Standing Eight

Christ, I feel like I should have a disclaimer in front of some of my posts. Especially that last one. No one deserves puppy dogs and death; it’s Satan’s elixir. How could you read it? I never did. I wrote it in a spasm of grief and fear and then let it float into the internet ether like some illegal untended fish trap; let those who pulled it up feel it’s sting. But bullshit, I never intended The Long Sunset to become a grief counselor’s office, and I’ll be god damned if five years later that is what it becomes.

But watch out for those curveballs, gentle reader. I’m a margarita of pain and numbness. You deserve better though, and I’ll try to give it to you as these long nights turn into stinging short days.

And for fucksakes it’s Christmas. Holly jolly.

This is my last post for the year, and so, feel free to not visit the Long Sunset until after the new year, but please visit in 2011. For starters, I’ll have stories about road trips, and transsexuals dropped for New Year's midnight, in clam shells at that, and these girls/men will be named simply Sushi. These stories are true. And in short; a good time will be had by all.

Maybe. Everything is hard to say.

Yet here I am for a piece of depression, and, lord knows, that’s why I keep writing here. Pain. The novel I’ve been writing crawls along at its own goodwill. Like some stubborn snail that fears not death. So I smash it with my small hammer, collect the pieces, and hope it reforms. And, faithful reader, sometimes it does and sometimes it does not, hence, this novel will work it’s way out of me very slowly, and who knows if it’ll even be worth a shit.

But it’s mean. And real. Does it work? Doubt it, but I’m going to try because that’s the only legs I have left.

So, as I was saying, this is my last post for what has been a mean and bitter year. And as I sat outside alone by the fire tonight I put a disturbing amount of thought into that; that being, my last 2010 thought.

I had a lot of people tell me over the past few days that they feel like Mike is something in the essence around them. As in, we are all here, and he’s not, but he is. I wish I could follow this. I feel nothing, but that discounts neither the opinion of the believer or the skeptic. Fact is, I think we all go to the same place, and our lives are but a struggle to define it. The less you struggle; the more definition you may get. Or the opposite, because lord knows I'll struggle. Ugh, what an awful theory. Jeffrey Dalmer, and my brother befallen to the same fate, and as we all will. So what part of that doesn’t push you over the edge of sanity? How can I feel that and not spend my days roaming US-1 like some crack addict hoping for a mental solution? A thing to sooth my brain sludge, and massage it like a soft putty into something I can handle, and cry less about.

Or, on this dawn of 2011, why not go completely nihilistic? Why not thrash and bite and curse every conscious minute I have? Ask why. There is no answer.

But those of us that are the smartest already know this, and in the course of human history we have answered. Family, friends, progress, patience, and fight. These are the things that matter in a world that very well may not. Family and friends are obvious; they are the core that holds everything you’ve known and ever will. Progress is the toughest; it often involves pushing things you’re not even sure of, but progress is the engine of all hearts, even if sometimes beats the wrong way. Patience is pure, it only takes the strong caring heart to absorb it and dispense it. And then fight…

We have to fight. Our lives have been put in some impossible situation with no obvious definable meaning, and so, what can we do? How do we feel? How do I feel? How are you doing? These questions are paramount to the Gatling gun of my daily existence, and, in time, I am somewhat sure, all of ours. Fight is the word I use to underscore the reality of the obnoxious everyday pain that is reality seeping into our cores, overwhelming us, and destroying us. That’s fight. And if you’re not facing it, you’re are either dodging it, pretending it doesn’t exist, or…you’re not really here.

Where is my brother? Last post of the year. I hope somewhere gentle. I hope he surfs with me every wave I catch. I hope he’s there in every dark corner I find. I hope he’s in my fingers. I hope he knows that when I cry late at night my tears are for his loss and not mine. And I hope when all of us who cared so deeply about him get together and toast, we do so for his soul, and the one we hope to reconnect with.

But, I doubt it. We are but pulsating energy beams that push until we break, and when we do, when we break, we go; somewhere that I think defies definition. That somewhere, odds are, what I feel personally in this dark pathological night, is nowhere. Nothing...death, is nothing, death is just pain for those who consider themselves undead. Commence to jiggling.

Well, sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes, brother, the bar eats you. And eaten we all may be when we meet the twisting beauty of some garage sale nostalgia that we've all been working towards. But I promise this; I will fight. Every night and every day; punching this reality until its soft core gives way to the pounding false reality I’ve always assumed lurked below the shadows. That’s all you can do though; punch, hope, and pretend. In the order of your choosing, and pick the right one.

That said, happy New Year’s, Merry Christmas, have a Tip Top Tet, Happy Hanukkah, and for god sakes, push....

I’ll see you next year. And keep fighting.