February 23, 2007
I have no idea if I sent the message.On top of being sick I was completely sauced. I had managed to get into a �fight� with my father which was more about me than him and I had lost all coordination in regards to pouring appropriate proportions of Captain to Coke. As a result, I resorted to Blue Moon beer. I had only The Moon to blame for this unfortunate incident. Ridiculous displacement of blame, yes, but strangely quite rational at the time.
I set forth on an offensively slow internet connection (24kbps) without direction. I wrote e mail messages that I did not send, I checked all of my outlets of public interface and I listened to sad, reminiscent songs after listening to about two dozen sad, reminiscent songs:
The rose I received while �Hanging by a Moment� and how I wondered if he had heard �You and Me.� The night he cried because �Nothing Compares to You� and standing on the pier at the Harp, contemplating �I Get to Come Home to You� as our wedding song.
These songs hit me the same way an air-conditioned grocery store hits you on a 98-degree summer day. It�s almost mean when you�re not properly prepared with a damned parka and mittens. I suppose I wasn�t prepared.
My emotions were already pulled to their utmost tautness. I was thinking about all the changes I needed to make in my life and I was thinking about how short this taut life really is. I was thinking about moving out of Waukesha and away from the motorcycle biz, I was thinking about eating more Brussels sprouts because I had actually not minded them during dinner and I was thinking about school and then, all of a sudden, I was thinking about him. Wondering how he was doing and how unfair it was that I couldn�t just call up to ask.
�Hey, buddy, still alive and kicking?�
That sounds so unfair when there is so much more to it.
How does one abruptly stop caring for human life? How does one erase another from their concerns?
�Love is the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love. Where this active concern is lacking, there is no love.�
Perhaps it�s silly to still get stuck there. Perhaps it�s normal � if anything I do actually qualifies as normal. Perhaps it�s just a moment. Another one in which I was tangled. But, just the same, I wrote the message. I lingered over it and dismantled it three times. I just wanted to feel connected at that moment � to something, anything. And I saw the profile picture he had � the picture I had taken, that I was connected to � and I just wanted to know. I wanted to know because I have always hated not knowing.
And the irony of it all is that I still don�t know if I even sent the damned message in the first place�