Moments

I believe in moments.

It’s commonly said that life is a series of moments but I’ve taken that to heart. Even when I was a youngin I remember laying on the bed in the nurse’s office — I was a sick kid. Sinus problems conflated with a general boredom for life and what I was doing. Unchallenged, uninspired, unenabled.

Laying on that bed a lot, waiting for the nurse to come in, waiting for my mom to fanangle out of her routine to come get me and bring me home — a lot of waiting on that damn bed. My bored mind began connecting the moments and thinking of the me(s) not only who were laying there in the prior grade levels but the ones who will eventually be laying there. I imagined the me(s) there and tried to will myself to them and make a connetion that I couldn’t get from anyone else but myself (even myself disembodied).

It was a pattern that I’ve rediscovered tonight in a grungy bar bathroom. I’m not proud of it but I’m still getting drunk in grungy bars even in my advancing age. Maybe I am proud of it — who can prove their life is better than mine?

Washing my hands tonight in that bathroom, I looked up and saw myself with the eyes of a drunken fool and laughed (because who doesn’t laugh at a drunken fool) and then remembered the times before, so many times, looking up and laughing and seeing myself disembodied with those drunken eyes and just for a moment I was connecting to a younger me and with some luck, all those older me(s) too.