Kiki

A bloke on NPR blabbers on about something people only pretend to care about; my eyes attempt to unblur – possibly a result of his monologue, more likely as I’ve only just become aware I’m awake. Been on autopilot for a little while now. Morning business attended to, now comes time to sit for a moment and flow.

Kiki died last night. Hit by a car. Must have been sudden because I let him out minutes before we heard the news. E arrived home to find him at the top of the driveway: eyes unblinking, shining in the headlights.

I couldn’t find tears for him then, though E could. Instead I reflected on the lifeless body I was looking at, seeing it not as Kiki, but a body for the first time. All these bodies walking around, sitting, talking, mingling, busying, driving, jumping, laughing, crying, and all I am looking at are bodies. Yet I identify each and every one as an individual. I see each of these separately as Jack and Bob and Mary and Sue. I don’t see them as reflections, projections of me. I don’t see that they are not their bodies. No, I use their bodies to identify them, to tell me who and what they are. I live a mistaken existence, and that is okay. That is what I do now.

And Kiki has helped me see it. Kiki is helping me realize that these bodies are meaningless: just breathing organisms that elements of this attach to from time to time. No harm in that, no harm in road-testing something.

The clouds form a blanket overhead. A wavy blanket of light and darkening grey. Waves form too from the radio, people’s voices, the rapid pulsations of every subatomic particle: exist now, now don’t, now do, now don’t, ad infinitum, never stopping for a moment to help us realize how ridiculous is this concept of existence. Millions upon millions of times every second every part of me ceases to exist, and yet here I am holding on tight to my identity: Caucasian male; 36; Scorpio; venue manager; partner of E; stepdad of Y and L; bearded; graying; thin; son of C and T; brother of S, M, N and D; facilitator of The Work; writer of this blog; reader of tarot. Millions upon millions of times every second of every day none of this could possibly be true because none of this exists.

How entertaining is the mind! To think it would believe the images it makes; to imagine such a fantastic existence, it is such an incredible thing.