Renaissance

I was a pilot once, in a past life. My refuge was heaven and my prison was earth. To me, there seemed no greater freedom than ether, no greater beauty than the curvature of the cockpit cocooning me in buttons, knobs, and gauges. I was Austrian in those days, with a mustache and a wardrobe of tweed and leather. My wife of eight years lived in an ornate baroque townhouse in Vienna with our three children. In Copenhagen, my blushing mistress frowned upon my every takeoff and fawned upon every landing. We were not in love. That is to say I did not love her. It was my youth, fading rapidly from me, but glowing in her striking honey-colored eyes and residing in the palm of her outstretched hand, which kept me holding fast to her spectral figure between international flights. And that was alright. But the fragile double life I led as an Austrian pilot vanished from me in a matter of moments as my commercial jetliner pummeled the mountains of southern Poland at the hands of home-grown terrorists late in the 20th century.
It is only now that I remember this, as I lay in stagnation upon this cold metal tray. Yes, I lay here a man and a spirit, not one but two; a young mechanic and a nameless vapor awaiting its next reassignment. Mere hours ago, I was blazing down Interstate 287 in the red Camaro for which I had just signed a three-year lease. What a pity it was to lose the thing having had so little time to enjoy it. Its black leather seats and tasteful chrome-lined instrument panel offered me a sense of accomplishment. Who was I, a mere mechanic? Yet what did I manage to drive? It was irresponsibility that took from me my newest love and my most recent incarnation.
As dusk usurped the sky and the sun conceded defeat, sinking away behind the hills of Lower Westchester, I scanned the radio - the satellite radio - in search of any songs I knew by memory. I was spellbound by the crystal clarity of the reception, blinking back mixed recollections of my dearly beloved Nissan whose time had come the week before. Anticipation laid my foot down harder on the accelerator, drawing me nearer and nearer to Irvington – and my mistress. It was our first anniversary and I intended to make it a memorable one, with the help of the Camaro and the handy news of my intention to divorce my wife. Rehearsing the impending date in my head, I signaled my turn to change lanes, favoring the right, as my exit approached.
Craning my neck over my right shoulder intending to briefly check my blind spot, I felt a rough jolt. The car to my left had begun merging into my lane as if piloted by a distracted driver. Panicking, with no time to think, I jerked the wheel hard to the right. With the second jolt, the world outside spun and blurred and in a split second, I glimpsed the headlights of the car that had just begun to pass me on the right. As the Camaro fishtailed out of control, the wheel wrenched out of my grasp and spun in frenzied bewilderment. The screech of tires filled my ears and I closed my eyes, surrendering my body to the will of physics. Through a series of impossibly violent jolts and rolls and the pathetic cries of mutilated metal, P!nk wailed “please don’t leave me” until, with a blunt smack and a sharp sting, the radio was silenced and unfathomable darkness descended.
Noises drifted in and out of being. A rattling here, then nothing; an echoing hum there, then nothing. Everything was numb. No, not everything. A scorching furnace raped the atmosphere, its crackling sneer popping and hissing around my head. My arms began to tingle. And my legs. I could not see anything, but what was left of my imagination drove a stake into my rioting heart, waking me to the fullest possible extent. Fire. I tried to grope for my seatbelt latch, but my arms wouldn’t cooperate. All there existed was tingling. That goddamn tingling. Frantic, I tried to squirm, but did not move. I tried to kick, but did not move. I did not and could not move. All at once, I found my voice and screamed, but I was taken aback by the horrific gurgling undertone of my broken cry. Tears escaped my eyes. I knew they did. But I could not feel them roll down my tingling cheeks.
Then it came. A moaning from somewhere outside the car. Not a moaning, a wailing. More like the shrieking of the damned. But I understood. Help was on the way. All I had to do was hold fast for a few moments and the paramedics would be hauling my useless body out of this flaming wreckage. As the shrieking grew louder, my heart fought frantically to escape my chest. Hope had never been an entry in my mind’s dictionary, but now, in the face of utter chaos, staring blindly down the barrel of burning alive, those sirens meant safety and expecting safety constituted hope. Hope for what? Blindness and paralysis? No. Too much thinking, not enough screaming for help.
As the smoky air grew thicker and heavier to breathe, searing my nostrils and sending me into fit after fit of brutal coughing, I heard activity to the right of me. No. Above me. Up until this point, it had not occurred to me that the car lay on its side, exposing only the passenger door. “We’ve got a live one,” a husky man’s voice shouted. Coughing violently, I could not confirm in words what my body did in retching.
I felt as though I were moving, being lifted out of the car, but no tactile sense concurred. The only sound that mattered was the heavy breathing and groans of exertion by the rescuers heaving me from my flaming prison. Hurried but composed voices swarmed about, competing with the rush of water, presumably extinguishing the blaze. Fresh air stung my nostrils almost as much as the smoke had, but soon, the coughing subsided and I could hear the scratch of Velcro and the rustling of paramedics as they brought me uphill to the ambulance.
In spite of hope, consciousness was a fading ocean tide. In and out I drifted, forgetting each time where the horizon fell. Over the roar of the engine and the shriek of the siren, I caught bits and pieces of hushed conversation. “Patient is Henry Slike, male, 29 years…” bled into “collapsed lung, total paralysis, fractured skull…” bled into “could not contact spouse.” Each wave brought me further out to sea. With my last glimpse of shore, my final breaths, I understood.
“What about the other car?” a man’s voice inquired.
“Four dead on arrival; a mother and three children,” replied a woman dolefully.
“Jesus.”
But now, my senses returned. I beheld my mangled body as a pair of green scrubs shuffled into the brightly lit autopsy room. Blanched and pathetic, burned and bruised, it lay there as I drew up and out of it, into the timeless stillness, into the freedom of ether. Once again, that eternal vice stole me away from the earth and it from me, but a time would come when I could start afresh. Wishing only that I could be granted the impossible gift of retaining what lessons I had learned time and time again in countless attempts at successful earthly life, starting afresh seemed more a curse than a blessing.
The cold, sterile chamber around me soon began to dissolve. At first, the color bled from its surfaces. Then the walls simultaneously receded and faded. Left suspended in perfect blackness, I lingered in tranquility for a protracted instant. Awakening to the sound of my own hysterical bawling, I opened my eyes to a whole new everything.

Half-Birthday 2011 Midnight Meditation

Equality and justice are not the same. There is no equality.
Patience is letting excitement run its course, welcoming each new day as it comes.
Self-deprecation is prejudice. Prejudice is the enemy of confidence.
To understand is to stand beneath an idea, looking up in awe at its truth and relevance.
Truth is not uniform. Nor is understanding.
Words rationalize and classify to satisfy the need for order. More importantly perhaps, they dispel uncertainty by turning the intangible, tangible.
Emotion is nothing to be ashamed of for shame, not emotion, is weakness. Shame, like prejudice, is the enemy of confidence.
A name is a tool of reference, empty without a face to refer to. A face is a tool of reference, empty without a name to be called.
To leave any stone unturned may likely be to ignore the unlocked door to heaven.
The search for peace is as imperative as it is futile.
Denial is the enemy of understanding. It is the enemy of truth. It is the enemy of patience, justice, and peace.

In all, I ask myself: "Who am I to throw words around like normality and morality?"

Infertile

Who is he that speaks of the sea
Without having tasted salt air upon his lips
Who gambles with bare dice and sleeps amidst foxes
With one eye open
Hogtied
He is no man who sings
In foreign tongues to the deaf
Brings to table the freshest kill already digested
And swears by his own soul
Without first weighing it against the blackened smog
Of a char-broiled countryside
No
He is a shadow
A siren’s dying breath
Petrified pasture beneath winter’s pallid blanket
The skin of innocent teeth
Bared in rowdy defense
He walks in vacancy and sleeps thinly at the edge
Of extinction
For all his tarry is vanity and all his vanity is
Infertile