When the breakdown happened…

When the breakdown happened, that’s all there was… Break. Down. The ground was the brakes, and then it was all DOWNhill from there.

And then some.

But there was an UP, too. And that was from you, mother and father. I just wish I could have appreciated it more at the time.

But that’s a downer, too. So let’s focus on the UP’s. You know what I’m saying?

The breakdown was a disaster because I was a disaster. Still am. But the river north was a wide one with tributaries in all sorts of directions, until it led me home, again…

Where? I cannot say, but home, again, or, maybe for the first time… But the river is leading there and that’s all that matters…

When the ground broke my fall, after my decision to “save the world,” yes, by hanging myself from a tree outside a Bank of Tampa some distance from the hospital that wouldn’t admit me the first time I saw them that day, I had no recollection of “the Fall.” That’s neither here, nor there, however, the thing of it is that, because of that, it wasn’t, and, often, hasn’t been, clear to me whether or not I was, in fact, successful with that attempt. Was I? Would you know? Maybe you’re just part of the matrix, just like all those other patients in the mental health ward afterward (in the hospital that wouldn’t admit me the first time) who were pretty sure I was the Dark Man from Stephen King’s The Stand when I arrived with my eyes clamped shut, unable to see. Rather than realizing I still had my, by this point, dried-out contacts still on my eyes (which I couldn’t realize… After all, how could I? I was too busy saving the world), the orderlies were content with, or, maybe, just indifferent to, the fact that the other patients were referring to me as “Snake Man.” When I wasn’t Neo, that is. (Or was I? Nope.)

But look at our world. Am I really so crazy to believe that, perhaps, I was successful in that attempt and that this “world” that I find myself in isn’t some quasi-liminal purgatory where reality television stars become presidents, pandemics rage, and we STILL can’t figure out (or maybe just can’t agree on) how to prevent 10 year olds from being slaughtered at school while reading Jack and Jill…

Go up the hill… Like Sisyphus’s rock. Will we ever find our way? Will I? Welp, I’m waking up… And I hope that YOU are, too. Thank you. Best.

For now.