Cherry-flavored gob smack in the kisser

Things move forward slowly. Things move forward. Things move. Things.

Life is a game of wack a mole. Life is also beautiful and, basically, a hug from the universe. A cherry-flavored gob smack in kisser. 

Life is scary and huge and scary in its hugeness and scary in the way it threatens to swallow you up whole and spit you out, drowned. Only with more gravity, both physically and in a poetic way, the kind that makes you heavy all over and all-over heavy. None of the lightness of being underwater. Just the gasping and flailing. And chlorine. I imagine chlorine, even in the ocean. They say you can drown in a cup of water. That’s reassuring--there's always at least that much, isn't there?

This is Lompoc, California, with head winds in both directions. Lompoc, in which every trip is uphill both ways, and even on sunny days, it’s cloudy. This is a dead town. I died and ended up here and I’m trying to be reborn here and that's quite a process. I feel as if I’ve accomplished little of significance today, and right now I don’t have the luxury of days where I, little, don't accomplish a significant amount of things of significance. Time flies by and by the time I notice, it’s already passed. Also, it crawls at a drunken slug’s pace. I do a lot of grumbling. Here and in person. I do a lot of sleeping, mostly in person, but sometimes by just not being here. I do a lot of aching. Which is an actual place. The pastor tells me aching is near Fresno. Aching is my middle name. But no, it's not. Hey, fella is my middle name. 

Benjamin is my first name. I’m the youngest son of my father’s favorite wife, this he used to brag, as a joke, in passing or at parties. Parties were passing and then passed. He was drunk at the parties, parties mostly in French and involving coq au vin, or vin au fin. And then he was sober and there weren’t any more parties, mostly just church and reading things silently or out loud, and plaid shirts and yellowing teeth and unkempt hair and the smell of old man.

And now he is dead. But I’m still the youngest son of his favorite wife, who is also dead. I wish I was dead-sure of this, both their both being dead and his favoritism of her. I’m all for favoritism, so long as I or someone I like is favorite. I don’t actually care much about the significance of my mother being his favorite wife because she was his only wife and thus winner by default, at least in the day to day once the past parties had passed. She told me on the occasion of their fiftieth wedding anniversary, you better love the person you marry because there are going to be times you don’t like them very much. 

I wish I was dead-sure my parents are both dead, which of course they are but not if you ask me at two in the morning practically every goddamned night when I dream them alive, vivid and useless. They won’t sink to the bottom. They are floaters, her especially. The Unsinkable Molly Brown, five foot two, eyes of blue. Pale blue eyes that I got from her, eyes that refuse to close and finally rest, for decency’s sakes. Aren’t you tired? Aren’t you tired of being somewhere between sixty and eight years old and doing the same old same old, night after night after night after night? I want to let you go although, apparently, no I don’t. I keep you floating, not rotting but not fresh. Fresh in my mind, but useless. 

You died in a proper manner, with an appropriate measure of pomp and circumstance (everyone dies with same amount of circumstance, appropriate or not.) I told you goodbye before you died and afterward, too. I stood in tight shoes and a necktie at your memorial and read bits of poetry with my sisters and everybody cried; I cried, too, being a part of “everybody” despite my frequent aspirations otherwise. And I held your ashes in my hands, your actual ashes in my actual hands. 

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down. But then we all get up, if you're me, against all reason and sometimes against the laws of decency. Dead people should have the decency to stay fallen, and the dead in each of us living people should have the decency not to get churlish and swirl like leaves around our heads, a head wind in both directions, uphill each way. But that’s Lompoc for you. And that’s everywhere for you. And that’s dead people. And that’s living people. 

And that’s one part of the hug from the universe. And that’s one part of the cherry-flavored gob smack in the kisser.   And I guess I’ll take it.