“You knew the secret. But how can that be? How can it be that only with death and dying does the sharp quick sense of life return?…that was your secret, wasn’t it?”—Walker Percy, The Second Coming
He sat on the porch reading and smoking cigar as he waited for thought to arrive. It was an evening without sky-change—no fire, splendor, nor glory—only a gray that turned to violet night; no moon, no stars, only monotony of mechanic sounds and red-white lights as men raced from a starting on to not even God knew where.
He read the line and, after, thought was there: full, complete and alive.
*****
It was real again.
He was twenty-three, and all returned: the sounds and the race, the smell of powder-burn, especially of 240: both its barrels glowing orange, pile of brass and links beside.
There was the rage and what you thought was hate but really only sudden fire-desire to live.
Then unworldly still—when you knew it coming—the burst and then report of bomb, delayed fuse, crash through rooftop cover and blast that blew it fucking wide; the thump of report that stopped your heart and the ache in testicles after: the feel of a false-god having rained and delivered vengeance—judgment and retribution—on ones you saw as devils and thought of you the same; but all were just men: wandering in the desert, fighting to feel and be alive.
Then the quiet and depression, coming down and off the high; reckoning and search for sense; the “what the fuck!?” which was nearest to an answer sense would ever find.
After, you made peace or you didn’t; and he thought of those who couldn’t and how so many sought death again, but by own hands and means for last fleeting feel and announcement of existence. He remembered them all, and he felt sick and ugly and sad and wondered why, all feeling same, they couldn’t help each other.
Then a different depression, beneath the sadness when you try and wish but there is nothing you can feel; and the darkness and shadow returns thoughts to death and Valhalla: the means and medium of those before. You fight for anything to feel and keep a little longer; and so you do: going through the motions, thought of shadow always near.
****
All of it was alive, and then it wasn’t: flare of fire and feel like orange beneath dead ash-stack after deep-breath draw from something world promised, one day, might kill you.
But it didn’t, not then, and not today.
He realized then, so much of life spent after was not living but only drift: mechanic, mindless, and empty like sound and lights of traffic speeding on through night.
He took another draw, orange ring of flame under cooled dead ash, just to feel a burn and the sense of subtle high. He understood then why of all his vices ridden this was one he kept. There was possibility it would kill him. Aware, for a moment, one knew they were alive.