I met him once before. He helped me with my bags at the Greyhound bus station on my way to Phily. When I saw him that night in town, our eyes met and once more I felt disturbed. His eyes are calm, perfidious, and absolute. As he approached me, my heart started to pound yet I maintained the stoic loathing facade of my past. After a shot of vodka and an hour of raw sex, we parted. We parted as bored friends part, without mystery, interest, or desire. We parted as accidental acquaintances part, without knowing, caring, or being. For once, an insignificant encounter was introduced, climaxed, and resolved within a specific time frame. The moment is mirabile dictu, ‘‘wonder to relate.’’ It is an incredible combination of conclusion and apathy.
I am eighteen years old. I am female. I indite my life in a leather bound notebook. I always ask why but rarely listen. My life is a series of moments.
I wake up to the loud sound of a fluorescent alarm clock. I stagger out of bed attempting to stretch the firm and steadfast tendons of my body. Constricted by the tight blue jeans from the night before, I have trouble directing myself toward the pile of clothing near the bookshelf. Five minutes later the morning’s confusion is a blur. I am sweating, wasted, and fatigued. I am running. I run past the post office and I remember my relatives. They were loving and compassionate but listless and fake. I run past the bookstore and I remember my first kiss. It was soft and pure but passionless and empty. I run up the hill toward the indivisibility of the sun and away from the dualism of the moon. I run and remember the past, briefly stopping to wipe a tear from my cheek.
I do not believe in destiny because that takes away my choice. I do not believe in fate because that takes away my freedom. My life is just a series of moments.
Nausea sets in at school. I look at my classmates. The hung-over, blank, Monday morning stares make me sick. I wonder about the direct correlation between the beer intake and the number of unexpected pregnancies among college freshmen. I think back to my weekend. It was a standard distribution of time between reading and writing. Schoolwork comes and goes but the anticipation for late nights with Kerouac, Salinger, and Joyce perseveres. I take out my leather bound notebook and inscribe a question: Should thought be taken for granted?
I do not settle because unbeingdead is not beingalive. I do not feel regret when I remember. I fight against self pity. My life is still just a series of moments.
Naked lunch-a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork. William S. Burroughs wrote that. There is a mandated point in life when desirous youth gives way to abstinence adulthood. It is not a particular age nor time but rather a place of crossing where intellect, ambition, and idealism die. Some people are the lucky ones; their bodies decompose as merciless scum below ground indulge in a feast of lifeless flesh. Some are not so lucky; their minds deteriorate before their bodies have the chance. Their minds die with every question not asked, with every answer not found, and with every ambition not attempted. The killing fields of any war where bodies die in pain and in suffering are justified with every life not lived in thought.
My life is an incredible series of moments.
