ONE CONTINUOUS BLUNDER

I set the cup down because my black coffee was too hot to drink. It was perfect.

Called a friend of mine this morning. I hadn’t heard from him since the day we took off down the path of another Writer’s 30 day self-imposed challenge.  We began the path together, veered in different directions and fell out of communication.  

Radio silence.  

After a few weeks, I figured he must be 'up against It’. I know I was.  Writing does that. Puts you in contact with demons that have been sitting around like patients licking their lips in a hospital emergency room, jonesin' for a flu shot.

He told me he’d gone totally raw. Needed to.  His energy levels were low he said.  We shared horror stories, tales from the edge, from the white hot center of the dark side of the cesspool where all our secrets, unfulfilled fantasies, wilted wishes and dank desires go to sauna and swap stories about how trite and shallow the righteous ones can be.

It was good to talk to a fellow traveler, who, even though is not side by side, walks, runs, and falls soul by soul with you.  Someone you don’t have to find a language to explain the wordless wretched wonders and splendiferous horrors of leaping, bringing your knees to your chest, caressing them, squeezing your eyes shut and becoming a deep see diver plunging into another puddle of abyss.  

Or maybe standing on a shadow’s shore, wringing hands and lips, toe testing the tar pit steaming in front of you. Another black hole beckoning and repelling like that favorite lover you just can’t seem to get along with.

My coffee’s gone cold.  There are bubbles and rainbows inside each one floating on the surface. I ask if they are a sign like tea leaves or tossed sticks. The bubbles pop and disappear and the coffee is still cold.

Now it is a mirror. And I see time on the face of the boy. The cup is a well and cold coffee an abysmal mirror

Soon age spots will overtake the lily pads, the frogs will move on or go under leaving ripples like circles made of thunder.

Life, my friend, like walking, is one continuous blunder.