If I Was Still Alive
Don’t even think about life much anymore. But if I was still alive, I’d have a damned fine day despite the rain, despite the depression, think of something you like doing and do it! Oh yes, you think you should sit around and mope, huh? No. Look, don’t wait for the peak moments. Create them. Now that I’m dead I can see all this. Folks wait too long, they go sour on themselves. I sang the blues too long, wasting sadness on myself.
Just for example, I used to hate bad weather. Say it’s a cold, damp day. You can build a fire and read your favorite book…or hey, start the day with a cold beer! Oh that’s a shocker in Peoria. Maybe there’s music or maybe you wanna lie in bed late on a Sunday, covers up to your nose. Maybe a long hot shower. Getting the picture. Make a list of things you wanna do, and then start doing them. Maybe there’s time for meditating, sitting around rocking on the porch, or driving your car, eating out, taking a walk in the park, calling a friend, girl, guy…or maybe sex…maybe work that in bright and early. More fun if you’re in timely tandem. Your choice. Make that happy list and do something for yourself. Uh huh.
As for me, if I was still alive, I’d have a great cup of coffee, a nice breakfast, then I’d take a drive, walk around, smoke a cigar, eye the pretty ladies…hmmm, nice lunch, yes sir! Read a good book and listen to music, maybe hang out with friends, watch some baseball on TV, love good conversation…and maybe end the night with a little romance. You know what I mean? Live, live everyday, every night, then when you get over here on the ghosty side, you’ll say like me, hey, I did pretty damned good. I hardly moped around at all. I enjoyed my precious human life to the full! Yes sir, I sucked the marrow outta them ribs!
#fiction DIFFICULT PEOPLE 172 EROTIC flash fictions, Zen tales revealing destiny-imbued moments. Adult readers only. http://amzn.to/Po18v7
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Susan, happy birthday. I knew you were an October birthday but glad you made contact. My mother was born on Oct 24th. She would have been 94 this year. But that aside I quite agree there’s a turning, sharp sometimes, about this time of year with light and weather and in my case this year a maze of absurd “to do” lists…Today’s fun adventure is about a car repair and legal matters with strangely muddled alterations from past years, requiring extra paperwork and payments, bureaucrats in Austin getting a bigger slice of the cut with our county of Bexar surrounding San Antonio. It’s been like this all fall so far. Writing is on the back shelf so it was uplifting to see an afterlife musing from my old collection of flash fictions, Difficult People. I’ve needed this fall to settle my mind around more pragmatic matters, which aggravate me more than creative writing. I’m glad you’re embracing the decline into fall with a heartiness of grasping happiness as it comes to you. I will try to make a comeback as correspondent if I can work through all these adult life challenges that I “felt” coming but did not know how draining and edgy it would hit me. Details are not worthy of mixing into your pleasant good times…on this side or perhaps one day (not soon) from the beyond. Like you the descent into darkness in fall is nothing to put aside easily but where there’s a bit of creative joy I give it the limited time at hand. Wishing you and yours a pleasant ritual slippery slide toward the Solstice and the return of the light and visions of hopefulness and creative surprises. Thanks for thinking of me around your birth date; this time was once a safe zone for me but with time adding up I have felt of late more about the act 3 exit, not as a worry but as a simple truth of rehearsing for the final exit. Like the writer in the story, carpe diem means more than a flash moment of reflection. Overall I’m pleased with my karma and I’m really not too absorbed in worries…only doing what I can to keep up with the busi-ness of the quotidian daily “adult” responsibilities that do appear to be crowding my once roomy creative space-time in a gnawing manner far too distracting. Peace and out for now…Be happy…and take no prisoners!
Jim, an aging scribbler on his own slippery accelerating slopes…and no snow or ski-lifts. Thanks for the revival of my “other side” correspondent who’s urging joyous engagement with each day where one can. Be safe, have fun and don’t take too much seriously. Definitely no “hand wringing”…May Persephone guide you through the dark passages of winter coming at us…Your olde pen pal in the midst of “adult” errands seemingly without end…adios por ahora. miJ
🙂 🐱
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