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Cosmic Wanderer   Sept 28, 2019

Full throttle

At times in the turbulent distant past, I have, foolishly, fallen into a quiet, raging despair. A sense of being overwhelmed by furious helplessness. Dragged by cursing soldiers, both real and figurative, and slammed up against a wall. Dragged into a small cell, again both real and figuratively speaking. The real part once was being led, a screw hauling each arm, and smashed, face first, into each wall. By way of introduction.
We never did get along after that. And that night, a demon was born.

The figurative part was that bleak cell, into which that one time I was cast, briefly as it turned out, against my will. I was released without charge, although others were not so fortunate, and spent many years incarcerated, for much less. I was a supreme actor. I could feign the innocent, bemused simpleton, totally out of his innocent depth, with a convincing, wide-eyed gormlessness.

The decades have rolled by. Many.
The passion has not diminished. The Irish temper, I confess sadly, has likewise stubbornly refused to mellow. But something in me has changed profoundly.

In this small valley, with the tree topped hills not far away, with few locals, and many deer, hungry coyotes and wary rabbits, the sky today is mostly clouded grey. Low, rushing, and ominous perhaps, to the earth bound observer. But through the occasional cracks and tantalizing lapses, there appears, to an old, seemingly retired, weathered pilot,  that marvelous hint of the vast, sunlit uplands. Literally, as well as symbolically. I puzzle sometimes why I cannot see more of that symbolic landscape. I was always a pilgrim first, and then a pilot. I puzzled as much as I steadily flew. I know something of that which I seek. Of that which I always thirsted for.

Or do I? Do I know anything?
I ask myself that question, thinking of the hordes of books devoured, the misty paths walked, and the reams of rambling scribbles I shall leave behind, as so much litter, to a disinterested world. What do I know?
Perhaps for me the change that I sense crept in when I slowly, very slowly, kicking & screaming, removed myself from the center of the Universe. When I first started to glimpse, beyond my scudding grey clouds, the gusts of life, and the uncomfortable swell of a choppy ride, something far greater. Far, far more astounding, than any vague gobbledygook I might myself inflict on an already gobbledygook-saturated, drowning world.
And the farther I happily ended away from the center of the amazing Universe, the more I awarded myself, not the foolish floodlit stage, but  the scattered fringes of a far flung oddball wisp, in a nondescript spiral, of a vast galaxy of matter and sprawling ideas,  it seems the more I felt my path, (although yet misty, and full of hidden stumbles), was much more steady.
Time, they say, is a great cure. It is, when you are dealing with a head as swollen as mine. When you realize that your labors are but a noisy piglet’s squeal in a cramped and often smelly stable. With a hurricane pounding on the barn door, threatening to take the roof off, and the walls out . And amazingly, every pig in the shop, furiously clamoring-fighting around the feed bowl, elbowing & stabbing like career hustlers of Congress for more trivial slop.

It’s a beautiful valley here. This minute is a gift. I sense much more upland wonders, hidden beyond those grey clouds. I am a Christian. Not the variety that uses that fig leaf to surrender in comfortable indifference to Injustice. The End Times stupor. I believe in fighting like a maniac. Every day.  Standing up for what you believe in. Being willing to die for your cause, and risk whatever punishment the paltry, deluded Silicon harlots of Mammon wish to contemptuously cast your way.

I believe there is something wonderful, that propels us not to ‘saved’ passivity, or turn-the-other-cheek, Jesus-meek-and-mild lethargy.
I believe it exhorts us to dream like a banshee, seek like a terrier, fly like an ace, turning barrel rolls and avalanche loops among those sunlit hinterlands.

Remembering, whilst we hit that perfect vertical, with a four point hesitation roll, and a hammerhead at the top, that we are here but for a blink in the Good King’s eye.

Full throttle, and propeller to fine pitch. Boost that sucker.

Here we come. Watch out, Moshe.

We got your number.

Last edited by Francis Meyrick on September 28, 2019, 11:59 am