Note: No Rara didn’t get out. This week she was finally transferred to state prison. Over the last while she has been sending me, her husband, things to post, but due to my own living situation (getting threatened, kicked out, near homelessness, no internet, no electricity, etc.) I haven’t had time to type them and post them, per her request. From now on, any post sent to via mail to me by Rara will be typed and posted under her user ID.
Intended to be have been posted July 31st.
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I’ve always been fascinated by the last of things. The Last Samurai, The Last of the Mohicans, the last item left at a garage sale, or even all the things I wouldn’t do even if I was the last human on earth.
“The Last” is a tangible ending—not the sort that brushes by unnoticed, but the type that toots its own horn. It does not whisper, bangs—and it screams to the world, “Hear me now, see me now! I am the end, and I am the beginning.” It is not the snake’s mouth, or the tip of the tail. It is “The Last”. It is the space that holds the mouth and tail together, transforming a snake into an ouroboros, and a story into an eternity. It is magical.
Still, despite all it’s pomp, the circumstance of “The Last” makes us turn away from it. We are taught to fear unknown endings, undervalue expected ones, and look away from them all in fear of bringing tomorrow’s necessary ending into our today. So we turn away, and the lasts become invisible.
Looking away doesn’t stop the end though, so I stare. But maybe that whole thought is only justification for my fascination with endings. A glittered cloak to replace one of invisibility? A sequined cloak to hide my own fascination with morbidity?
Either way, today is the last day of July and I am savoring it. It is the last day of July 2014 that I will ever see. It will be a whole year before I see a shade or glimmer of July again. It is a last, and today, I am mesmerized by its swan song.
I feel this day stretching into August and (though all July’s have done this dance it seems to be taking its time. It is yawning into the start of a new month, warming to the idea of a tomorrow where it does not exist as anything except a memory, and—even then—just a faded one. Still, it toots its own horn, bangs its own drums, and sings its own swan song. It will be forgotten in due time, but time washes and fades everything, so it does not take the slight personally. In fact, this day has nothing to say about tomorrow at all. It is simply celebrating how it was born of the grandeur of yesterday and rose everything it could be. In July, people loved and told truths, saplings turned to trees, birds found some of the shiniest things, and balloons escaped into the heavens. And there were lies born, and knees scraped, and tragedies, and death. But most importantly—the world lived to the end of today’s tale, and has started to sparkle its way to the mouth of eternity. A full circle begins again, and for this brief breath—we are forever.
Until tomorrow, when we begin the spiral of madness, creation, and destruction again.
Tomorrow is a first—the first day of August—and I will be celebrating.
I’ve always had a fascination with first…
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How was your July?
How is your August shaping up?
