Smoke Rings of Transcendence

In being recently and involuntarily forced into evaluating my mortality (yet again...not to mention on my birthday), I think I may have realized something. Not "realized" it in the way of knowing a life lesson exists and having some silly-ass reaffirmation that lingers a few weeks to fade away and be "realized" again, but moreso in the way we see contrasts between light and dark, hard and soft, wet and dry. I see it to be fact and foundation. My realization has something to do with being alone and surrounded at all times. My realization is that our life is shaped by events that we have little if absolutely no control over, and that condition makes for a feeling of helplessness and empowerment simultaneously. It seems much of my life (much of OUR lives) has been the consistent and all-consuming act of throwing shit at the wall just to see what sticks. Taking the shotgun approach and casting pellets out where they may strike to find some relevance within the spread pattern.

It's been the whole of my life that I've been moderately convinced that I'd die before 35. On the day of my 29th, I came uncomfortably close to fulfilling my morose prophecy. I've been told I live a charmed life, and so it seems. But the validity of such claims has made me pause with abject indifference...until recently. Sometimes, I think I couldn't be more boringly normal, but on the other hand, there's times when I glance in the mirror and see one wildly interesting fuck, with one zestful fucking experience after another. So instead of wretching on the tarmac, I gathered my peristaltic wits about myself and decided to drive home from the airport with the windows down and listen to my favourite song of all time over and over and over again until I got home; where I drank a bottle of something, kissed the ground, and embraced all the beauty and foulness of my life.

I don't know, really. How many times do we make promises that we don't keep? Or how many promises are made to us that are either forgotten or swept under the rug, like they meant fuck all to begin with? Then again, how many times have we evolved towards apathy to the point that we just don't bother with caring one way or another anymore? I think that we'd all like to believe that when we offer up that verbal contract of whatever it is that we intend for deliverance in the future, it's going to stick. Signed, sealed, and delivered. I've made promises to people I haven't kept. I've also had promises made to me that I thought would physically kill me and emotionally cripple me if they weren't fulfilled. Yet neither happened when they didn't happen. However, there are promises that I know are to be fulfilled. I know this with some certainty that only resides in the breathless altitude of the ether...in the peaks of the Heavens, and they rest easily in their parcels.

I've had a few "prayers on a ledge" experiences. Each one of them left me with some sort of profundity. It always sparks my recall memory, and delivers a few handpicked memories that are the perfect fit for situations such as these. I know we're all connected. I know that life throws signs at you, some with more subtlety than others, but it happens...I'm certain of it. I'm always reminded of a few minutes that I stood outside in the hallway of my high school when I was heading down the path of mediocrity, an apathetic kid, fucking up incessantly, who was more interested in raising hell and setting off alarms to those who had a vested interest in my future behaviors and successes. Not that I've measured up to become some fantastic success in any regard, but it definitely shifted my sails to catch a more productive wind. I was imparted wisdom from the only teacher I ever felt to be "wise" in the truest meaning of that term...words to set a motion on a path that would prove to be much more bountiful than that which I was currently traveling. Being headstrong and stubborn has done more than it's fair share of causing myself trouble, however it has seen me through times that were shaky ground at best. Those words, spoken with sincerity, drove home one singular message that I will never forget. "Don't waste your life. You have too much to misuse."

I'm no prodigy. I'm no savior, and I'm certainly no measure of what a man is to be...but those words, from that man, meant that I was something. And the journey to finding out what that is, is not to be wasted. It is to be cherished. It is to be owned fully and completely. Squander should hold no place on this quest, and neither should lack of heart or determination. They are enemies of this experience. They are the assasssins of completeness. The good and the bad.

I saw him for the last time that year. In that classroom. His pipe smoke filled the halls on the cold Spring mornings. And when you breathe in that scent, it holds a place in your head, in your heart, that takes you to something that either the universe, or fate, or God placed in each of our unique and signifcant experiences that lasts. Like the words, I can go back and remember the weight of what that meant. And as it is...years later, I can still recognize the scent. The smell still sits in its pipe reminding me that we all float up and become something new when there is a fire inside of us.

And while girls with the middle name of Marie, or any derivative thereof (Mary, Mariah, Maria, etc.), populate my life like a redundant tarot symbol in my deck of cards, holding resonance over the casual acquaintances, like some innocuous sign in some pyschic abyss, owning some prophetic signficance...I can assure myself that there is reasoning and patterns behind and beyond everything we can possibly understand. I can't possibly understand.

Charmed life...you just have to be faster than the hell hounds that trail you. In a smoke ring, I am in the twilight of my youth.

"...the unraveling of the grand design, you felt so alive at 29."