The Beat Goes On

I almost don't want to dilute the post below with another post so soon. At the risk of immodesty, I think it's pretty good.

But before I go giving myself carpal tunnel syndrome by patting myself on the back, I'll add this, an excerpt from email I just sent to PunchPig.

I think it's kinda cool.

Not to sweat. You are a great man, and that was a great scene. That was landmark. Everything you did was right.

Interestingly, I don't feel vulnerable. I feel like the proverbial million bucks. Here I am, no job, fending off creditors, spilling my guts every day to strangers, and I feel like I'm totally on top of my game.

And that's thanks to you. Because after yesterday, nothing can fucking hurt me. Not really. Not in any way that matters. Because you hurt me really bad, and you loved me all the way through.

It's like you pulled out the arrow in my back, or sawed off my gangrene leg to save my life, or took out your trusty penknife and made an incision between the marks the fangs left so you could suck out the venom. And the thing that really took courage on your part was that I didn't know the arrow was there, that my flesh was rotting away on my bones, or that the viper had bitten me. So as you were doing what you knew you had to do, I was uncomprehending. I didn't understand. I just felt the pain. But I get it now.

The other thing that strikes me is that the scene was complete in and of itself. The equivalent of fifty years of marriage or something. An entire journey we took together in an afternoon. It was all there. If at the end you had revealed yourself to be some angelic/demonic being and vanished forever in a cloud of smoke, that would have been fine. You did what you had to do.

Angels again. I wrote about 'Wings of Desire.' Now I'm thinking of Heinrich Boll. Ever read him? I read some of his novels when I was in college. He has characters in his books that are angels. They appear, change everything, and then vanish. Angels are fearsome beings. Read the Book of Revalation if you want to know what angels are all about. That's enough to banish those Victorian ideas of the guardian angel--a nanny with wings--guiding the wee ones across the stream. Absolutely. You are an angel .

Anyway, everything since then--you're reading my ms., the email correspondence... it's all gravy. Really good gravy. Gravy like the kind I make to go with my stuffed porkloin, but gravy nonetheless. It's all there already, and has been since Sunday.

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