The First Crim Law Exam.

Things are built up.  Things fall down.  That seems to be the natural order of life.  Everything is in flux and everything changes.  Somewhere along the way, I picked up a power up.  “Be like water” the scroll said. 

~*~

There’s this story.  It was a summer after high school.  Maybe a year into college.  We found ourselves at Pismo Beach.  Olivander [last name], Daisy, Arnie [Olivander’s older brother], myself and a few others were all enjoying a day at the beach.   I do not know what came over me… perhaps residual toxins from life, but I had the urge to purge my aura.  Stepping into the ocean, I dove into the wave as it pushed me back ashore.  I kept fighting the current, and relentlessly the ocean, the tides, the moon, the planet, the whole of the universe pushed me back.  I kept laughing and fighting.  I splashed at the waves as it rushed over me.  I used my arms, my chest, and my back. The ocean rolled over me and bulldozed me indifferent to the war I was raging.  I told them I was fighting the ocean.  I told myself this was futile but never submit to defeat.  I don’t think they understood the gravity of the moment, but it was gravity.  It was the universe sucking me in and taking hold of me, and in that salty eye stinging kind of way the universe was showing its immensity to my existence. 

~*~

I dream of distant places and all the while the fire subsides.  The camp is cold and the world is dying.  The last light fades to ember, and I wonder if I’ll ever see it; if I’ll get there.  I look to the stars.

~*~

“Will you write me when you get there?”

“I’ll send you a post card.”

“A post card? I’d think I’m at least worth a letter…” Her face is apprehensive.

“It’s really expensive postage and everything, hunny.”

I acquiesce.  Of course, that’s what you do right? “Hey, forget it.  A post card is cool, anything is cool.  So long as you come back.”  Smooth. “You are coming back right?” A confident smile. Is that my mask?  Truth in everything you say, perhaps even then in my confidence there was that doubt.  Self-doubt.  The world slips away into a dream of a dream.  Was it ever real?

~*~

Once I was on a beach.  I looked out to the ocean, and I said, “I’ll never forget you.  We’ll always have this moment right here.”

I don’t think she understands what that means.  I don’t think I fully understand.  I knew I was going to miss my flight, but this moment… it never should have ended.  

There are a few of those in life [if you’re lucky].  

Some people say that’s how they live life like every moment of everyday… to the fullest.  In the end, they say their life was full and complete, and they had no regrets because they siphoned every drop of life and distilled happiness out of each and every moment they lived.  It must have been… a good drink.  Whatever that concoction, I wonder how sweet it is.  Had I ever tasted it or had I only dreamt a taste.  What does that happiness taste like?

With her, I’ll likely never know.  “We’ll always have this moment.” How juvenile and cliché.   A pantheon of great words and I’m utterly un-original. 

It wasn’t the last time I saw her.  But I close my eyes, and that’s how I’ll remember it always.  The sunset I’ll never have.

~*~

White Knight: There’s this crack in my armor, right there

Blacksmith Apprentice: I don’t see nothin’

White Knight: Not right there.  Right There.

Blacksmith Apprentice: It looks a’right.  A scratch. 

White Knight: A cleaver.  Monstrous big.  The troll had a cleaver the size of my arm. 

Blacksmith Apprentice: Well Sir, reckon’ so.  Shall I fix’it?

White Knight:  I didn’t bring it here for you to gawk at, you buffoon!  Fix my armor so that I may charge into battle in her highnesses’ name and honor, so I may win her favor.

Blacksmith Apprentice: Sir, you arse noble and great, sirs. 

White Knight:  Are.

Blacksmith Apprentice: Sir?

White Knight: Are.  You said arrrssss... It's arrrrh.

Blacksmith Apprentice: Pardon my profnitties sirs.  I’m not learn’d you sees.  Sirs I don’t mean to say such things.

White Knight: What are you on about?  Get to it you.  I need this hastily.  I have no patience, for my lady waits for no man. 

Blacksmith Apprentice: Right away sir.  I’ll get on this.  Masters learn’d me how to mend the cracks and such.

~*~

It never ceases to amaze me how it all comes back.  Like waves after waves.  It floods in like I was there, in that moment.  I’m alive again.  And then I’m falling.  I’m awake and my head throbs.  Was it all a dream? Sleep.  Why does it feel like I’ve been asleep forever, and why does it feel like I’m so tired I can go on sleeping the endless sleep.  The dark, the void, like each word is staving it off - keeping it a bay.  Dawn has to break soon.  Dawn has to break so I can slumber. 

~*~

A speck of sand I told them.  A speck of sand on the beach can fight the ocean.  From one beach on this shore, it can find its way across the immensity of the ocean to a shore on the other side of the world.  There are specks of gold.  The sand is gold.  The ocean is vast, empty and filled, void, dark and scary, but the important part to remember is that there are shores and safe harbors. 

~*~

Sometimes it falls down.  You just get back up and build it up again. 

~*~

MyChallenger

It's like everything else; what are you willing to fight for?

I was drawn first to the idea of her... she was my liberty, my independence.  She was my American Dream.  Charlotte, was the car that had that look that could kill.  Look at her long enough, and you remember your first love.  Look at her lines, her curves, and she evokes that yearning, that subtle power that makes you question what else could come close.

Nothing can.  She drives smooth.  Silent.  She can yell, clear her sinuses and assert her American Voice. "Here I am."  Is she fast? There are faster cars.  Is she powerful?  There are more powerful cars out there.  It's her very American Cool that got me.  Her James Dean "I don't give a fuck" attitude that won me over.  You can search for the best, but what she is is that slight flawed girl next door.  Charlotte was my first car out of college.

She was all mine.  My own credit, my own labor, that paid her on a promise to make good.  It's almost a year and that year saw some radical growth.  She was my center.  She was what brings me back.  It's the constant pursuit that makes this country so damn amazing.  We sacrifice it all hoping dreaming of a better day.

Every month I struggle to make ends meet to pay those blood sucking creditors, and every month I am reminded of what she means to me.  She's my freedom.  That if push comes to shove I can just say "Fuck it" and drive off into the sunset.  The open road calls, and I'm wondering yearning and in awe of freedom... what it really means and what cost we must pay.   Charlotte is American and what it means to be independent and free.  She is a challenge and a Challenger.  I thought of those electric cars, and no doubt I will be buying one in the near future... but my Dodge Challenger, my Charlotte, she is a fixed moment in time... when I saw the coming of the times and I said "Fuck it" this is who and what I am... forever in this moment I will not yield to the onslaught of the mighty waves... I will hold my own... and perish to my dreams of real freedom."

At what cost...?  I'm not a fool.  I can see the world spiral towards self correction, to a third Golden Age, and I will revel in my time when men conquered our own passionate deamons, but until then... I hold on the vestiges of that profane... that self indulgence of rebellion.... an antihero of the damned and forgotten.

This July 4th, as fireworks burst and flare before me, I think of the possible future.. whether it is golden or catastrophic... a twilight with no dawn or a dawn of the ages... I have her still... she is mine, a constant struggle... a constant challenge.  Happy Independence Day.