This one is not a story, but more a conversation between me and myself not long after I found out that I was, quite possibly, dying.


So you wonder, I wonder, why no panic? Aren’t you supposed to panic when you hear things like this? Or get mad or sad or something? And it’s not that each of those has not made its presence known, well not panic, but certainly mad and sad and all that, but, and here’s something important, that’s not new. It didn’t just start, it’s not a recent thing. I’ve been feeling things for many years. Mad and glad and sad and confused and confident and awe and all sorts of little or big things that don’t have just one word to fit them.

Felt all those before when life was less finite, so feeling them now ain’t no big thing. I think.


It’s hard to know what’s a big thing. Is it a big thing to just me or just you because of me or is it a big thing independent of me entirely, which must make me ask, as I do, is it then a big thing at all? I mean, I am basically killing myself pretty close to dead and hoping to be returned, hale and hearty, after having sailed three quarters of that dark river and it’s Jolly Boatman and then, somehow, return, fare unpaid; soul undelivered. Is that a big thing? To know I mean. Not to conceptualize as something that might happen someday, some when many years from now, but to know, with a fair amount of certitude, that the spray of that wild ride will be wetting your cheeks before Summers end, possibly ending with that fare being paid, that soul delivered, knowing that is there waiting, is THAT a big thing? The Big Guy* with the not talking thing going so well for him and all, is that a big thing?

It’s hard to know. Seems like it should be, and I suppose it is, but big small or in between, it’s coming. I know this. So, it’s not a big thing in that it’s in any way a surprise or insurmountable or so large in scope that comprehension is impossible. Relatively simple actually. Survive and live. Don’t and die.

All.

Nothing.

It’s not new. It’s a tale told a thousand times a day in a thousand different places by a thousand different people, each as important as the other. Not a single unique thing to it at all. Except it’s mine. Doesn’t make it better. It may be. Or not. Doesn’t make it original or new or much of anything. Being one of many doesn’t stand out at all. Nothing does.

That is not to say there are not things of interest, even intrigue, held in the forthcoming. There are. Not new things though maybe, hopefully, found for the first time, or re-found from a time lost. Hubris is no man’s friend.

*lest some of you gasp and look at me askance, I have been referred to as Big Guy by several for many years. I've got a well deserved reputation for not being talkative.