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EXCERPT
FROM THE BOOK:
REQUIEM
FOR A MIDLIFE CRISIS
by
Phoenix Michaels
Epilogue
2007
Time is
a bitch.
Humor me
here for a minute, if you would, and I’ll come to the point.
The amount
of time which passed before we humans came into existence is
staggering, even immeasurable. Sure, with the science of
geology we can use the radioactive isotope method of dating both
earthly rocks and meteorites (think of these isotopes as “clocks
in a rock”, whose radioactive half-life and relative decay can
help to identify their age) to determine the minimal age of the
universe as best we can; at least 10 billion years old. At
least this much time has passed since the “Big Bang”,
resulting in the ever expanding universe we currently reside in.
But it’s also entirely possible that the universe itself has
expanded and contracted billions of times, in an ever repeating
cycle which our very short lives and perspective cannot discern.
Did time itself, reality itself, begin with the single explosion
we posit some several billions of years ago… just because that’s
as far as our science can see? I somehow doubt it.
We look at
“ancient” buildings with awed unawareness, thinking Holy
Jeez…over 4000 years old! AMAZING! It certainly can
inspire thoughts as to our mortality, viewing structures which
remain thousands of years beyond the life span of an entire
culture. But the stone itself, from which these ancient people
built these monuments, is the real wonder. This stack of
sedimentary stones would laugh, if they were able, at our
foolish arrogance with amused disdain.
You think you know about time, my friend? We were formed from
other ancient rocks which were worn away slowly over an
incredibly long period, after which we lay in beds for an
additional several billion years to compress into our present
form. You think you’re seeing something here, but you see
NOTHING.
The evidence
of this fact is all around us, often just under our feet; our
specie’s entire existence is not even a single sip of air in the
epic span of time which came before us, and which will likely
continue long after our eventual demise. Our individual lives –
a span, if we are lucky, of 70 years or so – are smaller, even
infinitesimal.
The earth
has already experienced, before our arrival, 5 or 6 planet-wide
extinction events, and they will continue to occur… a virus, an
asteroid strike, maybe a protracted ice age turning our little
cosmic rock into a twirling snowball. People worry about
overpopulation, pollution, and other similar concerns… joining
recycling programs, buying electric cars, or limiting the size
of their family. I try to tell them the truth: that 600 billion
years from now, the earth won’t even remember we were once here.
Have ten kids if you so desire, buy a gas-guzzling SUV, and
litter with impunity. Consume. Time will invariably make it all
moot.
Nuclear
waste? Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea
whatsoever of the incredible amount of radiation released when
the universe, and the earth itself, were initially formed? Yet
enough time has passed it off as a mere memory to the earth, and
it certainly can recover easily from anything we might do. Dump
that shit down the storm drains. It won’t hurt the earth, I can
guarantee you.
When we
worry about the planet, what we are really worrying about is
ourselves, our civilization, our continued existence. It’s a
pointless endeavor which is destined to end… that’s just the way
it is. It is not merely a mathematical probability, it is a
certainty; given the many opportunities presented over a
sufficient period of time, we are destined to someday experience
extinction. A cosmic Santa, whipping his compliment of plasma
reindeer mercilessly, is driving his sleigh relentlessly,
inexorably… to deliver his malignant present to all of Earth’s
good little boys and girls; oblivion.
In my
region, populated with hippies and new-age spiritual aspirants,
this perspective is usually met with silence. Their narrow
perspectives in this matter renders them disinclined to
participate in such debates, so heavily invested as they are in
their endeavors to “save the earth”… with recycling, with solar
panels, with committees. As you can well imagine, I haven’t made
many friends in the neighborhood.
It’s just
too big to wrap our heads around, and not very reassuring. Our
existence is a mere drop of water in an endless ocean of time… a
small and brief spark in the darkness of forever. An eternity
passed before we arrived, and another will resume when we are
gone. Who will remember?
Do I have a
point here, you ask? I know nobody really wants to hear this
stuff… not even me. I’ve never been able, however, to really
help myself.
Like
everyone else, I suppose, I want to feel like my life has some
meaning, some point. Has anything I’ve done had any impact on
anything… considering not just the brevity of my own life, but
also of the life span of our entire species? Was it all
pointless? Or, conversely, is it even more vitally important
to make a statement of considerable impact, considering our
brief appearance upon the stage? I still don’t know… and it
vexes me terribly.
But I do
know this; we are, all of us, going to be dead a very long time…
eternities upon eternities. It’s so vitally important,
therefore, to know what it is you want and to try to hold onto
it as long as you can… because there is simply nothing else.
Because time
is a bitch.
I am nearly
fifty years old, approaching that venerable middle-aged
milestone with the jaundiced eye of indifference. To say things
have not gone too well would be an understatement indeed. I am
aging rapidly, my illness preventing exercise or routine
maintenance. My body has grown soft, my will to endeavor against
the tide weakened. Regardless of any similar horrors possibly
encountered by my contemporaries, there once was a man residing
within me who would not have bent to these indignities. I find
now that I simply don’t care.
I think of
her daily. Despite the years which have passed, I am often
startled into the moment with a desperate angst; my woman is
gone. She is no longer mine, I am no longer hers. The emptiness
this brings will consume me for long moments, vanquishing from
my mind whatever enterprise, great or small, I am attempting to
endeavor.
I dream of
her frequently, the scenario playing out similarly each time it
occurs. She is resolute, even uncaring, preparing to either
leave or commit an act which will induce me to make her go.
Dreams observe no universal laws, and do not bother to ask
Einstein if it
is possible to travel through time. Emotionally, they drag me
back completely, with little difficulty, to the actual moment
when my world caught fire. I awake weeping and heartbroken, my
worst fears confirmed; I am alone here. She is long gone.
I have had
ample time to consider how things might have been done
differently, and certainly acknowledge my own culpability in
bringing this about. I no longer torture myself with what might
have been, or what avenues might have been left un-pursued. The
end results remain, like those aforementioned ancient stone
ruins stubbornly resisting the millennia. The rest, for me now,
is so much useless and irresolvable speculation.
I do know
that my love frightened her in some manner which, perhaps, even
she could not articulate. It was far better for her to relocate
me to any number of realms in which she could find me more
safely quantified. I was, she would sometimes say, merely
sexually obsessed with her. Other times, she might say I was
simply in a reckless phase. Finally, she would insist me
incapable or unwilling to understand that she was valueless,
even execrable… and that I deserved much better. She held, at
the core of it all, an unshakable certainty; that in time I
would discover the flaw within myself which allowed me to love
her.
My every
fervent attempt to discredit this tenet would only serve to
assert my commitment and adoration, thus increasing – rather
than decreasing – her level of alarm. A self-fulfilling
prophesy, this conundrum defied my every effort to unravel it,
becoming a wheel which would turn until it inevitably found a
terrain which could not be traversed. Having declared my love a
thousand ways, manifesting it in nearly everything I endeavored
while with her, it remains to this day invalidated,
unacknowledged. I am still denied that one small and miserly
comfort… she never really knew. She never dared to believe how
much I truly loved her.
Paradoxically, it was very apparent at times that she did,
indeed, love me. Forever scribbling in her journals, she would
leave me lengthy missives describing her amorous investment and
intent. Many were incredibly long… single spaced, filling both
sides of the page and into the margins. I received these all too
frequently over the years, and for the longest time my heart
would swell while I eagerly read them… her affirmation so
precious to me, so needed. Towards the end, I would read them
terrified, more and more certain they had become a hedge of
sorts against her secret trespasses.
I do not
think they are lies… at least not lies meant for me. Far too
much effort over so many years was expended to produce these;
something was at work here, some need, a genuine intent. I know
she has harbored suffocating guilt over her many transgressions
against me, both real and imagined. Perhaps each new written
declaration of her love and devotion gave her permission to
stay, to start over with me and try, again, to be a person she
thought might be lovable. They may have chronicled her struggle
to become worthy of my trust, while trying to reconcile also her
inability to trust herself. It is unclear if the devoted woman
she described in her many pages over the years embodied the
person she wanted to be, or the person she thought I wanted her
to be. I sometimes wonder if she ever knew herself
I have kept
them all, both the small notes and the thick letters.
Handwritten with her unique signature, many are beautiful and
deeply touching, so much so that I dare not look at them again.
They are sequestered away, stored in an old trunk like rusting
atomic warheads… too dangerous to touch, yet they can’t be
thrown away. Yellowing by now I am sure with time and despair,
they will likely someday be thrown out by some casual hand
sifting through the various articles of my estate.
If on that
day I could only somehow be granted a small appeal, I would pass
from this life quietly without objection or complaint. To whom I
might petition this plea, or, for that matter, might feel
inclined to grant it, I have no idea. There is no harm in asking
for water while, say, crossing the desert… as long as you keep
walking. It’s just a bad idea to sit down and wait for it to
appear. Such is the lesson from Water of Love.
I do not ask
for Heaven, Nirvana, or any other such hereafters... nor will I
plead for immortality. I wish for this and this alone; that the
same force which takes me repeatedly to that aforementioned
desolate dream be utilized, just once, to take me elsewhere.
There was a
place once long ago, a simple city park… unremarkable as parks
go, but pretty nice all the same. My beloved and I had gone
there on a whim very early in our time together. She wore a long
thin skirt, a t-shirt, and nothing else… the weather
unseasonably pleasant that day. I remember lovingly admiring her
beauty as the afternoon sun shone through the thin fabric.
We walked
some distance to the center of the grass, putting as much space
as we could between us and the peopled walkways, and stretched
out entwined on the grass. She lay atop me, her lovely face
framed by an impossibly blue October sky. We would kiss,
whispering our desire to be together always, preparing our plans
to do so. I made her laugh frequently, my jokes so old as to be
fresh and new to her younger muse. But mostly we marveled; the
impossible, the unexplainable, had occurred. We had found,
inexplicably, a treasure so profound and precious as to often
render us stunned and mute.
She would
look down at me, her emerald eyes returning my amazed regard for
long and silent moments. Turning it over again and again in our
hands, we remained simply astonished to merely be touching it.
Love perhaps
had made us bold, or maybe we just wanted one more secret to
share outside the awareness of all others. Sprawled above me,
her long flowing skirt obscuring any possible detection, her
hand disappeared momentarily to loosen my pants. Her eyes became
liquid green dragon’s fire as she maneuvered me into her body; I
looked up at her and was lost forever… as I so remain.
We
eventually came to regard our mating as a macrocosm of that
single day… we walked together with our bounty heedless and
unheeded. No one, not anyone we knew intimately, not complete
strangers passed on the avenues, no one had any
perception of what we held together in our hands and hearts. It
was not our secret… it was much more than that. It was simply
unperceivable to others, unknowable, intended for we two only.
Nobody understood why we were together, or what it might mean…
and we simply did not care, all such concerns becoming mere
trifles at best.
Just that
small handful of moments, that momentous and blissful single
day, when I could see in her eyes that I was no longer adrift
alone in my universe… and that through her eyes and her love, I
could share it with another. It’s such a small thing to ask, but
I know to just keep walking.
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