He often wondered what it might be like. What it might be like if his first thoughts weren’t catastrophe ridden. If his mind was able to, for just one second, perhaps two, exhale. Relax. Let the positive in for one goddamn second. He wondered how people do that. How people stay in the moment when your child’s consuming month old yogurt in the fridge that your wife refuses to throw out because expiry dates are, I don’t know, a tool of the man to keep the people down? a conspiracy theory invented by grocery mart to sell more goods? a theoretical construct? instead of science, fact, proof. What would it take forthoughts in his mind not to runaway train, not to think fuck botulism, fuck Hospital stay, fuck ICU before the first swallow.
He often wondered what it might be like. What it might be like to stand on the porch as you leave the house and have your first thought, or any thought , be about the scent of the air, about the feeling of the sun warming your face or the rain on dampening your scalp, or the melodies and choruses of early morning bird songs, rather than did you just lock the door, pretty sure you did, better check to make sure, and you press the top button with your thumb, push, ok locked, one more time, ok locked. You descend the five steps to the cobblestone parking pad, unlock the truck, slide into drivers seat, and think, are you sure it’s locked? the door? I mean are you sure? You jump out run across the cobblestone parking pad, up the five steps, press the button with your thumb, push, ok it’s locked, descend the five steps, run across the cobblestone parking oad, glide back into drivers seat, start the engine, put it in reverse, edge out into the street, thinking – the door, is it locked? yes, must be locked, but what if isn’t? you reach for the radio, Van Halen, you crank it up, Hot For Teacher mutes that wretched little voice inside your head, for now.
He often wondered what it might be like. What would it be like to know that your gum is clean? To be absolutely 100% positively certain that when you slide the cardboard cover down, push the tiny white square through the shiny foil onto the palm of your hand, that it is ready to be put directly into your mouth. That it does not require a pursing of the lips, a gentle blow of air as if extinguishing a candle, your breath flowing over every millimeter of that hard caked shell, the contaminents, too small too see, caught in your breeze, carried helpless off your piece, that now, and only now, is clean enough to chew.
John's Writing 