Dying. Death. Fucked up shit. There's been too much of it for my liking lately. You realize the good times might not be coming back around. It's fucking scary. Was it just youth that hid the carrion call from my eyes in days gone by, or has the reaper really been something more of a force upon the earth this year?

On Crashing

Crashing is a function of loosing control. Unless you're deeply fucked in the head, you don't crash on purpose. Say what you will about the sub-conscious, but I still don't think you run it into the wall unless you've either got a screw loose or a load on.

I crash when I'm drunk, intoxicated in one way or another. That's the only time. Sailing home though the cold February night after a long road and many beers, someday you might hit a pothole and the required reaction time, the foresight, the planning, the ability to deal -- it's all impaired. You hit the ground hard, bounce, hit, slide. At first you feel fine. There's a vague burning sensation and you're a little shaky, but you think you're ok. Rub your nose, maybe a little blood, maybe a few tears. No big deal.

It's only when some other poor late-night soul comes by and reacts in shock, offers you some napkins from his pizza that you realize you're bleeding all over the street. That's when it dawns on you: you face is bleeding and one of your teeth is about to fall out.

That realization is sobering, and you head home slow. Stop in on your friends who are expecting you; wash up, get high, garner a little sympathy. Then, feeling good with comfort and adrenaline, you coast on home to bed. You sleep the whole night through, and only in the morning does it come clear what's happening.

Your face is all fucked up, swollen. Your tooth is loose and sore. You can't eat. You've got a headache. Your eyes hurt. It's the aftermath, and it's a bitch, lasts a long time. Much longer than you want. Much longer than you think is needed to learn your lessons. Aftermath is always the worst part of any blunder. The fall itself is exciting, liberating even. It's the healing process that burns and aches.

So there's this period of languishing that has to occur. A time you have to go through alone. No one can help you with that original pain. No one can scratch the itch that grows inside your face as it comes back together. Friends are a blessing, but this is a thing that must be bourne largely in solitude. It's in you, and no one can take it out of you. It's there until you can digest it.

This is just like getting fucked over in a relationship. I'm making an analogy, see.

Looking back, it's all clear. You'd let go of the handlebars at some point, for we all know this is where insanely good things happen, when we relinquish total control. But then the asphalt reached up and grabed you with its sweet caresses, took some skin for its own. These things happen, to good people and bad. It can't be avoided; potholes are a part of the terrain. Don't drive drunk if you can help it, but if you move fast accidents will happen. Goes with the territory of speed and ambition. It was just your time to take a strawberry kiss. Take it up with the Buddha if you've got a problem.

So you swallow your pride. You bleed, you scab, you swell, you heal. It takes a while, and it's not fun while it's happening.

And on nights when it gets stirred up in lonesome Berkeley you drink a bottle of wine and try to forget about death and dying and all those other bad kinds of loosing; try to forget that injustice exists and that people are the most eminently fallible parts of any plan, of any dream. You try to forget that you've let people down and that people have betrayed you. You try to believe in the basic goodness of humanity. You drink yourself to sleep and hope a new day dawns full of promise and manna from heaven.