Yet another family meeting:
convoluted, confused, and intertwined with
friends not usually seen, but heard in hazy,
non-descript one sided conversations to which
you’re not usually a privy.
I phased in and out of this mysterious world,
painted an important cordial greeting upon my
face and drifted with the din of a multitude
of cute little cherubs, their bretheren and
sisterhood hooting the crisp childhood greetings
of simpler times I only envision now in my dreams.
Drifting in and out, to and fro, on waves of mystical
chaos: warm in the glow that is family even if it is
somehow distant and even unfamiliar to my typically
ordered and precise state of mind.
Strangers, now not strange, flow into my personal
universe as if they were ghosts appearing in the dark
grey corridors of some tall and mystical hall to present
tidings of terror, or fear, or joy, or bliss; and we
engage in mindless conversation to comfort us in our
naked vulnerability.
Then as our strangeness fades into a comfortable enveloping
mist we become our own small army against the unknown
and begin to speak of thoughts, beliefs, and dreams…
the kinds of words usually reserved for only the closest
of kin and those you see every day; but now is an open
opportunity to collect a new ally in a potentially
dangerous fold, that of life in extended family where
the dragon in the dark is every aging skeleton you hide
in the closet of your mind – with you now locked in
close proximity to excited peers all curious to see and
know, and all armed with the keys of ignorance and open
questions.
“Keep your wits” you think when you are awake, but the
soothing chaos seems friendlier and warmer as time wares
on and you find yourself lulled to sleep, somehow comforted
by the incomprehensible din.
Away, across the room and a see of jumbled souls all
embroyaled in senseless conversations you see your anchor.
That one familiar face that you arrived with. That one
who dragged you to this forsaken alien world now more
familiar with each moment, and you realize the reason for
your peace isn’t a follish sleepy tonic of calming chaos,
like the warm darkness of shock obliged to an animal once
cought in the jaws of it’s predator awaiting the final
passage from vital form to fodder.
This pleasant face, and it’s glow, this love, this other
soul to whom you are inexorably linked. This on has brought
you here again, and here is not so unfamiliar as it is an
extension of whatever was, what is, and what will always
be: family.
So roast the beast and sing the songs and contemplate the
murmor of countless hours in this company. It is a gift,
for the only true desert and dangerous ground for we
mortal beings of flesh and mind and soul and gifts of
spirit, the only true place of perishing in untempered,
unbearable rages of tempest and furies, the most horrible
wasteland which could cease our breath and silence our
voices in the loudest agonizing screams of pain and
terror is not here: that place is empty and alone, and
now, if you are here with me, you know there is nothing
so fearful for you, for you are not alone.
– Original (c) 1999 Pete McNeil