Wait And Bleed (Of The Darkness And Illumination)

I was riding again. The music filled my ears and a sense of flying through the rush of the air filled me with wonder.

Freedom...this was it. Free from the constraints. Nothing but me and the road and there never was anything else in the first place, now was there? Heaven was a kiss away from the Infinite and Oblivion seemed like a destination that was marked for the final point of arrival. I'm not even really sure what that meant to me at the time. All I knew was that since the sanctuary of the Cemetary was off limits, it would leave me in, what I considered, rather rude conversation with my grandfather long since passed. In a sense of not being where he rested, I'd have to yell...mentally. It was the only means of communication with him now unless I braved awful daylight to do it. Possibly during the winter but not now.

Still, that open road and the downhill slope at 2 in the a.m. was exhilarating. I felt myself resonate with the drift of the speed, realizing that, should I need to stop suddenly or round a corner, I would be unable to control the simple machine beneath me. I didn't mind. I was going non-stop and flying...like a creature on wings. Certainly, this feeling was somewhat alien to me. I pumped the pedals time and again and never tired. I breathed and wasn't winded.

I wanted to taste the sky and it's features, the stars mere pinpricks in the velvet blanket of night, the moon, brilliant and sending it's intensity through me. I wanted them all. To become lost in this feeling would be one I for which I wouldn't mind leaving this temporal existence once and for all.

It was at the baseball fields where I finally stopped, resting in one of the empty dugouts. I was back, a being of Infinity carrying Oblivion within. Then, unexpectedly, it consumed me. It crept up on me like a terrible dream. This is all there was, the darkness again. Like stepping onto rotten boards over a well, I plunged headlong into it. I sat down and closed my eyes. Why, when only moments ago, those feelings of exhilaration and freedom were so close, did they seem so far from me? Was I living in some illusory world from which I had no hope of returning? Was it all in my head again?

The silence around me was deafening but nowhere near to the point of the sounds from within. The iPod was turned off, the little device and the headphones sitting next to me. Behind the darkness of my closed eyes were the images again. All those faces of my dearest friends and my family, would I be able to do anything for them? Could I keep my own demons from haunting them as well? Where were my answers?

Where are you? I asked, I could really use the advice right now.

Then, it happened again. The song played again. It happened when he left. I was one of those left behind but his final message was there, waiting when I got the news. It didn't come from the iPod. I didn't have that song on there but it played within, no less.

Hello, my friend
Can't sleep again
Got too much on
my mind...

It's half past three
you're calling me
Just to make
Everything alright

Can't see the light
Heat of the night
I'm tired of feeling
so wrong

And if I could
Find a way
I'd take your place
But you just gotta live

Live on.

The words of Kenny Wayne Shepherd's song filled my mind again. At times, they were comforting and at times I would scream inside, "Goddammit! Cut the cryptic bullshit and just fucking out with it!" which usually ended up in me punching something and then hating myself for really fucking over a knuckle or two.

That night, those words were both. I remembered when the phone call came through. They told me he was gone. I'd planned on seeing him that weekend. Not that he would have recognized me. He probably wouldn't even know who I was when he saw me. His stroke had left him in such a terrible state. After I'd hung up the phone, I wasn't sure what to ask, who to ask or why. The one I'd turned to for answers was gone and, to me, there was still so much I hadn't learned. Then, that song came on. It came on over the radio and I sat there, in that dark bedroom with Pandora, my blind cat at my side, and listened to it. Ever since, whether mentally or through a set of speakers, that song played. Sometimes, I don't understand how it relates to the questions I ask but still, sometimes, it's the only answer I get.

I wish I could tell you that it all became better after that. I wish I could tell you all the problems I suddenly had were solved. They didn't. They weren't.

Still, I got back on the Mongoose and pedalled. Where to? Wherever the wind took me. I took a sense of comfort in it.

I was riding, being free and there was no box in which to put me.

If this was going anywhere, I'm sure it's reached it's destination.

Wherever that is.