Let's Just Start in the Middle

There really is no place or “beginning” to this story.

This will be a journey from front to back with some bouncing around in the middle with overlaps everywhere. 
They will all be connected in a sense that they are my story but they are their own pieces.

One of the many things that brought me here was death.

This impending and unavoidable death that is the one and only thing guaranteed in our lives to never waver in its promise to us.

And life! A full and rich life.

All the life that I want to live and experience before that impending death that is waiting for me at some point.

I want the “sabor”, that life that is full…….full of flavor, experience, color, sound, texture and the feelings. A life you realize when all of those textures are combined in a way that is outside the boundaries of the predictable life.

So, when that death finally does come to me I am satisfied and I am ready and grateful to venture on to whatever awaits on the other side of this life on earth.

It is my duty and responsibility…. I have worked hard for and been given the opportunity to have this rich life and it is a responsibility I take seriously.

I will not live or age gracefully…… I am just going to keep expanding and growing and pushing until life pushes back and says “you are done”.
                                                     

I will tell you this: I have seen shitloads of death.

It does not wait for you to be ready for it. It comes and you have to go…. You don’t get to say, “hey, can you give me an extra 5 minutes”? 

You are here and then you are not.

I have been elbows deep in the blood, shit, fear and vomit of death. I have seen the despair and the unfounded hope in peoples’ eyes when they are in the process of dying. I have been witness to their agony. I have told them to be quiet so I can cut them out of their mangled cars without them screaming in my ears. I have seen them writhing in pain, putting their arms around each other as they burn to death in their cars because we didn't get there in time to facilitate a rescue. 

There are a thousand ways to die and most of them aren’t nice.

These people just wanted their pain stopped and they all just wanted to go home…..

Well, it ain’t happening….. The only certainty in life, death, gets cashed in regularly and unrelentingly so you better be ready.

For many years in my career as a firefighter I felt I owed it to people to look them in the eyes as they were dying…. I know it’s a strange thing but it is what I did. I guess that was part of my tribute to them for being involved one of the most important and final parts of their lives.

And, then, one day I was just done with it. I had felt it and lived it and met my self-imposed responsibility to dying people and then my cup was full…. One day it wasn't full and then next day it was spilling over.

And those haunted eyes staring up at me with hope, despair, fear and just plain old confusion.  Windows to the soul, right? It is not a cliché. I can see many of them to this day and I will see them until mine are closed forever.

Well, all those eyes had commonality in their experience. They were the eyes of babies, kids, old people, people who had the cold reality of realizing their suicide attempts were going to be successful. These people who once were friends, family, lovers and outcasts to those around them and who are now gone forever.

They were people we all see and know in our lives.
Those eyes that just wanted someone to hold that eye contact until there was nothing to hold anymore.

It is those eyes that brought me here…. Those looks at me that said they would give anything for more life.

I feel that responsibility and privilege to be fully alive.  To live, see and experience the world and people outside the confines of a proscribed societal norm. I take that responsibility very seriously and I know that life is a privilege and a gift to not be taken lightly.

I don't give a shit what people think…. They can live their lives constrained by whatever value system they choose and when they look down on or criticize me for my life choices, my behavior, my choice of words or responses because it doesn't fit their life choices, well, that is on them.

And, trust me, they have criticized and offered unsolicited and unwanted opinions and they all felt as if they had not just the right but the responsibility to tell you that you are crazy to want to go experience and live the unknown.

I live flawed, without subtlety and with tangible mistakes but I have also have had many experiences that others never will. Experiences that I treasure that I never would have had if I had allowed others’ fear of flaws and mistakes to keep to the safer path.

I live my life in color and noise and solitude or brotherhood how I choose. I choose the color, the noise, the family, the inconvenience, the sabor of Latin America,  Mexico and it’s fatalism where death is always up front and expected.
In Mexico, where it is expected that you be alive because death is coming for you.
                                                      

No, the way life transpires is often not at all my choosing, but my response to life is.
Some days you survive and other’s you vibrate with the richness of it all.

To live a life where you recover from what feels unbearable to be able to experience the intangible and magnificent is the reward if you are willing to see that boundaries imposed by others are there to be ignored.

 Life is hard, brutal and unforgiving when it serves you up a shit sandwich. But, it is also full of beauty and feeling and experiences that are the base-matter of being truly alive…..and I will seek that until I can’t.

Follow your heart and your dreams….. they will lead you to the life you deserve.