Maybe All of Our Thoughts Are Misgiven

Baby, baby, I don't wanna leave you, But I ain't jokin' woman, I got to ramble. I can hear it callin' me the way it used to . . . I can hear it callin' me back home.
                                   "Babe, I'm a Gonna Leave You" -- Led Zeppelin

What the heart has once known, it will never lose. -- Harriet Beecher Stowe

For days, since my last stop at this bloglspot, I have been thinking about some short stories I want to write. Or maybe it will turn out to be just one lengthy one, with a bunch of 'what's it about' themes entangled. The moment of unsought adrenaline, a momentary headlong shove into deep fear and foreboding -- the push that actually got me racing to communicate this -- appeared chimera-like (resembling the horrid flash of a photo camera), in my car's rear-view mirror, some days ago. And then it was simply over. As I was driving and daydreaming, I had braked. Sharply. And I had almost crushed the car trunk of the guy in front of me. I had rudely come upon a stopped-dead line of cars -- on the 264-West freeway exit that runs down and over, toward my workplace. From the corner of my eye, glancing up toward my tell-tale mirror, a pick-up truck -- as icy cold and red as any blood one has ever seen -- blew past my right rear bumper. So close! Going easily 80 or more. My car and I rocked to and fro in its wake. A mere razor's edge away. Right beside me, like a robed-and-masked executioner swinging into action, so close I could almost grab his ax . . . Or did it go by? Did I unknowingly die in a crunch and tangle of auto-metal and human spirit, not fully grasping in my front-brain yet an undeniable horror?

{{Deep breath. Eye roll.}} {{Oooohh right. I forgot to take those pills again today.}} {I'm running late for everything.}} Okay, now. Glance up, look ahead. Yes. {{Grab the wheel tightly.}} Breathe like you mean it. Alright, I'm still here. Okay. Then, damn it, heaven can effing wait. (The red truck went on mindlessly, darting in and out of heavy traffic, rambling on like a crazed ex-psycho-prisoner around the town square, then he was lost to sight. Goodbye, sir.)

Heaven. Can wait. {{Slight shudder}} I may never lose this feeling.

I have wondered off and on what it will feel like when death really, inexorably, comes calling. A pale and bony man (all in morbid black, of course) who stubbornly refuses to go away from my front receiving room until I see him, having presented me with his crisp calling card via the hands of my hushed, eyes-down, and stunned doorman. Will it be a blink of an eye experience, a hit and run affair? Will it seem like an uncomplicated switching from one mindset to another -- like clicking instantly on command from one internet page to another? Will it be just a simple (but profound?) darkness, as in 'Oh shit! My life is a box? Now what'? Or perhaps, just maybe I say, we will all meet death's grin by actually get sucked up into some mindbending vertigo, a tossing and tumbling about, before that mythical white light shines dimly over there somewhere. Then those short, but darn big-brained, gray creatures (with those spooky black-almond 'Close Encounters' eyes, who abduct defenseless humans from their beds, among other atrocities) will extend their bony little hook-hands, hopefully grateful to see us.

The momentary whoosh of the red truck reminded me of M. Whom I had been studiously trying to forget. Several days ago, he (a young acquaintance) massaged his brain with a .38 caliber piece of merciless metal. Right into the right temple. Perfect shot, dead-on. How do you pick up that gun, young man? Steady the barrel? Finger the steel trigger? Pull. What happened, for God's sake, to you? Where did you go? How did you carry all that awful emotion, a burden that was both prodding you and calling to you, to that edge of that bathtub, to pass over and into that unrepeatable and speeding moment of mystery?

"Help me, am I slippin' into a twilight zone? This is a madhouse, I feel like I'm being cloned. . . . But soon you will come to know when the bullet hits . . .  "

Then it was all over. The truck -- the bloody-terrifying episode with M. -- All up in smoke, as it were. Almost before I knew what had happened. The traffic line, me sitting in it, remained motionless. Nothing had really changed. (. . . But me inside.) Racing dismay on the thin ice of new way? Turn the page quick, man, I thought. Repress. Click to a new Favorites link. Gotta get clear before this all comes real.

Now I realize that I just needed to tell you this tonight, whoever you are. There is something mysterious and blood-roiling just beyond my grasp here in the Friday night-dark of my man cave; yes, some entity or idea just beyond the frothy bubble-ledges of my consciousness -- perhaps a cloaked messenger, like Mr. Death paused in my waiting room, from some parallel universe -- that puts all of us, that damned madman in the red truck, and me helplessly waiting in my vehicle, and M. pulling a trigger to slice up his brain with a precisely aimed .38 (on the edge of that inanimate, mute bathtub), (yes, all of us) in the same tense. Here's the story, okay? What if the red truck really did hit me? Lethally. Smashingly. Inexorably? What if I didn't transfer into The Other way in the lapse of a moment? What would I imagine, what would I see and know? -- What or whom would I long for . . . until the full truth of that mysterious white light-shine crept up to me and into me?

Or maybe not. Maybe there is nothing that connects these dots. No such thing as present tense. Once a moment passes, it is history. Nevermore. It will never rise again. Me hit by a truck? Not likely to occur. As the ever-beautiful song"Stairway to Heaven" dreamily goes, 'Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven.'

So, maybe you can figure it out. What are the next steps in the plot line for me, if there is a shor story in these ramblings here? I think there is a some bemusing little story to tell. Characters of course will be crucial. You recognize the absolute, literary truth that "plot is character." Now that my heart knows (or thinks it knows) what happened during seemingly unlinked, unhinging moments in the last week or so, there will be no turning back. If you get this -- pray tell, if you can disclose a fulsome narrative to me, congratulations. And, for goodness sake, contact me. Now, it's getting late. I am written out. I've tapped my reservoir of risk for today. You understand? I need a presence to help me go tracking down a punchline and denoument.

Will it be Muse or Monster?