Crossing The Bridge Between Two Worlds
City of Dreams
Divided by lifetimes
The best part of dying is doing it so slowly nobody really notices; like walking backwards very slowly at the party, backing into the open doorway; the passersby don’t know if you’re coming or going and they’re looking right at your smiling face. All they see is the smile and you know this is something we all do alone. You couldn’t announce what was happening even if you had the words on the tip of your tongue. People see what they want to see and that’s ok because it has to be that way.
He’s off saving the world being a hero zipping along in a sports coupe way too fast while she’s crossing the bridge to infinity; the one with the tall arches laying in the misty vapors with only one or two gallantly marching across it’s ancient planks, like they had all the time in the world, and truth is, they do. Oh boy; narrow is the way, like going through a needle’s eye. He’s saving what is meaningless to her.
She asked will you come with me? But he would not. He wants to live forever here and not change a single thought that he’s ever had, not even for the sake of the mystery of love. He likes to put things in little compartments so that he knows where to find it and it’s like consistent then. He used to fondle shiny coin like most people do, count it up and say, wow, that’s a lot of coin. It’s such an important thing to do you know. She didn't know what he was doing now; it had ceased to matter the day he declined her offer to cross the bridge together.
Now he lives out his creations that he made in his head. Every single one, even the creations she flittered into by accident or design, he lives them out, even the truth, along with the illusions that brought the sun and the rain at the same instant. How could he leave all of that?
It would have been impossible. She should have known. He has to live out the words he uttered, or screamed. All his creations were sheer genius, like children of his loins he would never leave them just to cross a bridge he knew nothing about.
All the while she’s thinking we don’t need another hero; it’s all so redundant. He calls out I can help you. She calls out I can help you the same, yet you would not follow me over the bridge. We are already dead. Don’t you know there is no meaning here in this world unless you yourself put that meaning on it? Don’t you know, she would say, we can die to the world and yet still be among the truly lively here?
He screams out I want you, but you must follow ME! She shakes her head in disgust and mutters when hell freezes over I would follow a warped genius. Genius yes, but genius is always a lonely path, sort of like a barbed wire path; there’s no freedom there and you’re bound to get cut up getting even close.
Life Gave Me A Friend
I have a friend who is desperate. Her head explodes in pain. Life puts her through her paces. I watch but say nothing unless she asks me to. She knows when I touch her that I have healing energy. I’m just there in case she asks someday. She likes the raw masculine energy, makes no bones about it, a lady in her 60s going through her 19th nervous breakdown. We're both like sacred whores in a way, only I know I got my game on, she thinks it's all real. Only an idea separates us.
She doesn’t get the passion with her man so she makes plans to leave him; to find the younger, more virile men and make them take their shirts off so she can see their muscles and marvel over there dynamism; what only comes with pretensions anyway. She is desperate because she’s getting older but she can’t slow down, can’t enjoy what she already has, a nice guy and a nice house. She makes parties and cooks up a storm. She stops strangers on the street and greets them with a hug. She does not give the hug, she is taking their energy and they will comply, if she needs that. Everybody wants to show love, their capability to express it; she is their opportunity.
The perfect hostess, she uses food as the friendship enticer; they will never forget the broth she bought them with. Or the candy or items from the buffet line she slipped into her purse brazenly. She takes all the toilet paper from her hotel room back to her house. She’s afraid she’ll run out of something, but what she really runs out of is that feeling of liveliness what comes with all the good feelings of having enough.
Did I sing that song good enough? She asks me. No, I want the truth she asks. She’d reached a perfect high note, unusual for her. I mention it. But what about the rest of the song? I donno dear, this is karaoke after all. Nobody is expected here to sing the song the way the original artist did it. I say, not sure what she’s asking me about.
There’s just not enough of this, enough of that, with my friend. More, more and yet more, we must take it all, and steal what is not given seems to be the philosophy. We must gulp our wine, not sip it. At regular intervals she ingests her high blood pressure pills and her head aches. Then she’s on top of it again and entertaining the crowd and making it all come together once more, matchmaking and opening up people, like they were cans of soup to add to her recipe of life.
She directs the flow of energy that comes in the door. It’s her domain. Her home. When she welcomed me into the fold, she had to give up her seat of honor once in awhile and it took it’s toll on her reserves but she reached admirably inside of herself to love me, despite the sacrifice.
You’re afraid of me she said once. I insist, she said, you are. I straightened her out that the fear came when she asked me to gamble $20 when my system is to gamble no more than $5. We both ignore the odds, only a 55% chance to win any amount at all on the slots we favor. We're both like old ladies who still flaunt what is starting to sag. We're here for the party and it's going to be over like real quick here, but let's not talk about it just yet.
She insisted her system works better and recounts her many winnings over the years, while neglecting to tell me of the losses, for she does not add the losses up. She doesn’t know I only gamble until I’m sober enough to drive home. Nothing like playing a penny a throw to sober one up. You become part of the machine and it’s like milking a cow. Spurt, spurt, squeeze harder, make the milk come out...zzzzzzzZZZZZ..time to go home and do it all over the next night. It’s amazing what people do for money, the agony of losing the winning feeling.
Sometimes our voices rise and blend in excitement to get the bonus..we watch each other’s machine, prodding it along to pay off, and when it does we are on the stage of life and the audience is happy too. We’re all there for the same reason. To get a little thrill of winning, to be just a tad less bored with it all for one moment and pretend you’re not hungry.
My mind drifts to the bridge and the way I grandly approached it with wonder and pride and joy and gratitude and great relief to have found it, and I leave the world once more in my mind while my body pounds the button that has been pounded so many times it responds sluggishly, like my mind. She draws me back into the frenzy of her thoughts and I wish I could take her across my bridge but it’s not her time to do that.
Neither is it his time. The hero who drives a Mustang classic. It’s ok. I’m glad they are both in my life, I will be the one who always remembers them, and when they get on the bridge it will be me that greets them so that they won’t be afraid at all. I can make them familiar with it. That’s what friends do, make other’s comfortable in strange surroundings. They are mine, and life has given them to me and I to them. There is always a reason to love them and I will find it without losing myself. And I am not afraid. I am in the midst of one singular life experience, where I die everyday and resurrect the next, recreating myself with the rise of the sun. The bridge is always there and a part of me stands on the other side already..waiting for the rest of it's life force, then we will walk along further yet.