For my father-- Who will always have my undying gratitude, and who would make every man on the planet jealous... if only they were smart enough-- but most men, sadly, don't know what life is for.
Chapter XVII, cont.
RAIN
It was the same old story. I was back in Montreal, back to my old antics: doped up, strung out, drunk, and stumbling home through the student ghetto. Tomorrow I’d be buying textbooks; the next: studying for midterms. In a flash I’d be on no sleep, cramming for exams again, perpetually doomed to procrastinate myself into the grave. Maybe that’s my only chance, I thought: I’ll put off dying for years just to get my shit together.
This wasn’t the time to worry about the future. I had only a few more weeks of sunshine and warmth—only a short time left to soak up all of the positive energy floating through the summer sky.
This year was supposed to be different. I’d planned it. Life was going to be better than ever. But before I could even establish my life again, with its educational, monotonous routine, I was already behind. I’d given my last breaths to grasping at the setting sun, and by the time I blinked again, there was nothing left.
The sun, the warmth, the energy—they were all gone. Blackness filled my vision, and depression nagged at my soul. Repetition. Boredom. I yearned for freedom. I wanted to feel the sun on my face once more.
And then it started to rain.
It rained for two weeks straight that fall in Montreal. It poured, then let up, and then poured again. Midterms flooded over those who weren’t already drenched and alcohol drowned the rest.
It was well after midnight one evening, when I walked through the rain, back from Colleen’s. My socks were wet. My eyes were sunken and crusted with half-sleeping eye-filth. The sun hadn’t come out in over a week, and I wanted nothing but to be back in Maine for the summer.
When I got home, I was there. I packed a bowl of some fresh, sticky marijuana and smoked until I could see the sky. I parted the clouds and flew into the sunshine. My father was there, working in the summer. I was on the roof of an anonymous building, climbing the trusses and beams in the sun. My shirt was on the ground below and my skin was tanned and warm from the never-ending days of hot sun. Beads of sweat dripped from my forehead and fell two stories onto the sawdust below.
When the wind blew, I’d peek my head up and catch the breeze. All of the sweat on my body turned to ice. On the ground below, the shadow of an eagle soared past. Leaves rustled all around me, almost through me—oak, poplar, maple—even the pine trees were swaying. I could smell freshly cut grass, and as far as I could see, mountains turned to sea.
That was happiness. Working hard—not laboriously, but tangibly. Working on hard things, on a beautiful day in Maine—feeling like you were accomplishing things. Time stood still then, but not anymore. It was like the peak of a pendulum swing—the swing of a clock; of time—that one instant where everything freezes before flying, accelerating in the opposite direction. That was happiness.
When I blinked again I was back in Montreal: High, passing out, drunk and awkward. The rainy darkness outside still imprisoned my soul, but suddenly everything made sense. There was a reason that I felt out of place with my head in a biology textbook. Man wasn’t made—evolved—to hide in stuffy libraries or dusty cities. We’re not supposed to like studying—we’re supposed to like doing.
The neurons firing in my brain took on a pattern—a thought. Electrons swarmed all around, flying from my atoms into my surroundings. Air molecules were crashing into each other and into my skin cells. They were bouncing into my lungs, into red blood cells, disrupting chemical equilibria and transferring oxygen into me.
But what am I? How do I exist?
It wasn’t until I tried to define myself in these terms that I finally felt at peace. There were no boundaries: My body was a collection of particles, but they were only held together by probability. Any individual electron—any piece of me—could be anywhere, no matter where it was supposed to be, but the odds were just worse that it would be farther away.
What are the odds? I thought. Is there any of me in that Maine sunshine? There must be.
There must be…
Oh, the simpler days. Does it ever get easier again, Dad?
