Self Portrait with Wedding Ring

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C'est moi.

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I know I am going to die. I know. My wife, my child. My mommy and daddy. My friends and enemies.

I just don't believe it.

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I just read Didion's Year of Magical Thinking, because it is about the axe-fall of sudden loss, which interests me. I did not like the book and found myself not liking her because she was too rich, too privileged, too precious for me to take her suffering seriously.

How fucked up is that?

I guess what that book showed me was that it really doesn't matter how tragedy and loss do their work, it always feels sudden, complete, overwhelming. I find it so compelling and strange that it seems such an insult when the wheel of life turns and crushes you beneath it. Like, "Man, I didn't see that coming!

Really?

You didn't notice it happening to every single other person on the planet since man walked the earth?

Huh.

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But we don't. Not really.

Not until it's our turn.

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I suppose it keeps us sane. That peculiar kind of willful seeming blindness.

Keeps us paying our mortgages and fixing the roof.

Thing is, if we could only keep that horror fresh, in front of our eyes, see it for what it is, wouldn't that make our lives so much richer? But it slips away. I mean, I see truly awful shit every day, it's how I make my living. And I'm interested in it. I actively seek it out and study it, look at it hard, taste it, but still it mystifies me and won't stay in focus.

I keep thinking it's not really going to happen to me.

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Ha.

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Next week I'm going to sunny San Diego for a week long class in investigating child abductions, the child sex slave trade, and child murders.

After I get back I'm going out to Front Sight for another four-day pistol class. I'm a lefty, but I'm going to go through this class right-handed.

I don't know what's wrong with me. Am I supposed to figure that out?

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Meanwhile, other people suffer.

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Namaste.

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