Bedrock

At my friends birthday party a man was singing a song about the time in a person's life when one realizes they aren't going to be famous and change the world in some big way. He sang how it's a time of disappointment, maybe sadness.

In my own life I remember this moment and how it brought on disappointment and the feeling of shrinking into unimportance. But it's evolved into something different. Not that I don't still have my moments of wanting to create with word or picture, a life of influence in the world. But now I think about all who have passed before, tens of thousands of years worth of people. People most of which were and are completely forgotten.

So when I visualize my passing, what it means, will mean to others, etc, etc. I think this: That which is remembered is built on the back of that which is not. We the forgotten, cover this earth from one end to the next. We are the bedrock that holds the built up memories of the so very few. So it's OK to be the dust in a box whose grave stone no longer stands.

oily dark bears

I drove the ragged car over the jagged and jutted tracks made by big burly trucks, cycles and what have yous. I crashed just before the far hill that I couldn't keep my eyes off of no matter what was right in front of me.

I wanted my tank car to spill it's oil all over the jagged and jutted tracks so I would need to creak open my battered door and walk in my flip flops through the beautiful brambles, milk weed and black and blue berries.

I could stumble upon a oily dark bear, startled by my human thrashing. I would stand there staring at my potential death and think, "I'm supposed to lie down and pretend I'm dead so that I may not die." I would wonder which is better, to die pretending to already be dead or to die standing in witness, this bear threatening in it's bear way with growls and whatever sounds it makes before it eats something or decides to walk away.

I could experience the end of either the encounter or my life. I would stand there waiting for a terrible pain, for nothing or for everything. Laid out on some life platter of decisions I would stand there feeling very alive and none of it would matter either way the bear chose to act. Out of hunger or disinterest, this thing, life, would inevitably stumble on with me as I am or as I am not. And maybe in a week or two someone would find my flip flops and wonder why someone would leave their shoes there.