page 10

Randy rides a Harley, and he's got no particular malice against rockets. Most guys on cruisers are like that--a little too old to test their bones that way, riding for different reasons. Shrug. I think I'll just be a dick and say, "Not my problem."

But he knows some things, and it was worth talking to him. About getting wiser on bikes, and suchlike. Knows some things about being alive for a long time. We talked about how 50, 60 years of age didn't seem so hard to get to, but how now it seems like a shocking possibility. Shocking that I might make it that far, if I don't die. Shocking to consider it. I'm trying to say that suddenly I don't know if I will. That my feet are even further onto the ground and so suddenly I have a feel for this. Tasting life a little more deeply. And from here, this pinnacle of insanity yet so pure in feeling, I can just catch a glimpse of maybe how it was before I got here. Before I was the way I am now. How others I know have been living. I know if I bring this up with my friends they'll shout me down and call me stupid, and say I'm just going to go out and die, like it's a dumb thing to do. And I'll only get bitter and tell them they're gonna die anyway, taking that arrogance into their little body boxes too.

So I'll say it like this. That it seems like every day I get to be more alive than before. And that I know there are so many people who aren't living this way. Who aren't living lean, on their fingertips, grasping wholeheartedly. And it makes me sad as hell. I just want everyone to be as alive as me, all the time. I want them to be happy, like this. Don't you think it's silly? I go straight from explaining something of me and then I go straight to thinking about others. Stupid busybody. I'm not even able to handle myself, really, and yet I go running around scatterbrained like this. But...

I'm just saying I know something about this. What I am. What I've gained.

"What you forget, all that stuff that you seem to have lost? Well, when it's needed, --snap-- you'll remember it." -Randy

By the way, he said the tiny folding can opener I've got is called a "P-51" because the military used to make 'em and put those on there. The things you see...

...

(uematsu nobuo - the place I'll return to someday (piano))
That's how you know that it's done it's work and exposed what you know. Humility. It doesn't matter how I try to look at it, I am a strong rider because I was here. What I'll remember when I'm needed.

"a punch is only a punch, a kick is only a kick."

Before this gets overwrought, let's make sure to say that I didn't "leave a young boy and come back a strong man" or anything like that. Because that would be -totally- silly.

I -am- a young boy, and a strong man.

And I love you.

...

I miss you.

...

I can tell you this. When I next embrace you, I will be a man of peace.

...

A man finally reaches the point of ultimate fufillment with his love who is everything to him and suddenly everything is white. He wakes up on a lab table with 'trodes in his head, his memories almost like dreams. The one who was in his memory, he is told, was only the representative nature of the culmination of everything he is, the interface to the entirety of his state at the moment he 'woke up.'

The end of an experiment.

He can't believe it, even if it is true. And in his memories, interwoven with layers of what seem to be his 'old' memories, are puzzles. Little inconsistencies of riddles. They all lead somewhere, don't they?

To the one who the experiment was modeled on. The former researcher who was only with the project for a while...

...The one he somehow knows and doesn't.