I have nothing to add except admiration and awe. The Examining Room of Dr. Charles.
You once looked under a microscope at the spindly cells of cancer, with their dark and jagged nuclei, and thought to yourself how poetic, these living things killed by their own quest for immortality.
You passed an entire day on a beach in the Caribbean. Your eyes couldn't quite capture the totality of the scene - the lush green mountains, the tropical forest swaying lazily with the sultry ocean breeze, the eight squid that rode the underwater current with you, their eyes behind tentacles, their bodies propelled by some translucent undulation. It was like floating with intelligence from another planet.
You lived many lifetimes within the one.
The boy that blackened your face, the woman that humiliated you as a doctor, they were but a squawking distraction.
The rain on the sheet metal roof. The brilliant stitch of a meteor in the dissolving night sky. The smell of jasmine on the streets of Sevilla or within the rising steam from a cup of tea. The warm dog licking your face. The minor notes of Chopin from the piano. A plate of cheese, onion, and saltines, with Light and Dark ale at McSorley's.
And above all these were the good people. The friends that danced like stones skipping on water, the family who loved you, who loved you, and the girl who promised to carry your heart (i carry it in my heart).
For along the way you learned that love is greatest.
It runs deeply, silently, as an underground spring whose waters are pure, nurturing, and ever present beneath our daily concerns. It is a tie stronger than life, proven by our own existence. We exist as living incarnations of a love which preceded us. We are sustained by that love. And when we share it with others we can perhaps feel the face of eternity shining down upon us.
So know just this - you did enjoy the world. You were carried by an army of cells, risen from the sea, and all who crossed your path were brothers and sisters.
You'll dissolve into that night sky, you'll rise fragrant from the petals of jasmine, Chopin will break through your very substance, and the Light and the Dark will pour you smoothly, bitterly, beautifully into the belly of creation.
