As If. . .

Originally Posted Wednesday, November 6, 2013

When the Dice Are Hot

I saw an old partner of mine from a video production company we had.  He has been sick and I hadn't seen him in over a year.  Oh. . . he looked bad.  Worst thing that could happen to a video artist--lost his vision in the center of his retina due to some mysterious inflammation--happened to him.  And more.  His maladies are numerous.  I'd only spoken to him on the telephone this past year.  At times he sounded better, at other times he sounded worse.  But yesterday he was a walking mechanical skeleton.  He is a year or two older than I.  I've not felt well since. 

Another friend's mother died unexpectedly while he was visiting her.  He is close to me, and I feel his pain though it is impossible to share that.  I know what it must be doing to him inside.  Words are futile. 

Two other friends are going through some terrible divorces.  Their lives have been turned upside down and inside out.  What they assumed would be is not. 

We are all forms, fragile shells, inhabited by something.  It is enough to make you believe in god.  Not the religious ones, the Jehovahs and Allas, though they make sense, too, if you look past the endlessly silly rules that are associated with them.  I mean "the plan" that is no plan, the inevitable that is relative, the vast potential of all probabilities.  The one that makes you feel so fucking large and small. 

I am feeling on the small side of things.  We feel large, I think, when the odds roll our way for awhile and it seems to us that we have some influence.  Then the dice turn cold just when we thought the next roll would be the one, and they stay cold, and suddenly everybody who was betting with you no longer gives a shit and they go with the next hot player.  Then, like a tiny seed in a giant shell, you are unable to fill the void and you don't know if anything will come of you.  The soil beneath you just doesn't feel fertile. 

I am rooting for my friends, of course, for there is little else that I can do. 

I worked with a fellow who got colon cancer a long time ago.  I didn't know what to say to him, of course.  I wrote him a note that said simply that it seemed unjust and that he had always been one of the good guys.  I could think of nothing else to say.  He wrote back that he'd never realized until he was sick how much simple words could mean. 

That is all I have--simple words.  No, that is not quite true.  I have deeper emotions and even more complex thoughts about it all.  The nightmares are the evidence of that. 

But we move on from it as long as we can and pretend not to think too much about it, preferring to live "as if. . . ."  Tomorrow, surely, or the next day, perhaps, or. . . or. . . or. . . .