Yet Another Movie

I guess I always thought that I would somehow, in the future, find a way to go back in time. I never once, but maybe twice, felt that each day was really gone. Or that “the now” was really all I had. I guess I came to know with age that the sun would rise as it always had in the past, in the future, so I felt it obvious, if only slightly less in adulthood, that tomorrow could be yesterday, as easy as it is now. I’m still waiting for the nudge.

She moved away when I was 15. I was in a tree at the corner of 6th and 19th where I could watch the van be loaded, and then could watch it pass by in the first step of it’s journey to New Jersey. I felt sad like hot tears but didn’t cry. I felt like running up the driveway and having my case heard, tears, laughter, joy, no matter what happened, but I was stuck there like a cat without a ladder-truck. She never saw me in that tall oak and so I concluded that I could care less about her going off without a last goodbye. But perhaps I imagined this as imagination at some point near then, and now it’s all creation evolved.

I ran into a guy in a nightclub that used to be a loner and a friend but would latch on in a social scenario. I think he thought I had a way with the ladies, and he thought that being in my company would bring him some luck. I’ll assume this because I never shook mid-hello, or made eye contact, something. He was never there when I nearly pissed myself in front of a class trying to give a report, nobody was.

I sort of resented this, being seen as confident, but only slightly. My ego was healthier back then too. So shake it off spaceman. In the nightclub, after not having seen this fellow in months - I see he has a sweet kind girl at his side now, yes, and he has my whiskey on his breath, and doesn’t smile as he returns my greeting. The sweet kind girl smiles all over the place, at me, the sky, the lights, the music, in the way that the grass is always greener in space. He introduces me and my name and says hello, “hi,”

“hello,”

“hello.”

There was a back room at work. We used it in the event of an emergency. We used it when it was full in the front. Also we have incorporated the wine list into the menu itself. The wine sells better now. Whiskey cures a cold, in minutes, for about an hour, then it comes back worse. But if that hour is what it takes to get you back to camp, and the fire, to food, and out of the winter storms of earth and mind, well, then it’s not so bad is it? I fell asleep in that back room at work, once, on the clock, till they called my name and poked at my Adam's rib. If I’d of only known the boss would think it funny, I would have done it a million times before - always needing sleep at that hour, but I haven’t done it since. The cause can be the cure, and the cure the cause. The trick is running out of the loop, and making your own circle, but in this backwards talk of mine I remind the void, the loop is ego, the circle is nature, an original face saving. Mine, only I own nothing.

So then I ran into an old school buddy in the restaurant the next day, booth 5, in the front, said hello, What’s Up?

Nothing man…

…thought that was you…

…well, managing the restaurant…

…working for phyzer…

…great job…

…remember when…

…don’t you remember…

…what ever happened to…

…don’t you know… (some awkward silence)

Hadn’t seen her since I was 15, and it was now 15 years since that time. A semi ate that U-Haul whole at 65 halfway to NJ. Nobody made it out alive but the pet snake. What we use to be strong can also be our weakness and once we realize this, somewhere along the path, we doubt everything like a bad trip. Survive the paranoia and the head trip of illusion, the “I” of your own mortal immortality, we can find the part that we wake up to, that we want to live forever, dead, and that part that you can’t grab, that was there all along and hasn’t changed, will live on forever, identity free. As for myself, I was sleeping in the back room, waiting for the nudge. Now I'm back.

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