All I Can Do

I had a good buddy one time. He used to have a sweet tooth for some Wild Turkey and he had a tendency towards irrational behavior, we had a lot in common. Not that I would let him get into my Turkey, but the guy was huge; he sort of got what he wanted. He had an interesting part in my life for a short, and sometimes tragic, time. We used to enjoy eating dinner together and watching the paint on the walls fade to an even duller antiseptic white. He would wake me up for work and remind me I had obligations when I forgot I still had reasons to breathe in and out. He was a good guy. I would defend him to the last. When I had to leave, I told him to live with my mom and dad for awhile to keep them going.

I make him sound like some type of little brother. In truth, he was usually the grown up. He would take care of me and do the best an independent man can do for another independent man when comfort or a shoulder to cry on is needed. We were brothers without the inborn hierarchy of birth order.

He went on to whatever reward or anticlimax waits to meet us all when we lose our individuality to the engines of Life. I loved the guy. He died shamed and alone. He never knew what he did. His psychic pain took him out of civilization for good. He's been turned to ash.The crystalline structure of a diamond is that of an octahedron. They are octahedral in nature because that's all they can be. Carbon can only bond with seven brothers in such a way. Shoreline critters and plants in the fires of a subduction zone, the organic matter of a continental shelf, the Life, is poured into the forges of Vulcanus and catalyzed and purified into the basic building blocks of the one true individuality. In the loss of the temporal bodies to this terrible maw of famine and extinctions and illness, they prove that there is some order, there is some Platonic Idea of perfection. They never see it, but they prove the mystery simply by having existed to fuel the engines of survival for this little chunk of carbon we call life. Heaven may or may not be, but by passing on, Duck the Dog proved that he is perfect. In the gleaming white robe washed in the blood of time, he is one of the elect.I had a very close friend lose someone who was closer to them. Somehow, I don't think this is going to help.

Sorry.