Madness is Easy
I understand the turning to religion, to 'Faith', because the very fact we live and die terrifies us...What comes next is known only to those who have already gone on and they simply aren't talking. Not in any kind of sense, anyway. I've seen people who have died years earlier, not in the darkness of night or in some creaky old stereotypical building, but in day light. Some one standing next to me doesn't see them, doesn't hear them, and I learned a long time ago to keep most of those moments to myself because, unless you're headlining your own television show, people think you're crazy. And crazy isn't a bad place to be. Recently I've been looking back on some things that I've experienced and I remember this day a very long time ago. I'd married the daughter of a farmer and I ended up working on his farm because my dream of being an artist was always with odds with everyone else telling me to grow up.
One day I was driving his little Nissan Truck down the dirt road of a canal. It was filled and if you've ever seen Arizona canal's there is only room for one truck at a time but no real rules about which side of the canal a driver should always be on at any given time. This day I was filled with rage and anger and really at the edge of madness and as a result I wasn't paying much attention to both the speed of the truck or the fact that sometimes a canal will split off in two directions and the only road left is on the other side of the water. I had just enough time to realize I was going to wreck my father in law's truck and, probably, die. I closed my eyes and hit the breaks and waited.
And waited.
When I finally opened my eyes I was on the other side of the canal, the front end of the truck facing the road I had been on...The same dirt path my father in law was bringing his larger truck to a stop. I got out, as did he, and we saw the tire marks leading up to the edge of the water and none where I'd ended up. He took off his hat and looked at me for a very long time. Finally I shrugged...I didn't have an answer.
I really wouldn't even begin to know how to phrase the question. He got back into his truck and made a right turn leaving me just standing there. I suppose some would have called the incident a miracle or maybe I was hit with a strong rush of wind like a mini tornado and that saved my life. It was a strange moment, just another in a long list of them where I filed it away as 'Interesting' and, maybe, some day I'll have my answers.
I was building up quite the list of questions.
I've lived these last six decades in the most incredible time of man kinds history. Going to the moon, treatments for diseases that once killed in the millions, organ transplants, cloning, and technology falls under the whole IFM file (It's Fucking Magick).
Once, back when I was younger and my mother was still alive, mom told me of those men who look into this world, to the future, brilliant people who knew more than most, and she told me that when they followed the thread of life to the end they'd embrace madness. Took a while for that to sink in (Oh, fifty years give or take). Everything ends...Everything.
Yeah, there are these paintings, drawings and writings that have survived centuries and will continue to survive thanks to the digital age, but even that will end, or perhaps evolve. Sooner or later our sun will die out and the once beautiful planet, if it still holds life by then, will become just another among the crowded universe of items which are so infinite we have no number for them.
So, yes, I understand the need for some to embrace a religion, a 'Faith', or for some scientist to discover how to download the sum total of a life into something else. I don't know. I have my own ideas of life and death and Karma and the future, most I keep to myself because the one thing I've discovered to be an ultimate truth is people will believe anything...Even if it's wrong, evil or just loony...
...And we have enough loony going around.
I've always known I would one day die. Seems like I was born with that knowledge and it's never scared me or terrified me into becoming something I was never meant to be. What frightened me most, I suppose, is the thought of not finishing something I was meant to complete before that time comes. I've watched far too many people die up close and personal, some friends, some family, some just unfortunate's who found themselves along side me and others...
...Maybe it is madness, this life we all live. Perhaps we're a part of some grand experiment by beings watching through their versions of microscopes. Maybe the 'Matrix' really does exist. Maybe my old Philosophy teacher (And later friend) was right when he once told me that only he existed and once he goes through one door the entire of reality changes for him and everything else vanishes until needed.
I've quit asking a lot of questions...Most of those who might have had the answers have been taken out of this life and having the answers wouldn't change much of anything. Not now, anyway. Maybe the best place to hide from this reality is in madness, to believe whatever you want until you're tired of that belief always letting you down and you go on to something else...Another 'Faith'. Another drug.
Or just pop that last pill and say goodbye to the whole damn mess.
I've never taken the easy route on anything in this life...Tried death a few times but it just wouldn't take.
I'm tired. I feel my age and I find myself looking at my hands when I'm working...They're the hands of an old man, one filled with so many scars it barely resembles flesh any longer...And yet there seems to be that one thing left to do before I get the 'E Ticket' to the next great adventure. Whatever it is can best be summed up by a line from a character named 'Oz' from Buffy the Vampire Slayer: It involves a feathered boa and the theme from a Summers Place.
I know...Doesn't make sense.
But that's life. I don't think it's suppose to.
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