O Brother Where Art Thou?
Had a very intense dream that my brother was killed, except it wasn’t my actual brother, just some stand-in representation I guess, and his death absolutely gutted me, I was bawling and woke up with tears running down my face. The dream has stuck with me throughout the day. The best I can make out of it is I have been thinking a lot about Bill, and thinking how we used to refer to each others as brothers. I think I may have been playing out some latent anxiety about it all. On the surface I tell myself I am fine with this distancing, certainly more so at this moment in time than 10 years ago. The amount I reflect on this makes me think there is probably more than I let on, and dreaming is a way of releasing some pent up emotion.
I am reading Hunter S Thompson’s Rum Diary and the depictions of drunken abandon have triggered some faint memories of Beaches. I just about lost everything. Youth is that fickle. Depression was a parasite, it is miraculous I am here in one piece. I don’t remember enjoying the abandon, it was never about that. I remember fear, I remember sitting outside the downtown HMV just completely lost and drunk and as homeless as I could make myself. I remember pissing on St James Cathedral, The dank desparity of Filmores, the shakes, the endless days, the park benches. I cannot remember a single moment being happy drunk. I remember spilling the alcohol down the drain and Bill being upset with me, and even then, having the good sense to realize that was a dick reaction for him to have. Perhaps the writing has always been on the wall, and I just refused to acknowledge it. I fight tooth and nail for a response, it is desperate and futile. I gave up on Nicole, why is this harder? Because he is my brother, says the voice.
I don’t think about Beaches much, it may seem like I do if the written record were any indication. Rum Diary opened it up, and it is not an urge to binge or anything, I really truly have lost the taste and am in a balanced place now that is more than a front for desperation. It is more curiosity, like I was that guy, that strange guy and when I die that strange guy goes too. A lifetime is just the right amount of time to feel the sublime contours of one’s existence. A lifetime, that imagined gray-haired span I know nothing about, what I mean by lifetime is 35 years. There is enough in that to strike me down with the meaning of it all. To feel the fullness, to see Hayden starting everything all over again, a sweet torment - you play a part but the whole goes on. I dont think of Hayden’s future as much as I would suspect a parent would for his child. The present is awesome enough. Coming home and making first contact with him, the realization, the flash grin, the pure happiness. I soak it up as much as I can.
I feel in my heart Hayden is the one and only. How could we possibly top him? Just enjoy this now because everything is fleeting. Be there while it is happening, imagine I lived this and regret not spending time with Hayden to die knowing of this absence in my heart. Imagine this as pre-emptive time travel. Here I am. Right now.
