Heal

It’s not that I lie sleepless nights
Worrying about what we did wrong
But rather what we did too right.
Fruit for instance:  perhaps we shouldn’t have scoured that
McIntosh to mirror straight from the produce section,
Or special ordered the air purifier and dehumidifier,
Or rushed for the amoxicillin at first sniffle.

It’s not a question of loving you too much
But rather keeping you too clean, too safe from life’s detritus.
Of course we walloped the crap out of you in the divorce;
You’re still donning braces and slings from that bloody mess.
But I fear we overdid the psychoanalysis,
The reasonable talks at unreasonable times,
And the amphetamines we were assured would pinpoint your unlined mind.

Now a parent yourself, headed for your own marital maelstrom,
Better to break the cycle of shrink-pill-shrink,
Better to forgo the antibacterial soap
And opt to wipe the hands haphazardly on pant legs.
That oatmeal muffin you’re about to bite into?
Do me a favor: let it fall to the ground.  Count to ten.
Now pick it up and eat it.  Trust me.  It’s good for you.

Full of Sound and Slurry

"Between every individual and the rest of the world is a stupendous firewall breached only by saints."
                                                                                                                       --Thomas McGuane

Our entire biological evolution is based on the false assumption that it won't happen to us, that disease and death are things that beset other people.  For how could we live with the truth that invincibility is the wool each of us pulls over our eyes every day in order to arrive at the next?   My girlfriend recently flew to Mexico, and her adolescent children were horrified that she might perish at the hands of terrorists or faulty airplane equipment. I spared them the simple fact that their mother--along with them--was far more likely to die in automobile traffic en route to the airport or one of their numerous league soccer games. 

Part of the problem is the circular nature of self-awareness.  Consciousness knows no beginning or end; its selfish parameters are the eternal here-and-now.  But human life is measured in a straight line, and a rather blunt one at that.  I find it astonishing, for instance, that my daughter will be 21-years-old in six months; it seems literally only yesterday that she was taking her first steps.  The author and neurologist Oliver Sacks said of the perception of time something to the effect that  "weeks drag on, but years fly by."  It's this basic juxtaposition--human perceptions vs. the physical world--that causes existential depression but also produces some of mankind's greatest art;  recent evidence suggests that the art and dread are one and the same. However, the vast mass of us go through life blissfully ignorant of these facts, secure in the illusion that cancers, random homicides, and vehicular mishaps (think of Camus) will befall the other guy.

Even Jesus--for those of christian persuasion--dreaded His demise, and He knew about it in advance. He even asked His dad at the last minute if there might be some loophole around it.  Which just goes to show that even the Savior of mankind didn't fully accept the fact that the apostles wouldn't be throwing Him a surprise 40th birthday party.

This grand deception of human consciousness is intrinsically tied up with the equally dubious assumption that our little lives have Meaning.  Okay, even if one doesn't heed Nietzsche's whopper that "God is Dead" (or more specifically, religion as a guiding force in existence), what is that Meaning?  Investing in some heavenly time-share condo?  True, organized religion has not historically given great credence--ie, the Crusades, jihads, and all the assorted bloodbaths--to the notion of its institutional beneficence.  But being nice to other people simply for the sake of being nice doesn't hold much water, either. The existentialists started clearing their throats about 150 years ago, and their offspring--New Age spiritualists--dropped acid and peyote only to give rise to karmic debt and the Internet.  What I'm trying to say is that if one embraces an entrenched belief (or even disbelief) system, we are no closer to figuring out why we all shouldn't put guns in our mouths, point upward and fire.

Solipsism is the belief that nothing truly exists--or can be proved to truly exist--outside of one's own mind (probably not a concept to be embraced by a commercial airline pilot, btw).  If memory serves, it is an idea that has been largely dismissed in the philosophical  arena as limited and, well, solipsistic.  But the older I get, I wonder if this is not indeed our natural state: I'll smoke 60 Marlboros a day and I won't get cancer; seat belts aren't necessary; there is indeed a heaven, which I'm surely bound for if I were to die, which I definitely will not.  Because how could any of us get out of bed each morning knowing that complete oblivion could happen at any--and I mean ANY--moment?  And not only the absolute cessation of self-awareness and bodily function, but knowing that our brief time on this planet meant diddly-squat?  Sure, your kids will remember you for awhile, and their kids will hear some anecdotes about you, most of them embellished either on purpose or accident...but after that?  Who among us can converse longer than two accurate minutes about our great-grandparents?  Not me, that's for sure.

Antinatalism, another unpopular philosophical position, put forth the proposition that it would be better for everyone involved never to have been born in the first place.  Cranky sonofabitch Arthur Schopenhauer states:

"If the act of procreation were neither the outcome of a desire nor accompanied by feelings of pleasure, but a matter to be decided on the basis of purely rational considerations, is it likely the human race would still exist? Would each of us not rather have felt so much pity for the coming generation as to prefer to spare it the burden of existence, or at least not wish to take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?"

Not surprisingly, Schopenhauer lived only with poodles, and he wasn't known for throwing good parties.  But he does have a point.  (And he is fun, and relatively accessible, to read; check him out.)  The world is a harsh and pointless place.  As Hunter Thompson said: "Some people get rich and famous, most people eat shit and die."

The only reason I could give anyone not to eat a bullet would be this: for whatever reason, we are alive.  Like leaves, rocks, solar systems, even Rush Limbaugh, we are infused with The Life Force.  I don't know why, and neither do you.  Cold cruelty and pointless suffering seem to be the norm, but so what?  Be thankful if you've got the long end of the stick and quit bitching; most of the citizens of Earth have it way worse than you ever will.

Now I'm going to smoke a cigarette and masturbate.  Have a great weekend.

white bass run

this poem smells like the river
where we stood that night watching
the small pale bellies of doomed fish

reflect the moon just beneath the surface
like strings of unending light transmitting code.

my brother stood on a small raft of bobbing aspen logs
casting his line into the darkness over and over,

and as the mushrooms kicked in strings of thick smog
fell down like god's drapes closing for good,
guiding our souls back home for one last stern lecture.

a couple hours before dawn we heard a small bell
tinkling pagoda-like at the end of the pier
where a father and his middle-aged son landed

an illegal sturgeon, a veritable dinosaur with gills and asian whiskers.
it would've been the devil if not for the blind gray eyes

and when the father released it back into the river
it slid like a silent comma down again into its lightless cold tomb.

we staggered into the cabin toward our beds,
terrified of dreaming dreams of sunshine, love, and easy failure.

                                                     --for John