Bryan’s Blog: FIRE
FIRE
September 17, 2000
Jamey B Sarn
Can anyone answer this question: How much control do we really have over our lives? Precious little, it seems to me. How else can you explain something like this happening to us again? Once is terrible enough. Twice in four years… it’s just unthinkable.
What am I babbling on about? You must have heard about the man who was assaulted at the last Rave and later died. What you don’t know is he was G.’s brother. G. is absolutely broken. She’s off the scale with grief.
Think of it: Sahara died at a Rave and now J. Is this just part two of the same nightmare? Has it been lying dormant there only half finished waiting for circumstances to align so it could rain down fire on us again?
Right now the whys and the could be’s don’t matter. Later they will matter and all the circumstances will need to be dissected. But here and now nothing can compete with the shock, anger and stampeding grief.
And there’s another fire blazing. G. blew the lid off my not so secret affair. The truth is I’m relieved. Playing the I-know-you-know-but-nobody-says-so game is like walking on hot coals. I couldn’t have done it much longer. I knew all along – down deep where it counts – that when push came to shove it would be G. I would choose.
If there is a silver lining in all of this madness, it’s what I realized today about Sahara. I’ve been hanging on to her and not letting myself move on. Life is too short and unpredictable to live inside a memory. There’s no payback for dancing with the past.
God forbid that any of you should ever face something like this. But if you do my advice is: One day at a time, one step at a time. Walk through the fire when you have to but not before. Days like this, weeks like this, have their own momentum. You have to flow with it and let each wave crest and fall.
Oh, the strawberries don’t taste as they used to and
the thighs of women have lost their clutch!
East of Eden, John Steinbeck