Ch. 12
Like I’ve said, I kinda dropped every class that wasn’t the last requirements for my philosophy major. Philosophy how you evade my gaze yet demand that I ever search. How the lame are ever beckoned to walk though stumble be there stay. And, well, even those are somewhat of a struggle to stay consistent with. Speaking of which… fuck… FUCK FUCK FUCK. I’m late for my meeting with my professor. I was meeting with Dr. Pascal… well I was late to said meeting and now I was running 6 blocks… no wait I drove. Well that’s neither here nor there. The point is I got there late. He wasn’t entirely surprised. I kinda run on Brazilian time, at least that’s what Dick Fealey told me, if you know what I mean. Hours are just numbers anyway. Whose expecting me to keep track of the fuckers for fucksake. Hey professor I’m sorry I was late… I tried to continue before Dr. Pascal promptly cut me off.
Yes, yes I know plague and locus my kind sir you don’t have to explain, he says to me in his notorious french accent. The man was a genius and funny as fucking shit. So I was meeting with him now. Meeting with him mainly because I had missed class one to many times. Though I had made it today it was nonetheless poor on my part to miss class as often as I did and I realized that. I guess I could have talked to him after class today, but some of the other students were lingering so I figured I’d just schedule a meeting with him to lay all this shit out. Now as I was saying, Pascal was brilliant. A skinny crazy french mother fucker, but brilliant nonetheless. Like I said fucking hilarious, mean fucking sense of humor. I know he didn’t care, and my whole apology was kinda unnecessary, but I wanted to do it, you know, just because… well anyway, he asked me what I planned to do after graduating. Dying of ball cancer, I blurted out abruptly. Fuck dude, I thought rapidly. What the fuck was that? He looked 5 types of weirded the fuck out after that little explosion of honesty. Just kidding professor. Haha I laughed. Sorry I guess I have a morbid sense of humor. Luckily he didn’t know my situation and began to laugh along awkwardly. Uh I guess I’m going to graduate school I think in either theology or more philosophy, I says. Ah theology. Interesting. He says. I could see you being a theologian. Being an atheist himself I didn’t exactly know how he meant that, but there was a lot I didn’t know about the guy. Bet he’s had one hell of a crazy life. If I were to write his biography I guess I’d call it FRENCH AND FUCKING LOVING IT. But ya, we bullshitted for a while and by bullshitted I mean I flat out lied.
There was no way this death by scrotum was letting me get passed two months post graduation. Plus, after graduation, there was no way I was spending my last moments studying my ass off in some summer grad program for a degree I would never even get close to. After that awkward little blunder we talked about Hegel and Heidegger for a while, and how I might tie one of the two into a paper I was looking to write on Marcel. After deciding that Heidegger would be more fitting for the scope of the paper we both parted ways. Him off to teach a class and I off to snort or smoke something as my soul slowly detaches from my decaying corpse.
He had no idea that this was probably to be the last one on one encounter that we would share with one another. Then again, me and Pascal weren’t close like that… like me and Dr. Luther, who knew all there was to know about my situation. Pascal didn’t know I was dying despite my little oopsy of truth a moment ago. I think I liked it better that way. Him not knowing. Not everybody in the fucking world needed to know. I mean, besides the baldness that I had since we met my junior year, how was he suppose to know. He never asked and I never told. Just let me die in peace I says. The fuck alone in fucking peace. The fuck alone in the fucking woods or something. I don’t know. I’m fucking pissed now GOD DAMMIT. Sorry God I need to stop taking that fucking… that name of yours in vain.
There was something up with Chancey. There was something up with a lot of my friends, but we’ll focus on Chancey for now. He had practically moved out of his apartment he had been sharing with my bro Bobby. And now he was living with me, well on my futon. He was running from something. Something more than just my brother’s nagging about unpaid bills and unwashed dishes. God could that mother fucker nag though, Bobby ya know. But God love him was he the most deep, almost paradoxically stoic nagger there ever was. But back to Chancey. Chancey, as I was saying, just wanted to hide and he knew I wouldn’t give him to much shit for doing it at my place. How could I? He had been there too much emotionally for me to give him crap over real life shit that Bobby was concerned with. His family life was less than ideal, and sure as hell it was getting to the motherfucker. Well to say it short his family life wasn’t… well it wasn’t great. Not that it was my place what so fucking ever to make a judgement like that, but I don’t know, it just wasn’t great for him. I won’t go into much detail because it’s honestly none of your fucking business, let alone mine. Not to be crass but honestly it’s not, and Chancey wouldn’t want me too. Little enough to say he was now also apart of our family, as problematic as that may have been and further would continue to be. He became one of us. Me, Bobby, Z, Dugan, and Chancey. We all loved each other in our own ways, but we also enabled one another to an extent. Even the best families cultivate inequity in one another. We have a way of overlooking the vices of those we love the most. It may not be entirely christian love, but it sure was human. God how I wish Chancey would let me in just further than the facade of a troubled heart I saw from time to time.
I may be dying, and it sure was nice of him to try to spare me the troubles of his own, but that’s not what you do when you love someone. You don’t shut them out, because in doing so you end up making them feel just as alone and helpless as you do. Really loving someone is pain just as much as it is joy. We have to cry with the ones we love just as much as we are to laugh if love is to truly be seen. Real love is reciprocation. Its mutual disclosure of tragic horizons and joyful starlight that shimmer in soul’s skies. LOVE IS REVELATION. Apocalypse. The unveiling of face’s true countenance. Love is and is so abundantly for all. But how may I ask my brother Chancey to do what I myself fail to do at every juncture. I just pray dear Lord I die less a hypocrite than I was a day before. Pray I never fall into the tetters of consistency concerning the hypocritical, if yet I haven’t already made that plunge. For everything I just said in poetry, for everything I pray I disgrace in my own willful acts.
I stood there staring. Staring into that mirror. One must loath himself before he may know himself. I know you, I says with grimace gasping. God how I wanted to punch the fuck out that mirror. For only the ever looming eye of self-hatred can penetrate the veil of our own ignorance. I held the knife’s edge to my arm. Though only hatred is capable of unbinding man from his ignorance. I know you… I know… Fuck, I says, as the red became revealed. It is only love that may allow him to live with this new found self that one truly is. Fuck you, I said with a sigh, for I had no tears to hide. Hatred may slash away, but only love sustains.
As I wrapped my arm over and over with toilet paper, before pulling down my sleeve, I knew this one was going to get me into trouble. I know what you’re thinking and you’re right. I wasn’t doing ok. I really wasn’t. I wanted to cry all the time. I prayed to God. Please. Please. Just make it stop. What did I do? What have I done? Please make it stop. Please make it stop. Where was this coming from, I asks myself, half knowing the answer. I was stoned as fuck right now.... Why am I not happy? I guess even I burry things. Things not even the herb can keep down. Even me and all my emotional display was still capable of burying things. Obviously not deep enough. God please. Please make it fucking stop. I had always thought myself too honest, too sincere to hide something from myself of all people. God let it stay… Let it stay hidden. We all hide things. Me, you, your mother, the mailmen, and even the fucking pastor. There are things we all wish not to face so we don’t. Its as simple as that or so we like to tell ourselves.
It was weird participating in something purely for its own sake. That was what this last semester was for me. What the fuck am I going to do with a degree anyway. I’m not exactly fated for the career route, as we have already established. Even if I was I’m a goddamn philosophy major. What the fuck would I do with that? Actually, I’m just trying to act snide. There are a few things more in this world that I wish for, and one of them is having a career, a true vocation, in philosophy, actually more likely theology, but you get the picture. To be honest philosophy was really the only fucking reason I’m still here at Miami. Shit give me a few more seminars with Dr. Luther or Dr. Pascal or even Dr. Fennen and I can die a happy man! Well, maybe a few more things before I kick the fucking bucket and that statement can be full fledge fucking true. A few more things God and then you can take me away. A few more things, and my gorgeous fucking sunset, and I’m fucking yours, I swear in the most christianly way possible.
We believe. We believe there is more. More than what we are. There is more because we were meant for more. We were meant to shine. To be brilliant in our days though few as they may be. Lasting longer than moments in the fray. We were meant for the coming of man to himself and to his brothers. The crossing from beasts to men of true love. Where God no longer weeps, but wails in joy. For at last we have returned home. How could this be a lie, I thought to myself, as the winds blew in and over me. They were cold and I did my best not to let them make me so to. Why would we tell ourselves such a cruelty? Darwin… you fuck! Would you be such a bastard to not only give us dreams of divinity but delusions that we had anything to do with such, I questioned in my own joyful sorrow. I began to cry, for the wind began to call my name. I began to cry, and In my tears I smiled, for this would not be my dying day.
Their words cut deeper than they use to. Don’t get me wrong I know how to dwell on the perceived criticisms of others, but ever since the sickness a certain anger burrowed in my chest. I was dying. HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SAY IT BEFORE IT GETS THE FUCKING POINT ACROSS. I’m sorry I’m such a bore. Cut me a break if you could. Let me get what I fucking need to get off my chest, including this god damn fucking anger, and let me die in fucking solace. Don’t tell me not to snort this or smoke that. You don’t know what it’s fucking like, I want to say to them. You’re all on the worst drug of them all and you don’t even have a fucking clue.I just want to yell at them. To show them what they so happily mainline into their souls with numbing ignorance. For the most poisonous of drugs numb with lies, and of which I know no greater than the idea of a full and happy life. What a goddamn fucking delusion most cram down their fucking throats. They all hold it as if it were their birthright when only the opposite is true. We were born to die, and life be but the fleeting interlude. Dust to dust. Ash to ash.And time in between but leaving these things to putrefy and sicken in mouth. For we were birthed from a time we never remembered to exit off, and into a time we will never know. Ash and dust they sicken me for ash and dust I am. If only we were honest about the true things. That our human affairs left to themselves are but contingencies. There are no guarantees in life, only cold matter and vicious genetics.
God dammit, I scream to the winter night’s slumber, but damn not God, I sing to hopeful springs. But are springs not lies and only winters real? Why? Why? Tell me FUCKING WHY!!! Why lie to ourselves? Why do they seem so real even though there is nothing further from the truth. Is it fact or fiction to hope? Is it a lie, all that stuff I just fucking said a second ago? In such truthful lies we dwell. In such truthful lies lay the gambit. Man’s gamble with his most precious belonging: his own life.