Ways To Get Through Days

Ladies and gentlemen, I have just written a terrible poem. A poem so hackish and brackish my first impulse was to punch myself in the face. Thankfully, my second impulse, to listen to some Bach and console myself with the fact that almost every poem ever written by anyone, anywhere, is terrible, overtook me before I pummeled myself. 

I have argued with friends today. I have put on unclean underwear and eaten processed foods. I have shaved half my face and walked away from the mirror in dejection.

For no particular reason. For this very reason that incited a terrible poem and is now about to inspire this ill-advised blog.

I watched one of my very good friends in a corner a few months ago, knowing with certainty he was in the last days of his life. I saw fear. Not the kind of fear you see in someone's eyes when they they have uncertainty or come face to face with something that will harm them. Fear that his consciousness was about to end.

They say there are no atheists in foxholes. They say wrong. My friend possessed one of the keenest minds I have come in contact with on this plane of existence. He was not an atheist. The word for what he was he used many times in our numerous three a.m. discussions. It was something akin to agnostic by default because I can't really see all the evidence. 

He took it straight. I miss already being able to run one of my more whacky ideas past him just to see how unreasonable I am being. His mind was reason. And don't think for one second there weren't times when I used that fact to tweek his sense of logic by intentionally saying something so preposterous I thought his head would explode. My favorite was the time I feigned disbelief in dinosaurs because I considered the fossil evidence "suspect." That went on for days. I'd seen him wash his hands and block other people for less. But I think he knew I was just having fun, and some of the dialectics we were able to engage in have changed my mind forever for the better. I had written a short poem about it, but really wanted to keep it mostly to myself.

The Fool

You never suffered fools lightly, 
My friend.
I am a fool.
A very lucky fool.

Something about this afternoon is weighing really hard on me. Selfishly, I guess. I miss him. Maybe I should put this blog deep in the archives and be satisfied knowing I put it to words. It's mostly about me anyway.  Pin It