Out, Damn Spot

          Oh, Lady Macbeth, how true your words are. Whether it's the wine stain in the carpet or the tumors invading my dad's body, they just don't seem to go away. Unfortunately, this is a sad version of non-fiction that not even Shakespeare can rival: this is a tragedy of epic proportions. Despite the advances that modern medicine has made, this is the little cancer that could, and it's determined to kill him. On an even more disturbing level is my break up with reality. I've been swimming in disillusionment for the last year and a half. Wading in circles, not drowning, but never making it past the first buoy.
          I sat by the fireplace last night and just listened to the crackle. Listened to the flame eat away at the wood. It resembles the slight sizzle I hear as I inhale my cigarette, and I imagine it's doing the same to my lungs. I imagine it's what it's done to my dad.
          In this thought, a strange realization takes place, and it's what scares me the most about my habit. For years, I have marveled at how can everyone else not be ready to die and see His face in the same way that I am. There is a quiet solace and contentment that I get imagining flying through the air to meet my Creator and leaving behind all worry and anxiety. Sooner, rather than later. I am envious of my dad that he will experience this peace before me. It is this thought and envy that carries me through any attempt to quit, even when I had my first taste of anger at the cancer. I was mad at the cigarette in my mouth and the other nine still in the pack. I proceeded to take each one out and break it in half, determined that I was now, indeed, fed up.
          Each one had a letter: L-E-R-O-Y-A-N-N-A. I made it about three hours before my longing caught up with me.

Cosmos

       


 Today, I feel like crumbling, like a Roman statue lost to time, encapsulated in sand, dirt, and grit, until excavated, touched by the sun, and developing deep seismic cracks all over my surface from the top to the bottom, then toppling down into one big, dusty pile of forgotten clay. I want a soft rain to fall down and morph me into a pit of mush and be soaked simultaneously back in to the earth.
          Deep down, a desire to change is in all of us. Change forms, circumstances, thoughts, lives. Are we living the life we've been given or the life we've chosen, or both? There must be certainty in uncertainty. Certainly, we can say that our lives are a result of the choices that we've made, but how do we account for flukes, lucky draws, and chances? The person who smokes everyday for eighty years lives to be 100 and never gets lung cancer. The person who hates sweets and sugar, yet develops diabetes and has to have amputations above the knee. Rhyme or reason? Chocolate or vanilla?
          I loathe those philosophical know-it-alls with their mantras of "if you can think it, you can do it." Can I, really? If I just "think" hard enough, will the malignancy in my dad's chest magically disappear? I have that power?
          I am just stuck. I want to change so many things, but I know that changing one thing at all would topple my universe, but at what cost?
          Oh, to be a shining star in the middle of a black hole.

Brownie Mix

Today was one of those days that actually felt like Fall. When I come outside with my coffee, the first thing I do is take a deep-nostrilled breath in, and see if the smell registers. Usually, it reminds me of one of the first few days of a new school year back when I was in high school. It was the smell of grass and anxiety, dirt and nervousness. What will the day bring? That was today's scent. This evening, it has sprinkled off and on, not nearly enough to make a dent in the drought, but enough to get your hopes up that your car will get rinsed off. As I stepped out of the car, I could smell the warm pavement mixed with the clay of our topography. I could smell the singe of the oil on the road being gently kneaded out of the concrete.

What I smelled more than any of that was my childhood.

Walking barefoot in the dirt that resembled brownie mix on a beaten path around our home. The smell of wet bark and slick blades of grass.

 I stopped to listen.

Each drop of percussion sounded like home. I closed my eyes and imagined each tiny droplet settling into the fine dirt, not soaking in, just sitting around in a bubble. I imagine walking around that trail with wet feet and the dirt slowly getting caked in between my toes, making muddy hand prints on the side of our chalky-white house, and climbing the Everest of trees in our front yard.

Then the real rain came.

 Just like that, the quick thought of home was gone, and today came in curtains of precipitation. On days like today, I imagine the sky is crying for me in empathy for things long forgotten and memories that can't be remade or remembered again.