Grand Cycle (or a lot of rambling nonsense)

Home alone again and listening to Hendrix and drinking white wine and red wine, having spent more than a week sober, and with good reason. The back was terrible last Sunday, and I screamed, screamed, screamed in pain, to myself, and I couldn’t lie still. I had to sit up, and days after I kept waking to the feeling that I was drowning, or something. I couldn’t breath, it was awful, and I’d find myself waking up, gasping, choking sometimes, at two in the morning, and I’d turn on my little nightstand light and I’d sit for a while, maybe twenty minutes or so on the edge of the bed, looking at the floor, at my feet, at my shoes a few feet away, then I’d glance outward towards the rest of the room and look about, and all I’d see was the stillness of things and all I’d hear was the god damned air condition clicking on and then eventually off, and I’d hear the occasional strange noise, the house creaking, settling, and then I’d grab whatever book was sitting on the nightstand beside me, and I’d read. I’d read for a half hour sometimes, and then several hours other times, until I could read no longer, and until the breaths I took replenished my tired blood, when I felt as though each gasp of air was not in vain…when I felt that I might survive sleep…might wake up the next morning, although groggy, dizzy, yet alive to face another day, to see my wife, to be once again… to be me. That’s all I asked. For despite whatever depression might accost my mind, whatever physical ailment might attack my body, I still yearned for one more day, for life, for the breathing, in and out, in and out, and to hear my frail heart beating against my soft chest. I yearn always for this feeling, for while death may be imminent, just around the fucking corner, I want to keep breathing, keep feeling, pain and all… I want to keep going, to see what happens next, to feel my lover’s breath once more against my naked body, to traverse the aisles of the supermarket and purchase food… glorious fucking food. I don’t want to die because I know, I feel it in my bones, that there is nothing… nada... nyet… nothing after this fucking life, and so be it. No Heaven or Hell… no Hell, for God’s sake, for while Hell might be the last place you’d wish to find yourself, at least it was something and not nothing. At least there was fire, brimstone, agony… feeling, for fuck sake. There was that. No matter how bad it was, how bad could Hell be compared to an eternity of nothingness, of lifelessness, of listlessness… of void… of never knowing, never wondering, never contemplating… unending darkness, but that doesn’t matter anyway because you’d simply cease to exist and with that ceasing you’d cease to understand, to comprehend, to be conscious. No dreams, no nightmares, no bright white light at the end of that seductive tunnel that pulls you towards it non-stop. Nothing. Nada. Nyet. You would be alone, and you wouldn’t know it. No one would, for everyone else would continue on, grieving, getting over it, meeting new people, other lovers and that would be that. You’d be nothing more than a picture on a mantel, a memory in someone’s failing mind, your few scribblings left behind, perhaps in a trunk in some dusty attic, a house for spiders, and for mold and mildew. Your work, your life, crumbling away, yellowing with time, and that would be that, until someone, some kid, some little girl, might discover a scrap here and there, some bit of wit, some serious sentence, some piece of you, still crying out, yearning to be heard, and then nothing but kindling perhaps, or some cool kind of ancient wrapping paper for some child’s birthday gift, or to the trash where your words, your thoughts, might wind up in a heap, a heap of garbage rotting, disintegrating, like your shell of a body, deep under the dirt, becoming again one with the earth, the universe, pieces, parts, down to the molecule, the proton, disintegrating… down to the electron, the nucleus, the sub-atomic particle… disintegrating, breaking away, fast, onward through the universe, congealing somewhere by some heavy, heavy force of gravity, pulling you back into substance, something, matter, renewed again, into light, heat, energy, matter, hot gases, molten rock…rock forming, lava flowing, cooling gases, water condensing, raining upon another world, ready to begin anew. Ready, ready. The primordial soup, readying itself, barring any catastrophes, and the single celled animals erupt, and then more, and more, growing in a soup green, gray, cloudy, fresh water and minerals, pouring down and in, replenishing, and you grow again, again, and the specter that you once were now hints of tomorrow, the primordial thoughts sparking in your simple cells, your new yet someday ancient DNA, and one day you will grow into something, something small, something potential, something slimy, extracting gas from liquid, oxygen from water perhaps, and then you might eventually crawl upon the land, then back to the water, then back onto the land, which maybe less harsh this time, and you might rest your weary body, your weary legs, appendages, things, under the shade primitive leaves of some kind of primitive tree, trembling as the wind blows and wondering what next to do, and you make your way back to the water, then back out much, much later, more robust, and take to the trees, which are different somehow, different and new, oh the glorious, tall, reverent trees, then back down to the land, then fighting off the insane, deadly creatures, fighting the insane, deadly diseases, believing eventually in spirits, looking up to see the sun and the stars and the moon and ascribing some primal meaning, something ethereal, other worldly, spiritual perhaps, for you have no explanation as you witness the grass growing in the warmth of the sun sometimes, and dying in the dead cold other times, and eventually you sense cycles, patterns… and one day you discover eventually the wondrous thing that is fire, like the sun, but closer, hotter, more effective, and you learn to cook your food, fend off beasts more easily, and eventually make your own clothing to warm you from the elements when fire isn’t around, and you hone little tools of stone, wood and plant at night by the light of your fire, and you carve, and cut, dig and chop, and grow, the intellect growing, too, ever onward, upward, and you fear others who might know more than you so you gather your people and conquer the strangers with your tools, and you take their tools, and you learn, learn, learn, and you become the leader, for you lead your tribe, your small group of followers, mostly inbred kin, towards victory, and while it might not have made sense at first, the spoils… oh the spoils… strange skins, strange vessels, strange tools… strange foods, perhaps preserved, strange images on stone, strangeness all around, and you accept some and discard others and fear yet some other things, for some reason, for no particular reason, you fear and you make up stories of danger, death, gods, spirits, and then you move onward and upward, and civilizations come to pass and with it clothing, and manners, and things, all manner of things, and food is easy to come by and work, too, for now you find yourself employed, wanting more, making more of yourself and you move onward and upward and you find yourself once again drinking the beer, the wine, feeling better and better and poorer and poorer, writing words down onto something, perhaps paper and with a tool, perhaps a pen, perhaps a keyboard, perhaps dictating into something artificial, whatever that means, that might take your very words and transcribe them into the writing of the day, of the age, and then you marry and are happy… And then one day your find yourself home alone again and listening to Hendrix and drinking white wine and red wine, having spent more than a week sober, and with good reason…