AN EMAIL EXCHANGE or, shaking hands with monday morning

THE NAMES OF THE INNOCENT, OF DEPERATE ACTS, OF BODY PARTS AND SUCH, HAVE BEEN OMITTED OR REPLACED BY xxxx.


ME:
i had a heavenly weekend, because it was kicked off by depravation and repression. once i was liberated from my captors, i was free to bounce back and overindulge in everything i wanted, mostly food and beer and fishing and xxxxx. actually, ONLY food and beer and fishing and xxxxx.

i don't remember much from friday, as the drugs i was on create amnesia, xxxxxx.

i had some interesting thoughts while lying in a hospital cot waiting for the procedure. i realized very very clearly that this is where we all end up. we are all headed for a hospital cot in the middle of some non-descript hospital, waiting to die. it was bone chilling.

my father died in a place like that. i will die in a place like that. an unknown entity, a piece of meat, a distraction to those who are there to earn their paycheque. it was so so cold. but you cannot pay people to actually care, which is the beauty of love - and why it is the loneliest colony.

i discovered a fear of death i had never known before. i have never feared death, because i never saw how it would come. i assumed the best, you know, as people are wont to do - it would be in my sleep in my bed, it would be in the blink of an eye somehow, somewhere far far away. but the truth is, it will feel just like i felt lying there: unimportant. unnecessary. that terrified me. what is this life for? i kept asking myself and never got a concrete answer. my faith in my own beliefs was shaken.

yes, it fades quickly today, the concerns of work, of energy, of friends, of basketball, of duty and responsibility, drowning out the big question. I had no religious epiphany or yearning for god, lying there. i just had the sense that, even if i write the next pedantic novel that changes people's minds for 250 years, even if i have children who learn to fly, even if i make a zillion dollars and cure poverty, i would lie there and wonder the same questions, i would lie there and feel the same way.

so how do i prevent it? temper it? obliterate it? what can i do now to prevent me lying there feeling unnecessary? the world will not stop when i leave it. the world will not be made much different by anything i do to it. the only thing i can do in this life that is of any real value is to love... i think.

i'm on shaky ground. it is uncomfortable to have your foundations rocked. mine are still wobbling. thoughts?


YOU:
some thoughts+
I am chilled by the imagery and thoughts you explore.

When I was 5, i realized that I would one day take the long sleep in the ground and that the world would continue without me... I wept in my mother's lap saying "I don't want to die, I don't want to die". I have been the same person since that day, it's one of the great watershed moments of my development.

That is probably when I grew up, and ever since I've been struggling to unknow that feeling of dread... true that your life's greatest value is to you. the living of it is infinitely greater than the results of it...those who change the world forever still feel pain and die as an individual... life is a gift to the person who is living it... and Love is the essence of feeling, which is the essence of living.

You are such a lover already, too much thought about the inevitable isn't good for anyone. You'll die one day, I'll die one day... a fate that is not negotiable. it feels like it should be, because the details of our lives become SO important to us...but such is the nature of being human.

This life is for living. that's why I hate TV. that's why I love my bicycle... Saturday afternoon I played on my bike at the CNE grounds for an hour... drifting in slow circles around some cement flower beds and flag poles, making a little obstacle course for myself... I was 8 years old, or whenever it was that I could have fun and no worries... I only started doing art when I was 25, so that never makes me feel young, it makes me feel good, but it makes me feel older... the bicycle makes me feel young. I am also wobbly today... "xxxxxxxxxxxxher arms xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx far awayxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"


END

how wonderful to have friends who want to shield you from the world.

"Friend, we are lost in a storm of our own creation! "
"farn, you're standing on my roof, it's february, and you're wearing my robe"
"then what are you wearing?"
"a tea cosy"
"oh, how nice, let's have some tea"
"that's what i said"
"i thought you said jump"
"i did, i said 'jump in the shower if you're cold'"
"so what are we doing up here"
"i am protecting you from yourself"
"am i dreaming?"
"i am flattered, but no"
"good"
"good"

END 2