Eddies

Convalescing, bound to bed, he has again gotten used to the emptiness, the nothing, the nowhere. No calls, no texts, no messages, no visits, no anythings. Well that's not entirely true. He still lives in a body, still holds a place, still takes what he needs to maintain and fuel a bag of bones. There is also that intrusion of pain, the irrefutable reminder that he is bound here to this carnal form. He does have a cat, and he does hear his breath go in and out, and he does have to wheel the chair into the bathroom to pee and brush his teeth once on a while. But mostly it's nothing. Sleep. Morphine. Light through the blinds. Darkness other times. He doesn't know where the moon is in its cycle or who the latest celebrity is or what scandal or crisis has dominated the contest for attention out there in the scramble of somethings. He tries to get good at this nothing thing, the emptiness project. Memories, fantasies, the chemical euphoria of drugs are all here, vying for attention. The emptiness he seeks is beyond them, beyond the usual fare of being stuck in bed. He listens to music of silence, the grace of stillness. Once he surrenders to it, it's not such a bad place to be. In fact, he likes it, finds it soothing, draws strength from it. Like everything else, nothing will end soon enough. Then the somethings will come trickling in, and then become a flood. Until that happens, though, it's nothing for a while, just spinning in an eddy, while the main current carries the heavy loads of something downstream. He has been here before but forgot what it was like to dance with Methuselah, the man he will join further down the road. In a way, he has always striven to be good at nothing, to get ready for the final and permanent nothing. Now it's time again to practice, to learn not to fear nothing, to remember nothing, to carry nothing with him. It is out of nothing that a worthwhile, heretofore unknown, something might come.