What is lost?

All can't be lost. I have my eyes, my tongue, my ears are pretty good. My body, though some time has shown me that it does imprint age upon one, still returns to a fair balance after antagonism. The knot of pain in my back presses me through writhing postures and finally I sit up. It can't be forever, but it's very good for now.

Someone once asked me if I'd do a particularly taboo thing. I explained that yes, I would, if I never cared if I were alive or not. It wasn't a promise, I was giving the conditions under which I would. Shortly, then, after some consideration, I did realize that death didn't scare me. I've seen corpses, been to burials, and as real as death is I came to understand that I wasn't afraid of it. Pain I avoid, dismay and disgust put me off things, but death itself -- to cease the circus of my psyche wasn't a threat.

It wasn't depression. I read depressing books perhaps, and my idle time was meted out in held breaths and urgent sighs, but my lot was not insufferable. My interests inclined to the strange, the bizarre, the magical and musical. Ultimately this macabre rite was a gift, in a sense. In a book titled On the Beach, the characters are forced to reconcile with the obvious and impending finality of their lives. They drank, raced cars, worried about their children, took care of their lovers, and generally worked on the lists of what needs to be done before that time comes.

The particular indulgence that precipitated this core of obsessiveness did not kill me. I lived. Games of chance don't usually appeal because I understand randomness to a decent degree and can see the ratios of outcomes. Recently I was reading a friend and he wrote about how he was leaning out over the edge of a great hole. I saw in that form my own doings, except I dove into the hole. A different and wiser man also told me, "The first rule of holes is: When you're in one stop digging."

So, after a lifetime in darkness and shadows, caves and burden, I wake up and look for the sun. It sometimes takes hours for the sky to crack dark and then blue. Once that sun is up, though, the waiting is done and the day begins. The chores and obligations, social and internal, crop up and then for me is to contend with them one by one until that same sun returns to the horizon and leaves the day to sleepiness.