Comfort is for the Dead

    Where there is no struggle there is no life.  Within our comfort zones we are numb, blind; it is only when we stray to the outskirts that we really live.  This nucleus I speak of pertains to certain states of being in which one’s general health is not of particular concern at a certain point in time, and thus the individual’s mind, for lack of fear, wanders elsewhere, usually to places of miniscule importance, irrelevant to survival, such as spheres of conversation that one would find bouncing around sewing circles.

    I was driving home from work on the Long Island Expressway through an ominous fog.  The erratic atonal jazz on the radio was interrupted by a fast and fraudulent voice that tried to sell me Viagra when my body began convulsing.  Being that I was in the leftmost lane it was quite difficult to pull over.  My extremities were quivering and shriveling and out of my control; yet I managed to shake my right foot from the gas pedal, steered the slowing car—with my chin—over three lanes, and eventually—luckily—came to a stop on the shoulder.  The voice persisted to tell of the glories of the apparent erectile revolution.  I was short of breath, light headed, and alarmed by the oncoming mist of death slowly engulfing me; its pervasive stench stunk like a cross between low tide and sewage.  I could feel my body, in the raw of its design, resisting the mist.  The pains in my chest lessened in intensity as the setting took on a brighter and clearer light.  I saw that my pupils were fully dilated when I looked myself over in the rearview mirror, and when my bug-eyes returned to the visage before me I couldn’t help but laugh hysterically; I felt like I was in some kind of movie.  The windshield became a screen and the endless multitude of drivers were all actors, flying by, talking to no one except their cell phones about the weather and the daily gossip, assuming their made-up roles of presumed importance—it was an awful movie: monotonous, nonsensical, dreary, dry. 

    My chest was pumping out laughter, and my arms and legs were dancing like electrocuted tentacles—I was a mess, torn between opposing vibrations, wrangling and repelling within my body.  I hunched over in response to the sharp pangs tormenting my stomach, and my head came to a violent rest upon the center of the steering wheel. 

    The persistent roar of the horn was drowned out by vague yet loud, very loud, memories of birth as they emerged to the forefront of consciousness.  My eyelids slowly opened, letting in the light of life as I emerged from the womb, and I saw the white hospital walls gleaming in my lap.  Everything was sheer pain—I cried and cried, but my mother’s face was beautiful and glowing, like the moon; like the moon it lured me, her ocean, in.  I didn’t want to leave the warmth, but the obstetrician snipped away and I was detached thenceforth.

    I snapped back to my current and aching body, staring at blood stream out my nostrils, onto the steering wheel and drip upon my lap.  The uncontrollable palpitations eased enough for me to lift my weary head.  The cars persisted to regenerate and fly on by.  This is it, I remember thinking, this is what my life has become: routine, repetition, routine, repetition.  Flashing lights bounced off my rearview mirror, and a knock on my window startled me out of my trance.  Stiff as an erectile revolutionary, I managed to roll down my window and turn my head.

    “Everything okay here, bucko?” I couldn’t speak.  I only smiled, amused by his ridiculous getup.  There was some sort of wire hanging from his ear which, along with his metallic aviators and plastic flattop, really completed the Robocop look.  “I uh saw that you had your hazards blinking there and heard your horn blowing, and uh you’re  pulled over on the uh shoulder here—and let me be frank, if you’re not uh in distress there, you’ve gotta move it along now.”  My grin only grew.  I was drunk on the absolute absurdity of the situation, and moreover, his role in it.  He studied my face and said “Been drinking, buddy?” Yes, officer—the elixir of life.  “You got that glazed look in your eye.  License and registration.  Run it.”  I still had no control over my movements.  “Alrighty then.  I’m gonna need you to uh step outta that there uh ve-hi-cle, bud.”

____________________

    It smelled like fried chicken and sand had gotten into the potato salad.  We all lied on the quilt that my grandmother made.  Mom was bickering with friends about the potato salad.  Dad was coming back from the shack with cold beers, jogging swiftly to the quilt so as not to burn his feet on the scalding sand. 

    I remember how the air quivered harmoniously with the ocean.  Entranced by the world of endless waves before me, I felt myself drift towards the singing Atlantic; I watched my little legs move faster and faster.  It wasn’t until the cool white foam washed across my feet that I realized how hot the sand actually was, and moreover, how incredibly relieving the ocean could be.  Something was pulling me further out.  My body was hot and sticky, and the water bathed me.  Further, further it pulled me.  The water was now at my waist and rising to my chest, my shoulders—and a wave was swelling before me.

    I was just a boy; could hardly speak.  But words didn’t matter then.  Words would have only attempted to catch and confine the magnificence—it was a feeling free of definition. 

    The wave grew and grew, opened its mouth and showed its teeth.  It roared and my body went limp, only moving in stupefied submission to the ocean’s fluctuating flow.  It came closer, faster, swelled higher, and the roar grew louder and louder— it swallowed me whole, tossed my body about like a rag doll.  Everything was blackness, with intermittent flashes of green and bubbles and then white foam.  White foam, again—how drastically altered in my mind it now was.  Through the tears and saltwater streaming from my eyes I caught a blurry glimpse of the white foam as it receded back to the ocean like a predator nonchalantly resuming leisure after making its kill. 

    But I was not dead.  There, stunned, spewed out on the shore, frantically panting and with that glow in my eyes, I was very far from dead.  I laid upon the wet sand and fragmented shells, facing the blue sky; it was so bright, an angelic off-white.  The sun laughed at me as I laid mystified in a glow of elemental fear.  Adrenaline rushed throughout my body and my heart raced to keep up.  Yes, I was very far from death, panting wildly on that shore. 

    When the excitement eventually subsided I scurried back to my parents.  They asked where I had been.  I couldn’t speak, or make sense of anything.  I tried to explain the best I could but only uttered incomprehensible bits of words between breaths.  The condensation on my body and face answered their question.  The water blended with and concealed my tears.  Mom hugged me.  Dad laughed.  Their friends smiled, and they all quickly relapsed to their conversation about the tragedy of the potato salad. 

__________________

    It is very strange that the only time we are truly alive is when we are close to death. 

    I awoke in an ambulance.  A paramedic informed me that I had passed out as the cop was hassling me, and furthermore, that I passed out because I was dehydrated: oh, moderation.  As life flowed intravenously into my body I envisioned the wave—the wave that awoke me.