Breathing feels good. Do you ever catch yourself breathing so shallow you could be in suspended animation waiting to awake in Jupiter orbit? Then you take a deep breath and its like a first bite of ice cream.
Long ago, when we still thought we were winning, I lived with a woman for a couple seasons; I loved her, I love her still, but the evening before she went back north to school we crossed to a park in a strange giddy mood; a massive weight had lifted from me (and from her; neither of us ever married) and I ran the perimeter full out until I fell and lay gasping great lungsfull of air. Rich, nutritious, clean, generous, delicious atmosphere; there was all of it I could ever want, the whole planet is wrapped in it, and it was free. What a discovery.
(One of my three friends, Tom, argues that air isn't free; we pay taxes to regulate emissions.)
Years later - it might have been a mid-life crisis - I had an obsessive/compulsive love affair. The passing of time turned to a poison drip. It took five years for that stone to lift from my chest, but when it did, for the next year, it felt good just to breathe. Nothing more was required. To suck in air, to expel it, was ecstasy. Just to breathe.
When you're young sometimes you see an ancient humped over in their wheelchair and the highlight of their day comes when a Little Brown Bird hops onto the aluminum frame of the sliding plate glass window of the managed care facility. They wait for that LBB all day. And you vow that you will never let yourself become so diminished.
Maybe they swore that too. But something happens as you age. You cross a line. If you intend to bail, you'd better be aware of that line and see it coming. Because the day comes when you don't care about the details anymore.
There's a line in Full Metal Jacket: "The dead know only one thing. It is better to be alive." That's my mantra when I want to wake up, to sharpen my senses and bring the here-and-now into focus, I invoke that incantation.
There comes a time when you just want to keep on eating air.
Long ago, when we still thought we were winning, I lived with a woman for a couple seasons; I loved her, I love her still, but the evening before she went back north to school we crossed to a park in a strange giddy mood; a massive weight had lifted from me (and from her; neither of us ever married) and I ran the perimeter full out until I fell and lay gasping great lungsfull of air. Rich, nutritious, clean, generous, delicious atmosphere; there was all of it I could ever want, the whole planet is wrapped in it, and it was free. What a discovery.
(One of my three friends, Tom, argues that air isn't free; we pay taxes to regulate emissions.)
Years later - it might have been a mid-life crisis - I had an obsessive/compulsive love affair. The passing of time turned to a poison drip. It took five years for that stone to lift from my chest, but when it did, for the next year, it felt good just to breathe. Nothing more was required. To suck in air, to expel it, was ecstasy. Just to breathe.
When you're young sometimes you see an ancient humped over in their wheelchair and the highlight of their day comes when a Little Brown Bird hops onto the aluminum frame of the sliding plate glass window of the managed care facility. They wait for that LBB all day. And you vow that you will never let yourself become so diminished.
Maybe they swore that too. But something happens as you age. You cross a line. If you intend to bail, you'd better be aware of that line and see it coming. Because the day comes when you don't care about the details anymore.
There's a line in Full Metal Jacket: "The dead know only one thing. It is better to be alive." That's my mantra when I want to wake up, to sharpen my senses and bring the here-and-now into focus, I invoke that incantation.
There comes a time when you just want to keep on eating air.
