First hookup

“What we seek constantly in romantic love is not human love or human relationship alone; we also seek a religious experience, a vision of wholeness.”
~Robert A. Johnson

2:13 AM

A puttering engine whines down beach street on a frigid night. The sound of rusted struts and worn wheel bearings bouncing along frost heaves and pot holes. Headlights fluttering. Shadows of leafless winter limbs shifting and merging against the bedroom wall. He watches and listens—passively—without comprehension. Eyes half open, half shut.

An electric blanket covers him to the nostrils. Thermostat set to 60 F. A frugal man of limited means, he found this place at the dead end of Beach street, near the river’s edge, where it takes a sharp left and meets Willow avenue—another dead end and entrance to the old Jewish cemetery. He bought the property for a song. The street itself a hazard, with its heaves and holes, notorious for frozen fogs overflowing the river bank at night.

An anonymous chat, several hours earlier. She’d answered his Reddit post; an anonymous stranger. He’d baited the invitation with homemade hot chocolate on a frigid night, marshmallows too. Sex on the mind, but unstated.

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Going in circles

“There are patterns which emerge in one’s life, circling and returning anew, an endless variation of a theme”
~ Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel’s Chosen

Does this place look familiar? Wait, we’ve been traveling in circles the entire time! We’re back at the same place, again! It looks a little different, but the same. Have we gone nowhere, not even one mile!

Sound familiar?

Often in life, we go in circles, circumnavigating the same old places or issues, meeting the same kind of people and circumstances, before ending up where we first began our journey.

Nevertheless, things always change, even if we don’t change, sometimes appearing a bit more ragged and run-down than the last time, or maybe occupied by a few more strangers. Tired, flattened down paths arriving at the same old same old, but eyes becoming more nearsighted with each repeated arrival, leaving pieces of the familiar old and unfamiliar new in the shadows. And so things look somewhat different, but mostly the same within one’s evolving tunnel vision.

The alternative is to circle back with new eyes, being more aware and enlightened than before, having learned a lesson or two, and ready for the next revolution with an adjusted attitude – the precursor to change.

Special moments

“As you get older, you want less from the world; you just want to experience it. Any barriers to feeling emotions get dismantled. And ordinary things become beautifully poetic.”
~ Richard Linklater

Following many years of traumas, disappointments, broken promises, and unrealized dreams, you settle for special moments. Those unexpected, one-shot deals that seem to come out of nowhere, without your intervention; possibly the result of random circumstance, good luck, fate, or God’s hand. Regardless of origin, you consume each special moment with a lust driven fervor and insatiable hunger, until every last drop is consumed, as if it were your final crumb of fleeting happiness.

Default justice

“Every man thinks God is on his side. The rich and powerful know he is.”
~ Jean Anouilh

The favor of the Gods is the ego’s illusion, until circumstances change, and one realizes that God, fate, karma, or random chance can take everything away in a moment’s time, including one’s fortunes and sometimes life itself. The higher the climb on the backs of others, the more disillusioning the fall when those backs shift position, as they always do.

Everything seeks its equilibrium point, moving from the low to the high, the high to the low, from side to side, and finally to the flat ground, where purposeful activity ceases and all is balanced again. This is life’s default form of justice: the birth, rise, fall, and eventual flatlining – an immutable process that nobody escapes, including the rich and powerful.

If a higher form of justice exists, and I hope it does, then maybe it rests upon this immutable default justice; our attitude towards it being the difference between being reborn as a worm or saint, or anything in-between.

An unfamiliar world

A dream?

I awoke in a daze my friend, still partially submerged in the subconscious realm, thinking that the nightmare was true, until full consciousness kicked in. Thank God, it was just a dream! Can you imagine?

Everyone was walking around wearing masks and shields. The Sears store became a mass vaccination center! Had to sit there 15 minutes after the shot, with many others, in case the vaccine made any of us stop breathing. There was no choice in the matter, as this contagion, called Covid-19, was killing millions all over the planet. So, you either took your chances with a hastily created vaccine, or lived in fear of catching the Covid and dying an ugly death, and you would eventually. Yeah, not a choice really, unless you had a death wish.

And this vaccine was no one shot deal. You had to go back for a second one, to get more protection, maybe a third one later on, and so on. This invisible Covid was like a demon, it kept changing and mutating, finding new ways to sneak up on us, get at us. Glad it was only a dream!

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