Something That Heals

"Time, I thought while lying in my bed, doesn't exist. What is exists in the movement of matter-or better- matter in motion, because //motion// doesn't exist any more than //time// and //space// exist; it's just the word we use to describe matter in motion. Time is not a thing. When asked what time is, we can't point to some specific object, the way we can if we're asked what a chair is, a column, a lancet window, hemoglobin. Time isn't tangible, just as space isn't tangible, and the idea that we could turn these artificial (yet useful) terms into something tangible, into something that heals, into something you can kill, or something you have to fight against, this might be one of our last great myths." *

"When I consider the brief span of my life absorbed into the eternity which comes before and after- as the remembrance of a guest that tarrieth but a day- the small space I occupy and which I see swallowed up in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I know nothing and which know nothing of me, I take fright and am amazed to see myself here rather than there: there is no reason for me to be here rather than there, now rather than then. Who put me here? By whose command and act were this place and time allotted to me?"**

I woke up in Pensacola in room that was probably the average temperature of Iceland, woke up John, and we drove to the hospital half drunk and confused on sleep. I should have brushed my teeth. I should have combed my hair. I shouldn't have stayed up all night doing fake speed and drinking. Still, I had to go to the hospital (not for myself, my health problems seem to be getting better with copious amounts of allergy pills and antacid tablets). No one, not a single fucking person helped me when I got lost not once, but two times trying to find the ICU. Finally, I just stopped a nurse and asked. You'd think with someone like me walking around they'd want to make sure I wasn't stealing pills, but I guess now I know that the Sacred Heart Hospital will be my first stop when I go on some sort of Drugstore Cowboy rampage across Florida. So I found my dad, and he looked yellow (probably from the Iodine, I don't know if you know this but when you go into surgery they love to wash you with Iodine and it stains your body for days). He was sitting up and watching the weather channel, and didn't seemed surprised to see me. My step mom didn't look happy, she looked stressed out, but I don't think I had anything to do with it. I kissed Parker on the forehead and we talked about bullshit for five minutes (the weather, bullshit, my band playing a show the night before, bullshit, et cetera). He explained the surgery to me and it made me feel pretty sick to my stomach. I don't want to think about anyone's ribs being opened up like that, and veins in their leg replacing the deflated, empty veins in their heart. I got one of the nurses to get him some more morphine, they put the needle into the IV and put a fucking lot of it in his body. My step mom walked out to talk to someone and Parker starting telling me a story about my mom, when she and him were sailing out of Haiti and he broke his finger. I've heard the story about a thousand times, but not since he got remarried. Luckily, he finished the story and nodded off before I really started crying. My step mom and I hugged goodbye, and I walked alone through the mostly empty hospital and waited for John to come pick me back up.

Rose Cross played in St. Augustine, Gainesville, Pensacola, and Tallahassee. All the shows were fun, and I met some nice people, and I don't feel totally awful now that we're back. I read the quotes about time while we were driving on I-10, which can seem kind of surreal when you're eating Taco Bell for the third time in as many days and you know in a couple hours you're going to get really, really drunk. Sitting in a van being quiet can be hard for that part of your brain that thinks about choices and "what you're suppose to be doing." I'm sort of incapable of making any choices right now, I just want to play shows with my band and come home and listen to Agnostic Front's Victim in Pain on repeat. I just want to wake up and get coffee and maybe eat something and read a book. The bigger decisions can wait a little longer. I told someone this last week and I'll stick by it- don't make life decisions in the winter. Let's just wait for warmer weather, then we can resume freaking out.

*Marco Candida, Dream Diary

** Blaise Pascal, Pensées