Curiosity ~ Lucidity ~ Humanity
Falling into a black hole, a dying star gets pulled apart. On a faraway planet the wise men wonder: Do astral pathways just happen to cross, or has the hole’s undeniable spin exerted on its victim a fatal fascination? Closer to home, I feel on firmer ground when I say: where my mind wanders, my body then goes. But I am in truth tonight not all that close to home.
We are the last two people poolside tonight. The sky over our small section of the planet ripples like it too is liquid; stars, brilliant pinpricks, flip place. Is that what jerks us, finally, from opposite sides of the pool, into action? Flesh hits the surface, flesh hits flesh. What qualifies as chance encounter? You can anticipate the shock of bodily contact but cannot block its consequences. The cracking sounds recall a flag in the wind; the cries, a childhood lost. To enter the water (warmer than the air) you already submit to visual melt. Limbs must learn all over to slice through the alien medium. Failing that, they will simply flail. A squeal is a hard thing to swallow.
Still, going under engenders a silly exhilaration. It swells, even as lungs at length empty of air. This might be an extracurricular midnight dip in the gym’s rooftop pool— afloat in the water, adrift in the air—but midnight slid by a while ago. Under lunar spill and six feet of liquid, lane lines splinter, reconstitute, splinter again—a flicker that finds rough echo in the muted rumble the ears drum—oh give it up. A lifetime of nights, squeezed into one, suddenly reverses. Worlds split.
Back at the village I slip past security and, upstairs, slip out of my still damp trunks and sink to bed. “So who you been bangin’ now, bro’?” asks my roommate for these summer games, woozy but aroused now, his head an unsteady snake in ascent. “She a swimmer too?” But once my head has hit the pillow, I’m (blessedly) once more a goner.
Jim Eigo Bio-Fragment: After several decades of hiking life’s woozy footpath, what have I learned that I could pass on? What bits could I salvage and distill into a blurb that might fill a small card? All the kids that I’ve never had could carry that card in their digital wallets for easy reference as they hike their own woozy paths through life (or their bots do it for them). Such a card might read something like: Listen to everyone. The most usable wisdom you’ll ever glean you’ll glean from the least likely sources. But believe no one. Only gods are worthy of belief, and there are none.