Doug: It will be real

So here I am again. Staring at this blank page and wondering if it matters what I write or only if I write. Thirty six minutes. That’s the time left on my battery. No. it jumped to forty two. This Mac is temperamental, depending on my actions. I kind of like it, like it has a personality. I haven’t named it yet, and I should. All things worth having have names. It was recently brought to my attention how important names are. Names have power, and to know the name of something is to have a kind of power over it. Or so it is said. But to give a name is something personal, almost like making love, though perhaps over more swiftly, or perhaps more important. Perhaps not.

Solitude. The name of the place you can carry with you. The thing’s name has many meanings, none negative in my eyes, though you might be hard pressed to find someone who agrees wholeheartedly with me. People need other people, and those that carry around Solitude carry a hole in their lives as well. Not altogether a bad thing. A bad thing would be to carry Loneliness, Solitude’s less attractive, but more prolific brother. As the saying goes, depression is just anger without the enthusiasm.

A year. It’s so long, and yet I just breezed through four of them. Did I do all of the things I remember? Recently my memory has become suspect, as I suspect all memories do given time and fermentation. Like a good draft, always better at the first drink, but the bitterness is found in the bottom. Keep drinking, if your bartender is good you won’t reach the end until it’s all incomprehensible anyway. Just flashes of color and sound and sweet and bitter things. Imagination fills in the blanks, and things are much richer that they truly were. Or are they just pale shadows? Perhaps the drink was that refreshing, the air that sweet, the sex that satisfying. Like a long run mixed with the finest of meals.

My wits will give me what I need in the coming months. I’ve spent the last four years learning how to think critically, problem solve, strengthen my mind and body, and bide my time. I’ve learned patience, I’ve learned speed through adversity, I’ve learned how to lie and love, and the hairsbreadth that separates the two. I’ve learned to drink deep from the well of knowledge without falling in. I’ve learned that some things can only be learned through weeks of mental and physical fortitude, and some ideas can be grasped nearly before they are said out loud. Though I’ve never been to Oxford, and couldn’t place it on a map, I’ve learned about the Oxford comma, and the difference between bringing the strippers, Stalin and JFK, and bringing the strippers, Stalin, and JFK.

The difference is important.

I’ve learned that liquor can make you sicker, and beer too, though I’ve developed a taste for the latter and not the former. I’ve learned how to make a rue, and what it’s even for. I’ve learned… well, who cares? I have learned much and cannot list it all here. That is the virtue of  knowledge, it is nearly limitless, and in recounting it you gain more.

I bought a car, and subsequently learned how to change oil for myself. It is dirty work, though it feels clean, and only one who has worked with their hands will know what I mean by that.

I bought a weapon that can kill a man faster than you can say the words. I found I had a taste for them and bought more. I’ve spent a small fortune making it and myself more lethal for a threat that may never come. I feel reasonably prepared. The trigger is smooth, my reflexes are well trained, and though I’ve never killed a man and never wish to I feel like the act itself would be no great trouble.

The older part of mind believes this to be arrogance beyond reason, and chastises me for thinking it. Another part of my mind demands it be censored, but I’ve yet to delete an entire idea from this ledger yet, and I’ll be damned if I do it while I’m so close to the end. I mean to write this till the complex piece of metal, plastic and loose ions in front of me goes cold. Music hastens the process, but I’ve always had weakness for it, and Florence is in fine form tonight, though I’ve had to occasionally goad her past the weaker tunes.

Another thing that’s changed about me. I’m afraid of this change. Afraid of what it means. Three young men that I have known personally have died on me. Others have died, but they were old, or relatively unknown to me except in deed. But these there I have shaken hands with, laughed with, told stories with, which is the most intimate thing you can do without touching flesh. I cried unashamed tears for the first two. I even swore vengeance for one. It was both childish and old of me. I swore that the men I called brothers would sing the death songs and claim vengeance in my stead. I do not know if they did, only that they tried. But the time for beating breasts and strong flowing tears has passed. Or so it appears. I did not weep for the third. I do not know if it is because I did not have a great fondness for him, or if I am simply tired of the people I know being claimed by the reaper. I fear for either conclusion. I want to cry, for it means that I am not yet numbed to the pain of passing. I want to scream and beat my chest and sing the death songs that I know well.

I cannot now tell if these tears I cry are for him or I.

I wonder how I will feel about this a year from now, when I study with the warriors I hope to call kin. I will earn my place among them, at a price as yet undetermined. A price I’m willing to pay without knowing. This I know for certain. Perhaps the only certainty.  I’m afraid of this intervening year, afraid I will lose my razor’s edge, honed only as steel sharpens steel. To turn a phrase.

I am afraid. But I will overcome. As is the way of those I hope to join. As is the way I wish to be. I have always held the belief that if you hold something in your mind long enough, it will be real.

It will be real.