Thoughts.

That’s the theme here, right? Though, I suppose I shouldn’t be asking you that. This is my creation. My monster. One spawned so far back in time, yet only a few hundred yards from where I was standing earlier today. But we can get to memory lane later on, with all its tricks and false signs. And all it’s honest recollections, as well.

For now, let us go on the brief journey of the massive and miniscule thinkings that have been bouncing about this skull, as of late.

Death, and its antithesis, life- they’ve been about. Loneliness, as well. Point and purpose and the futility of it all, never far from the forefront of my mind. Thoughts upon this story I’ve been weaving of myself, and how it intertwines with the other beasts of this species that I’ve known and continue to know. Some lost to time and the like. Some lost because this plane of existence is no longer where they reside, if there is any other planes to be called home. The theologians have their varied thoughts on the matter. The philosophers, as well. And here I am, attempting to make sense of what little I can even arrogantly claim within my understanding. Amateur in both standards, and so many more, no matter how much time might be consumed in those and similar such genres.

It wasn’t a funeral. It was a memorial service.

I missed it all the same. But as always, for me, with such events, it is not the souls now gone that concern me. It is those that get left behind. Here, among us doomed living, in all our beautified and behemoth sufferings. Those are the ones who concern me. The dead, they suffer no longer.

So, for that, I feel guilt. A dear friend could have used my presence today, but the matters I had to attend could be ignored no longer, not if I plan on keeping this personal meat vessel operational. I’ll make it up to him, my friend, in due time. But not here. Not now. Not within these words I am stringing together, if for any purpose at all aside from some form of self-service. My now necessary malignancy, this thinking on page and passed out to a generally inattentive and apathetic world.

So, onward.

There’s this modern millennial crisis, as I see it. Scrolling through the list of social media connections, realizing that with the passing of time the deceased are growing more numerous.

Among peers, it is still within the stage of tragic. Being that we are young enough for it to be unnatural for those in my age range to be corpses. Yet, there they are. And still, the digitized pages of their existence lingers on in this electronic eternity. Hell, I even have two of them listed right next to each other, among all the rest, living or dead. Alphabetically. They had the same first name. You can often tell the details of demise by the foundations and causes the living tag their online memorials to, even if never officially announced. Of those two now dead fellows, side by side in order, they differ. One of them, a few years back, desiring no longer to carry on in this life. A choice, sure, and one many have strong opinions regarding. But ultimately, his to make.

The other, the fellow of topic in a church today that I failed to make it to on time, he would have liked to have gone on living. Wasn’t in the cards, evidentially.

Both of them, gone now. So it goes, to steal a phrase.

He and I were not what you’d necessarily call friends. Top notch acquaintances, I’d say. A good person, through and through. We didn’t have all that much in common, though there are things that I wish, perhaps, we’d connected more on. Though, that would only have led to a greater pain on my behalf. But we could have buffed out about films more, but alas, we did not.

Though, he did write reviews, and a great many of them, while near and totally bedridden with the illness that took, along with a great many more before him, in that battle lasting for him less than a single solar circuit. Immortalized, beyond his own flesh and blood.

He also, occasionally, wrote about his situation.

The last of which, I read last night. It was not uplifting. It was not drenched in self-help delusion or contrived inspiration. It was real. And now, it is clear, these were the last public thoughts of a dying young man. He wrote of the fight against his demise, and how hope was not abundant in it. Of the kindness and support of his wife, having only been married this past summer, already sick with the disease that was to end his existence here on earth. His shame of feeling weak. Of being lost. Of not seeing the light at the end of this struggle. And I suppose, he might have known that there wasn’t any. Other than whatever peace returning to our original abyss might conjure. But at thirty-two years old, I can’t imagine such thoughts being relieving more than terrifying. But I could be wrong. I am only vaguely citing his own words, or at least the one he chose to put out for the world to see.

He was an excellent writer. And an excellent human being. Was, though. Again, so it goes.

My heart breaks not for him, not any longer. It did, but his suffering is over. It breaks now, for those left behind. His newlywed widow. And another, my dear and close friend, who was as close to him, as I to he, and possibly, even closer as of late. Then there are his parents mourning the loss of their progeny, which is not the way, I believe, those things are supposed to go. To mourn a parent, even if before we would have liked or wanted, is still something more natural.

To mourn a child, though, is one of the cruelest blows this life can deal. Something that should never occur. And yet, one that, tragically, does. I’ve seen it before, on a personal level, a few times, but they were a few years back, and further down in the alphabetical listing. I hope they have found their peace, as well. But still, they are gone, as it were.

Again, so it goes.

But as I don’t believe the dead have internet connections, I’ll go on no more about them.

So, us, still living. What of we?

We, with all our petty and profound differences and similarities. With our desires and disdains. With our hopes, both possible and fatally forlorn. With our past and presents, and whatever futures are up to our choosing. And the great many of them that are so far beyond our control. Of course, plenty would argue, that nothing really is within the authority of our grasp. I’d like to think them wrong, but even my own, often at times, massive ego must admit that I have been regularly incorrect on matters both benign and cataclysmic. And reason leads me to believe there is much wrongness I’ve still got left to get at. While still maybe a few rights, as well.

But I mentioned, earlier, about being in the area where this very experiment was first concocted. In such grandiose vanities as only unrelenting youth can abide, a decade and a half ago, I started these ramblings. In the place that has proven to be pivotal and prominent in the shaping of the man that clicks away at you today. The place were I first stood on my own, so to speak. Where the ideas that still shape me found much of their formation and foundation. The place where I met some of my closest friends, still, to this day. The place where I met the mother of my daughter, and therefore, the place that ultimately is responsible for drive of so much of my current day-to-day. If not all of it.

It was a college when I attended. A university, now, being the ever-ambitious institution. And ambition that I have both been fed on and have fed into. I teased the idea of strolling about the campus, but the day did not allow the time for such, perhaps fruitless, wanderings.

So instead, I met with a few friends in that deli known of local fame. The one where we would so regularly line up on hungover and sleep deprived mornings, which for many such young academics, might start in the afternoon. To get coffee, or the coveted mac and cheese. Or a wedge. Because that’s what it is called. That, or a hero. No other nomenclature will your narrator accept.

The owner remembered me, for certain. Though I’m sure my name was lost to him, the idea of my identity remained clear. Both of us older. He, looking it enough with hair now grey where once brown. I, perhaps not so much. As jokingly, I told another one of those impossibly dear and lifelong friends I gained at this establishment, who sat across the small table by the window today, that all the college girls were checking me out. She said, hevaily dosed in chagrin and admitting that she hated feeding my ego in such a manner- that I still look mostly as young as I did then. Then being, as we rounded down to the delicatessen’s owner when asked, being a decade ago. That being our graduating from that academy. The truth is that by this spring, it will be a dozen years.

Oh, woe, to think so much time has passed and I feel none the wiser for it.

But I know that isn’t true. In all that time, I have been through and experienced much more than a great many of my peers. More than some of them will ever do and feel and witness. And still so much more to do.

I wondered, earlier, whether that young man of yesteryear would laugh to see what he might become. Or, would he be riddled with pride. A bit of both, I’d imagine. Much as I look back at him, with all my armor of hindsight and all that blind fantastic foresight, no matter how inaccurate.

     I know his hopes were different than what ended up being. But perhaps, and likely, he might be satisfied with all we ended up getting to instead. Being ahead of the curve in so many ways, even if not in the ways of vain construction composed back then. And yet, those hopes are still alive. Molded and adjusted, for certain, but still all there, in one form or another. h

     So, I suppose, that being among the living means I must keep getting at as many rounds of tomorrows I can manage. A great many more, me thinks and me hopes. Though, I have never been fool enough to know them guaranteed. My profession is dangerous and grimly enlightening enough to know that.

     I am, though, fool enough to keep trying. To feel and chance, even against idiotically near-impossible odds. To experience and share such endeavors with those around, be it friend, foe or stranger. And to succeed. Sure, for my own sake. One always operates at least slightly from such selfish perspectives, being the general curse of singular sentience. But as a parent, I know my accomplishments will ripple through my own daughter’s life, along with my failures, though limited I hope the latter to be.

     And, as the hopelessly romantic dreamer I still somehow see myself being- hoping my deeds in this brief existence echo at least a little ways beyond my biological life, if not far beyond- I know that I must keep on keeping on. And more than that. I know I must rage against oblivion for as long and as loudly as I can muster.  

     So, let us end on the optimistic, for all us left living. After all, these could be the last words I end up putting out, even though I don’t believe they will be. But either way, while I still seem able, I’ll leave it on hope. For tomorrow, in this case, being Tuesday, might be the day we’d hoped might come. And if not, there is always Wednesday, if fate, or whoever, will allow it.

     And if they won’t permit such aspirations- I say fight for it anyway. And if you’ve got no fight left, go ahead and keep fighting all the same. We’re all of us, doomed. So why not shake your fist at the abyss, and let the barbaric yawps ring out as long as they can. And after that, for even just a little bit longer.

All us, eventually, worm food. So it goes.