress, the street that runs almost three miles away from the south steps of the pink granite state capital building, i saw the green light, saw the intersection unimpeded. i didn't let up on the gas. i caught a glint of damp white t-shirt and skin. someone was running out into the street in front of me, and was squarely centered in front of my car. left foot to the clutch, hand shifting quick and hard into second, right foot putting the brake to the floor. anti-lock braking took over, and i felt the pulses of computer-modulated braking run up my leg, into my heart, as i steered slightly left.
the person scrambled back to my left, to the curb, and i missed him... or her... it wasn't clear. it was immediately clear that the person was not your regular pedestrian trying to get to the grocery store.
i stopped just past the intersection, no one behind me, and i got out. "dude! you have got to be more careful, i could have fucking killed you!"
the person grinned at me, held his or her arms to the sides, and hands waved from wrists. i'm pretty sure some strange noise was made. i repeated myself, and the hand-flapping and grinning continued.
this morning, i had awoken early, gone to run in the third 10-kilometer leg of a marathon relay with good friends. i felt strong, despite myself, then i felt weak. i am usually able to imagine, visualize, fantasize something to keep me going, to keep me pushing myself for some imagined, worthwhile glory.
today, as has been the case lately, i could find nothing. no sense of accomplishment, no admiration, no love could take me very far beyond the pain of the moment.
my friends came to my house afterwards, and i loved them all. i cooked, and was happy just to watch them, just to feel them around me. then they left to go on about their own lives.
i pulled up the energy to go to another party. i continued to talk to two people who had been at my party, only to eventually realize that we inhabited, probably wanted to inhabit, vastly different worlds.
i stood in the rain. i lost and fond my keys, i watched fireworks and ligtning, i went home, and i almost took a life, through no fault of my own.
my cats were waiting for me, and i poured them food. i took a shower, had a slice of the cake holly made.
nothing changes, not really, not meaningfully. nothing changes. the tension of life and death flow against each other. i try, i work to change myself, to change my environment, to change my life, but nothing changes, not really, not meaningfully. despite my efforts, despite my will, despite the person i try to be, i seem to have run up against the limits of my ability to change my life for the better.
i'm fortunate i wasn't the mechanism for someone's death tonight, but that's a meager measure of a day or a life, isn't it? i feel like it ties in with the course of things. i feel like it means something in conjunction with the ever-failing degree of care i have for my own life. i want to at least be able to use it to wrap what i have to say here in some nice, clever bow. but i got nothin'. i feel it, can'ts quite say it.
some people would have come away feeling some renewed sense of the worth and value of life. to me, i came away feeling even less... as if life were just another simple reaction in the universe, a chain of causality that stops and ends, but means nothing in and of itself.
there's something ironically comforting in that, but it makes me want for a solution that isn't one, just the lack of problem. i wish i wish i wish
Posted by Rob at July 4, 2006 10:52 PM
Comments
Happy 4th of July, Rob...
Great party, great mimosas!
Posted by: Jane at July 6, 2006 05:53 PM