Conical Time
The dirt at my feet swirled as I drove my favorite matchbox-car through it. My lap was open with my legs encompassing the hole I’d dug. I was living, and couldn’t stop. I had to do a number two, but shifted my heel to plug the eruption from ever occurring… ever. My lap and the hole I’d dug begged my attention with every moment occurring, and I drove and dug and drove again as my life unfolded. I was living, and the world around me sped forward, but never even registered into the realm I inhabited. I had stopped, and I was living.
My friends went to accost pedophiles in the park, and I went along. We were in high school, young and tender beings. We wanted to live, we wanted something to happen. My Italian friend’s little brother did the deed, plunging into deep cover, sitting wantonly on a bench. We were all developed, being California surfers, so it was easy to see how perverts could bridge between ‘adult’ and a mere child. I watched as the mark put his arm around the kid, whispering something unknown, while all hell erupted and I cringed; I stopped. Yeah, I was living.
A cave on the beach beckoned as I walked from my town to the next. I wasn’t lost, but knew not where to go. Waves crashed along the shore, and I wet my toes but needed more. The cave beckoned. There was no one in sight, no one to see, so I crawled inside. It reminded me of exiting the sewer down the coast, on a beach with volcanic rocks and white sand. Inside the cave it stank, but outside it sang. I went inside, nevertheless, and while there I dwelled within shame. I stopped. Alone, I was living.
Her face shone because of the shadow I spread, with the sun directly behind me. The only thing I could understand was her glow. We bantered and brawled, and we grew into a One. We had arrived, we both knew, and we needed to help all the others to know, too. We got hitched, as they say, and the rest is still history. The rest we’ll mostly never know. We were two, together, and we were living. We were alive, so regardless of my endeavors into myself, and what I thought about where I had stopped, I was living.
At the top of the tower, swaying with each earthquake, we lived and we built our worldview, one kiss at a time. Then a kid came. We folded, the two of us, and shifted our lives to the Midwest, um… a corner of it, anyways. We had traveled the coast and then headed inland. Life became calm, regular, and sane. Life as we knew it became plain. I was an artist, a carpenter, and she was a physio. We raised our family, two kids to our name, and we lived. I was lost, I stopped… but, I was living.
She came to me one day, saying that being buried where we lived was just not okay. I agreed, waking into a possibility of 'actually' living, and we planned our move across the world. Once we arrived, with war spreading out across our lives, we dug in. We understood nothing, having moved to the other side of the planet, and all we understood was that we were finally home. We were in the Middle-east, and we knew it, but knew nothing all the while. Finally, we stopped and listened; finally we were living.
Almost 20 years later, the world erupted into insanity. The month of October was always sacred to me, but the 7th of October will always overshadow the rest. We continued to live, lives being lost, and death overwhelming, but we all understood then where we now must stand. There is a line etched into the sand of the world, separating those who love life, and those who worship its end. On one side the world lives on, as difficult as it may be, but on the other side it falls down. To be fair (full stop here) we are all living, but not everyone contributes, and many don't even seem to understand. Life may go on, but depending upon which side one's legs are rooted down, living may never occur, so living a life may actually not be living.
