…of cold, sudden death minutes from the airborne journey’s end. The often horrifying mystery of life. But we go on, searching, we the living; searching for the dead, and for ourselves.
That was yesterday. Though, really, it’s every day. The cold shallow river still holds its terrible burden.
I go to Orlando tomorrow. I don’t want to go. (It’s morning. I go today.)
Another month in the subtropics while the country above me devolves in various weather through history. The river flows.
I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m tired.
Tragedy. Young skaters, their gift, their grace, their future gone in the ice cold shallows of the famous river in history–American history’s river. A current President who, no matter how solemn the occasion, manages to be rude, embarringlyly, infuriatingly, (disappointingly?) inappropriate, egoistic, partisan, uncharitable, self-congratulatory, self-involved….
Master of Puppets. Hope of those who’d be rescued from the Other Puppet Masters and their crazy ventriloquists.
We are, in our derelict, unreflective moments, all puppets delivered to the hands of life’s monsters, and life’s “petty pace…tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…”
But we were all, in a moment two millenia ago, rescued from death. And from all that is rude, inappropriate, egoistic, etc. etc. It’s urgent that we believe it. That death was conquered.
As the old priest said from the Brookline pulpit years ago: you live–forever!
It was years ago, but it might as well have been yesterday. Or tomorrow. (I’m writing some of this in what was ‘tomorrow’ when I began it yesterday..)
Meanwhile….
America the Beautiful. America the Deeply Troubled. America the Divided. America of Terrible Accidents. America of Storms. America of Fires.
And, meanwhile….
No one read about my artist friend Knox, the artist in my last blog. Lonely old Knox and his post-Christmas apocalyptic visions. And the Devil chasing him, chasing me, chasing us. So what?
I’m sure he’s given up his “ghosts” and gone back to being just old crazy Knox, living forever (in my imagination.)
So be it.
Had to write something here tonight (today).
The New Year, the Yuletide might as well have been a hundred years ago. But, I always say, Christmas must be every day. And Easter too.
Goodbye, January. We march on toward spring, though, generally speaking, there is no spring in the clime where I now roost. Save an occasional chill and occasional gray sky, the climate is seamless, except in summer when it is blazes, turns, turns steamy and uncomfortable, seemingly without end — until the thunder rolls in at the end of days.
So be it. In exile. Everywhere is nowhere.
(Pray. For the Living and the Dead.)
Good night.
19 Cent Notebook 