More Reflections on Death and Shit

I sometimes look back at writing I did during that period, videos I recorded, things I scraped together. I can see my eyes are hardly in the world. It’s through a total distortion of flooded tears. I will never be how I was, who I was, in the before-times. I think I have accepted now that this is how it has to be; that the before-times belonged to then. That now, the developed Me has more understanding of life because death is such a harsh and violent tutor. You have no choice but to wake up and learn again how to deal with things that you never before considered. 

I suppose it’s like driving a car. When you’ve done a journey countless times you get into a state of flow, where you’re not worrying about the mechanics of it. You’re not consciously doing any Driving, unless something comes along to shock you out of it. Where this metaphor breaks down (pun intended) is that you can learn to drive, from someone who can show you how to operate all the bits and bobs you need. Once you know you can do it, you pass a test and get on the road. What you are really learning is how to free yourself from the conscious effort of operating the machinery. You’re learning to consider it part of your body, I think. You don’t usually have to work out how to pick up a biscuit do you. To tell your muscles to move together in a certain way, and your hand to make a certain shape, and all that. Babies learn it. And you have to re-learn it if you’ve been somehow disabled. Then the subconscious can kick in.

What am I saying? I don’t know, really. It’s even more important than biscuits. The worst that could happen there is that it flops into your cup of tea cause you’ve dunked it too long. With cars, you can be in a wonderful state of flow, pootling along merrily and singing along to O Fortuna, but suddenly a juggernaut crashes into your back end, sending you spinning across the central reservation where, trapped by your twisted-metal wreck, bruised to fuck by the airbag, all you can do is stare terrified into the eyes of the headlights of ten lanes of oncoming motorway traffic.

And there is no test for that. No training. No safety net. Good luck; you will need it.

x