I admit, I might have grumbled once or twice about getting old ever since I turned thirty. As time goes on, it’s hard not to notice that my youth is swiftly becoming an artifact of the past. The music that once defined my formative years as a teenager is now being played on classic rock radio stations. The cartoons that I once loved as a child are now being “rebooted” by Hollywood into bloated, unwatchable, nostalgia-driven wank fests. Young people are using weird slang words like “YOLO”, and I have to resort to Google searches to understand what the hell they’re talking about.
Category: Human Condition
Invocation
30 Minus 2 Days of Writing
Day 27: “And That’s Why I Got Drunk”
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We raise our glasses to the inexhaustible variety of life, to all of those separate moments of sameness wrought with stagnancy, or trifling human catastrophe — to those tentative steps towards hopeful beginnings, or in deference to sadder times marked with the bitterness of inevitable ends. We toast to friends both new and old, to the promise or passing of lovers, to mothers both living and long since lost.
A Prayer for the Living
30 Minus 2 Days of Writing
Day 22: “Compulsively”
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As time goes by, never forget the dreamers, the lovers who lack the understanding to endure the faithless rigors of lost certainty. Never forget our common capacity for triumph and songs, sorrows and sins, empathy and forgiveness.
The Station at the Edge of the Great Unknown
30 Minus 2 Days of Writing
Day 21: “Last Train”
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A man sits on a bench alone in an empty underground train platform. He sits in silence with none of the customary sounds around him of footsteps, conversations, and the chatter of station announcements crackling over the public announcement speakers. Occasionally, in regular intervals of minutes, a train rushes by the boarding dock in a rush of wind, rumbling echoes, and the metallic whine of dutiful machinery gliding across the rails.
The Grand Promise of Little Things
30 Minus 2 Days of Writing
Day 19: “Little things”
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“I’m really no good at this.” I said, taking a step backward. I pushed my palms out and away from my chest as if I were being held at gunpoint.
Still she persisted. Crystal inched closer with her infant son held forward, beckoning me to grab hold of him as if she were offering a ball to a young child…
Some Grand Revelation (Conversation with God Continued)
30 Minus 2 Days of Writing
Day 6: “Haven”
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KEVIN: I wish you would just give me a straight answer.
GOD: About what?
KEVIN: Well, about most things. About anything. Why does every conversation with you feel like a game of theological dodge ball?
To Gain and Lose (Reposted)
30 Minus 2 Days of Writing
Day 4: “Friendship”
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Life is a seamless collection of hellos and goodbyes. They stitch together the totality of our days, and they have a way of tearing us apart until nothing remains but memories, and the hollow sting of lingering regret. The start of each new day brings the promise of a thousand hellos — thousands of first times and anxious introductions. Yet just beneath the surface of every meaningful meeting lies the inevitability of loss, heartache, and a bitter farewell, whether by death, or by some trivial variant of a piddling manmade catastrophe. Even so, despite the promise of pain, we dare each day to put our hearts on the line with a fresh set of ill-fated beginnings.
All We Have to Do
30 Minus 2 Days of Writing
Day 2: “Hold On”
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We all reside within the universal link, the brotherhood of necessity, this life with its remarkable complexity and manufactured meanings. We wade through waves of the mundanely surreal, through so many declarations of certitude marked with the confidence of meaning found in misplaced authority. All we seek in this life is direction, to understand the might of ambiguity, the strength of suggestion, the grand certitude of maybe. Maybe one day we will fully understand. I have faith in the promise of maybe.
The Cough Syncope (Fainting While Coughing)
I don’t know whether you could call it a flu or a cold, but I’ve been dogged by some kind of an illness with a persistent cough for at least a month. The severity of my symptoms has improved and worsened over the weeks, and my cough has been the cause of two fainting episodes that scared the hell out of my poor fiancĂ©e, Diana. Based on what I’ve read online, I believe my fainting episodes could be defined as “cough syncopes”. That’s when you cough so much in consecutive sequence that you lose consciousness due to restricted blood flow to the brain.
To Gain and Lose
Life is a seamless collection of hellos and goodbyes. They stitch together the totality of our days, and they have a way of tearing us apart until nothing remains but memories, and the hollow sting of lingering regret. The start of each new day brings the promise of a thousand hellos — thousands of first…