Tell them it’s me. Phone 71B, location 2 Crew (B). November 2011. Somewhere off the coast of Oman I sit in a same-ness institutional room, opening my mind to the full circle encompassing darkness and light. I have sat here all over the world. The tan walls, the don’t-give-a-shit mattress, the white sheets and thin soft blanket on a bed not mine but for now. Training in Arkansas, waiting in Nicaragua, a tussle in Alaska, a Noosa Head spaceship ride direct from the beach. Here I am again, wondering what I should do with my life, forgetting until I push back Burton’s black dog night that I’m doing it.
Arrives this wild and pure kernel of spirit fire in me, slips it out in heavy weather, in big wind, in the hiss of heavy wooden poker chips sliding off the table, when my corporeal being falters, when my true spirit rises.
I have begged for it to show, I have forgotten I had it in me. On a cold mountain in the Tetons when all I wanted was to be safe and comfortable, with no quarter given from the merciless earth it was unremembered in sick fear.
Sometimes too late, after a confrontation with one in a long line of alpha males who won’t admit wrongness, sometimes as unnecessary as a warm ejaculation waking me from sleep. What is this spirit that seems at times to be of ultimate importance, exquisite joy, and at other times like torn plastic floating on the ocean, a useless and unwelcome reincarnation of its former self?
I return to the moment, relieved of conversation with utlanning, strangers of my own culture. The waking sea falls away at every horizon, the ship’s white deck high off the water, dark clouds heavy overhead, warm drops of rain flecking my shirt. The wind rises, the sun sinks away blood orange. Tricked by genetic response to rain-dark-anger, my spirit awakens yet I am already safe. Rage, sublime joy, a tempest of emotion, an uncontrollable belief in self all sear through my veins. Another decision made, another poor action conquered, my weakest self beaten again, raw fluke, genesis inevitability.
Looking for proof of existence I forget I live in a vapor of faith, that I breathe it in every time my chest expands. I step once, twice, into space. My self pulses, an explosive oval thud, the terrible heat only burns brighter my fire. I fly. I am gone, here forever.