Life and death and all the contemplations in one lazy Saturday afternoon.
(Ashamed of my sacrilegious existence, I finally borrowed the first book of the Death Gate cycle and I'm appropriately feeling like a teenager reading it... Curled up in my hammock chair, avoiding my homework.)
Today, the day the brave men March Fourth, my bravest of warriors roommate turns 33. We wanted to do something juvenile to celebrate the fact that we're not old yet, but it occurred to us that we're still doing it all...
...and we're both tired of playing slut for now so sex in an alleyway didn't happen.
John, standing in my doorway: "Vene, vidi, vici - it's better to burn out than to fade away." He's such a pseudo-intellectual, the perfect picture of brighter than life as he wanders out the door with expensive wine in his hand. They're having roast beast for dinner.
*sigh* Johnny, the noblest socius criminis a monstre could wish for. Johnny, thinking of going monogamous again for the first time since his divorce.
Johnny, who spent the day demoing skis up at Mont Blanc, never bothering to adjust his bindings...
Johnny, who after hurling himself over the lip of a jump, and dropping into a shoulder-roll as both bindings release simultaneously, and who proceeded to follow them down the hill, skiing a perfect parallel in his ski boots. One of the boys called to report the sight of a pair of skis (too thick for the bindings to brake their momentum) running perfectly straight down the run, with heroic Johnny skiing a perfect parallel sans skis, after them.
Johnny, after all this time, after watching the crow's feet establish themselves in graceful laugh-lines around your eyes, you're still more my hero than Le Zubial could ever be.
Because he is so damn ALIVE.
So here's where death comes in. Tiffany, my lovely ex (I have written numerous poems to her alabaster belly and fierce cries) who is now engaged (and well-deserving) to my ex-husband, just e-mailed me.
The father that she hasn't seen since she was fourteen, just died.She has spent the past week in contemplation of the finality of death.
She asked about how I feel about death. Most of her friends refuse to talk about it.
I have a strange relationship with our quiet sister. She is no thief of light or love, she is no dark temptress come to tear the soul away. I don't believe in evil, and I don't believe that death is wrong.
I should. Ford knows, I have faced noble sister and kissed her cheek. Kim, lying like an abandoned doll in a parking lot. Kim, who I have never spoken of these last 8 years. Kim, who took a scar identical to the one I have in my leg, but with her neck. Kim, who for one instant was no longer my mentor and heroine, but who looked at me with the glazed sweet eyes of sultry sister.
I spent several years administering first aid. As a lifeguard, an EMT (those damn defibrillators are FUN), even a lieutenant in the Israeli army.
I have fired a gun at a man, I have hit a man with the crazy jagged edge of a bottle reeking of cheap beer.
I have bound the eyes of a child covered in third degree burns, I have held the hand on the long ride to the hospital of the father that I despise while waiting for some other ambulance attendant to take his pulse.
I have kissed the ridge of countless bottles of sleeping pills, and Drain-O. I have most probably ruined my liver.
My yearbook quote begins with: "Slave screams, he thinks he knows what he wants (I was a NIN fan, whatcanIsay?) Ten thousand suicide attempts and I've learned".
No mention of other times I've played tonsil-hockey with death, but it doesn't really matter, does it?
I've learned. I've learned that the screaming in my ears as I race far too fast, down roads, down ski hills, on roller-coasters, or when I stand stock-still on the highest peak I can find.
I've learned that I have a million things to do, and as long as I'm here I'll be working on them.
Dave, sweet boy of 19, was writing assembly code and sappy poetry until the day they locked him in the hospital because his AIDS infection had gone too far. I was 15, and Dave didn't care how old he was. He'd LIVED.
I've LIVED. Johnny has lived enough for three men (and a small pug, but we'll leave that go, shall we?). I'm not afraid of you, dear sister. I've longed for your quiet, late at night, now I just revel in the knowledge that you're never far, and that thanks to you, fancy cars mean nothing.
I will fear nothing, not even you, sister. I will remember smiles and cold fingers entwined with my own, and breaths fogging into near-nimbus masses over shared cigarettes on the snowy mountain.
I will fear nothing because I know my strength, and I know that it is already unfair how much I have been allowed to do, and touch.
I swore to die when I was 19, once, allowing myself the loophole to wait until I was 29 - if I was having too much fun.
I don't break many oaths, and if I break this one it is because for the first time I am not afraid to keep going.
And I have you for company.