There is a dichotomy, opposing sides, currently in my mind. There is part that doesn’t wish to seem too grim. And, of course, the equal and opposite urge knows that I must be honest, and to do that, at least this evening, grim matters must be broached.

So, anyway, off we go.

Despite it all, I am still fighting. Fighting towards what I know to be an ultimate futility, fatality. But fighting all the same. In pursuit of the moments worth all the strife, even if their fate ends up as little more than memory. Though, to be fair, that is all of us end up being. At least to the folks that hang around after we exit, stage right, hopefully to thunderous applause and ovation.

At the moment, I am watching within my own skull, what was once in my regular reality slip into the realm of reclusive reverie. This is not something new. Not to this here writer, nor to most other folks who have been alive on this rock for any decent amount of time. Everyone you know will go, unless you happen to leave first. The way of things, here in this mortal sentience. My fear is not with that, as I certainly have no desire or drive towards departure any time soon. The fear resides in the idea that I’m getting used to loss, and still how uniquely shattering each occurrence is. How special is each hurt. But within that, I am never aiming for total stoicism, numbness being the enemy of a life worth living. The sort of life my perpetual efforts go into crafting for myself.

There are always the thoughts on what comes after this life. And my suspicion is that it isn’t much, and likely is nothing at all. Dust to dust. Oblivion to abyss. Etc. But still, I strive in this pursuit of life, despite all the death, around the world and around the corner alike.

But hey, nothing like the passing of a loved one from this mortal plane to reaffirm positive action in your own life, am I right? And so fades away the ideas of one’s own mortality. Replaced by the reach and yearning for more, and more, in perpetuity, if I can manage.

There is an idea, arriving in a few kinds of forms, and in vogue both from the ancient up to this modern world. An idea that the apex of accomplishment in this human struggle is the acquisition of strength. That weakness should be despised and cast out, not protected. The ‘natural’ demise of the ‘unfit’.

With such a notion, I firmly disagree. Not knocking the idea of strength, but rather the idea that it emerges through means of declining empathy. Conversely, I find that there is tremendous strength to be found in the protection of others. Additionally, in the admittance of personal ‘weaknesses’. Or so I have continually come to notice. The weakness I find within my own soul occurs most heavily when failing to protect, to help, and a disdain for the pride of ascension of the advantageous and opportunistic. And a rejection of the arrogance of trumpeted and false fortitudes. Especially in those whom would still seek assistance from those they will gladly later step upon, if the circumstances as they see them deem that a fitting movement forward. Phony altruism for personal gain, and those sorts of efforts and ideas. The sorts of folks who never understand that just because something does not benefit you, does not mean that it is unfair.

But I try not to expend too much of my limited energies (believe it or not) in such persons and places.

And still, I think of all that isn’t. And among those thoughts, all that I know will never be, either again or to begin with at all. And the guilt in thought and action, or inaction. Working my way through and beyond them, but I suppose I’m not there yet. Comes with the territory, in the moments, extending years in some cases, after a loss that seems to be unbearable. Yet bear it, I continue to do. As bear it, I must.

There is shock, often, or maybe always, with sudden loss and such similar traumas. But generally, and/or eventually, that fades into states of contemplation, more so than overwhelming sorrow. For those of us capable, the reflective moments of what has happened and how it all still fits in what is yet to come provide the spaces for even if never answered, for our questions to get sorted out and a little more organized. Maybe a little dissection, with the tricky bit being operating on a live specimen, and one that aims to keep living even after all this self-imposed surgery.

Or, that is how I am choosing to see things this evening. The vicious opportunist might see it another way. The totally thoughtful empath, likely to see it an entirely separate way from that. Not that such folks are exclusively one or the other. Some are, but most of us, I believe, are bounding between the two with various rates in various degrees. Static minds and hearts might as well be dead. It is the act of being dynamic that is one of the key indicators that something is a thing that would be considered among the living sort of things.

Still, I wondered, today, that perhaps within that shock following something, well, shocking- that perhaps we allow things that we otherwise wouldn’t, for ill or for better. Just a thought.

But in all this onward, I ponder. Desires and downfalls, deserved or unprovoked by ideas like karma. And what is possible, while attempting to claim ignorance against the doors that my better, if not more cynical senses seem to know are closed to your humble narrator. Some only for a little while. Some for much longer. And some, for all that remains of what I aim to make a rather long and full life.

I think of my past, seeming more vast than my still youthful spirit and demeanor might suggest. In three decades and change, I have done more than plenty of folks might do in a full century, and I am nowhere near done yet. Yet, all of those accomplishments can be so easily overshadowed by the failures and faults I eternally blame myself for, no matter what logical argument might be employed in defense or damnation of such stances.

Forgive me, if you will. The last two books I finished were not what would be classified as fairytales. The first, a dystopian fiction. The other, the final writings of an intellectual knowing his demises is imminent.

The later, spoke about an idea in common use, which he rejected. The idea is this ‘what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger’.

Surely, that would strike differently to a mind aware of impending demise, which I do not consider myself to be of the mind of, at the moment. But there is something to that refutation. That the things that don’t ‘kill’ us are likely chipping away at something essential, more so than adding to it. That is not to say that challenge is not strengthening, for I know it certainly is. But the idea that the things that bring us closer to the brink, even if immediately retreated from, grant us a fortitude that is otherwise unattainable.

Strength, I believe, is gotten through various means, and chiefly among them is admittance in order to gain expansion. The worst, or perhaps tragic, idea a person with life ahead of them still could have would be that some final form be reached with an existence still to be got at from the future. That there is no room for change, for growth. That the best of life is already gotten at, and there is no point in experiencing anything further, and risk the tainting of some perspective deemed pure, no matter how flawed.

But so, the fool goes on. Making lists and achieving goals. In planning a future, and future beyond that. In wanting, whether reasonably attainable or not. And, in hope, that that which is believed to be rightly deserved is still something out there, ahead of me.

Building a better Bruce, as it were. Not trying to reveal my secret identity.

But thankfully, I know when a stone has no more blood to let. And this evening’s ramble is just about dry. This week might have been less potent than the last, but that is a natural enough progression. I won’t claim to know what the week will do to me between this conclusion and next week’s introduction, but I aim to get there no matter what tribulations might arise.

  But I dreamed of my friend, last night, vividly. Part of me wishes I wrote down what he said, after waking with a sudden bolt into consciousness. It all seemed so potent and true. But I also know that those were not truly his words, only how my unconscious mind imagined the words he’d say might be. The dead have no words, not anymore. Only the whispers and shouts from the past. It is us living that keep hollering into the future.

So, barbaric yawp, etc. Into tomorrow. And until next week, my dear reader.