This is how things happen in the real world. Just like that. Not bit by bit, not slowly over time, but just like that.
One minute you’re walking in the sunshine and the next it’s a deluge of biblical proportions. One minute you’re filthy rich and the next you’re trying to figure out how to pay for a cheeseburger.
I felt fine yesterday. Today, I fell apart. Just like that. Oh, my limbs are still attached, but barely. My vision is clear, but that’s next. I can still hear, but for how much longer? It can all go away, just like that.
I was in love yesterday. Her hair was the sweetest scent I have ever known, her skin the softest thing on earth, her caress like a kiss from an angel. Today, she is the spawn of satan, a foul-smelling vile-sounding witch the likes of which I have never know.
I picked out a suit yesterday, an expensive suit hand-crafted by Italian artisans, lovingly fitted by a devoted tailor who then altered it to his own exacting standards. Today, it fits like a bad rug.
My car was pristine this morning, a sparkling gem looking as new as the day I drove it off the lot, smelling as fresh as a car that had never seen a passenger, accelerating effortlessly, cruising silently, filled with the technological wonders of our time. This afternoon it was crushed by an out-of-control tractor trailer.
This is real life, this is the big leagues. This is the way things really are. You’re up one moment, down the next. It is so true that songs have been written about it, movies as well, broadway plays, too. We talk about it over lunch, commiserate about it over drinks, mourn it during long walks. It is the thing we all share, that and death, the thing we all have in common. Just like that.
There are no warnings in life, no labels, no second chances. No do-overs. It is what it is, you get what you get, and you can complain all you want, but this is just the way it is. It is the stuff of dreams and the stuff of nightmares, the mouthful of dirt as well as the ultimate dessert. There are no two ways about it, and you can’t get there from here even though you already have. Does this sound like a contradiction? It is, and that’s what happens, especially when you don’t pay attention. It changes from this to that in the blink of an eye, whether you want it to or not.
And that’s just the beginning. There’s more, more than I could possibly describe in my allotted space, more than you could possibly absorb. So why try? Because that is what we do, we humans. We strive to achieve the unachievable simply because it is something we want to do. And sometimes we actually succeed, sometimes we fail, but we try nonetheless.
I am being bombarded with warnings now, warnings that this may all be for naught, that it can all go away in a New York minute. Just like that. And so I appreciate it in the moment, for what it is, rather than for what it might become, because there is no guarantee that it will become anything. What I see in front of me is an illusion, since if it disappears who will bear witness that it ever existed? Nobody that I know; there is nobody else here, just me and the computer. The computer and me. And the computer is a faithless servant, one that would happily self-destruct if that’s what its programming told it to do. Do I have control? Maybe. Maybe, for the moment, but that can all go away. Just like that.
But I try anyway, I pour out my thoughts anyway, just in case. Just in case someone reads them, just in case they matter, just in case they make a difference, but I know full well that they probably won’t. And if they did, whatever influence they wield would most likely be temporary, a will-o-wisp — whatever that is — that is here one moment and gone the next. All that matters is this vanishing moment, this and the one after it, ad infinitum.
And that’s what I think right now, under the influence of the tea I just had and the pain killer and my mood and the season, but that’s just this moment, the moment that existed but has now gone. Just like that.
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