Thursday, April 30, 2009

Bells Unrung, Cherries Un-Picked.


There are some moments in life when you stop and think to yourself, "well, after this there's no turning back."
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These are the moments just before you gain motion on a path upon which taking the first step implies wholesale commitment to its destination.
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Some words cannot be unsaid; most pain cannot be uninflicted; no potatoes can be unmashed.
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Everyone's had them, these moments.
From minor adventure: the second that you are in the air between dock and lake, wondering to yourself, "Shit. It's gonna be cold. And are those rocks?"
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And major adventure: wondering, "No one is forcing me to jump out of this plane."
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To the romantic: the brief breath you take before walking into your girlfriends apartment and admitting, "I slept with your sister"
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To the perverse: that same breath before admitting, "I slept with my sister"
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Many of these are in business: putting on your jacket before stepping into your bosses office to say "I quit."
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Well, I've sat for surgery twice in the last 6 months, and I discovered that these moments live in the operating theater as well. Twice now I've laid back, lucidly on an operating table folks in scrubs bustled around the room and thought to myself, "I don't have to be here. I chose to come and I can choose to leave."
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It is the flight-impulse that rises up in your bile, I think. Your mind knows that you are there for your own good, but your animal being also knows that these people are going to knock you out and cut you. Badly.
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Mastering the animal, you think to yourself what a good idea this is. The run through of the logical train is quick and easy, because frankly no one in Canada fights their way through the system without good reason.
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But the moment is still very much there. "I can get up and walk out of here now; in a minute, I won't"
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And after that minute, and the minutes or hours that follow in a darkened heartbeat, it's true: you can't go back.

1 comment:

AdrianaIsabel said...

Excellent! Good reading to start a more-than-humid summer day.