Click images for desktop size: "Power And Chaos" by Chris Bailey I've found myself thinking about mortality.

Not in any sort of sinister or morbid way.

I'm certain that some French or Greek philosopher some where once said you had to sometimes think about death to enjoy life. I'm sure there was at least one. Wasn't there?

It might be nothing that bought this on. Maybe just the grief I've been going through trying to get my drugs for cheap. I hate being addicted to drugs. Even if they are prescription, give me no pleasure and have no function over than keeping me alive.

I still haven't taken a prescription painkiller since I've made the move. I have been killing the ibuprofen bottles though.

It used to seem odd to me that I was alive. It was odd to most of my buddies too.

What sort of cosmic joke or justice let us keep on going? Why didn't it apply towards everyone?

My first encounter with death was a kid at school. I was 7. He was about 17, rich and popular. He was at a party with his girlfriend sitting on his lap when, the story went, he pulled out a gun and shot himself in the head splattering gray matter and blood over all the other teen celebrants and his girlfriend.

At 7 I didn't understand death but I understood drama.

It stayed with me for nearly a day.

I didn't wonder why he chose to die. I wondered why he felt he needed so much drama in his life.

Then they let us out of school early for some sort of memorium and I forgot all about it. Most of us ran to the beach.

Throughout our lives we must wonder why we survive. Like the times I've run a too fast car off the road into walls, lamp posts and trees and walked out of it without a scratch.

All those times surfing when I'd go over the falls and get tumbled along the bottom. I'd swim to the top and gasp for air only to discover the foam was two feet thick and instead of air I was gasping in rarified sea water. I'd have to swim down to the bottom again and then swim up even faster to build up enough speed to break through.


Click images for desktop size: "Paris Night" Only to get hit by a breaker and have to start the cycle all over again.

I'd think of things like that when I'd hear about how one of my surfing buddies had drowned.

I'd think of how many times I shot the pier at Huntington and Manhattan when I'd hear about Shaun or Dusty ramming a pylon and dying.

I wasn't a better swimmer or surfer than they were. You wonder why.

Like, the war in Viet Nam ended before I could get drafted. That was cool, I thought. I had two friends who had to go.

David, another David - I've not yet gotten to speaking of myself in the third person - did a tour in Viet Nam. He was on some kind of troop ship or something that was pulling into San Pedro. He for no reason anyone could explain got out his rifle and shot nearly everyone in the hold before he turned the gun on himself.

I still think about that. What had he done or what happened to him over there that he couldn't bear coming home?

What had his fellow soldiers done that he decided they deserved to die?

And what if it had been me who'd gone through whatever it was he went through? Would I have become a mass murderer suicide too?

Denny went to Viet Nam. He killed himself the slow painful way.

When he first got home he seemed fine. Had some wild photos and wild stories. He drank a lot. We were still kids. We all thought drinking a lot was the path to Hugh Hefner. William Holden style cool.

He started to put on weight. A lot of wight.

Denny got a job tending bar at the Valley VFW post. He got a studio apartment. The last time we went to visit him he had to be nearing 300 pounds. He was sitting in the dark, drinking and listening to Grand Funk Railroad.

He died of congestive heart failure. He weighed over 450 pounds. He was 24 years old.

None of us would have recognized him. He was the 6'4 wide receiver, the guy who taught me how to do a 360 as a follow up to a lip smack.

I never could figure out what filled him with such despair that he did that to himself.

Nor was a I ever certain that I wouldn't have done the same if I'd seen what he'd seen or felt what he'd felt.

It was when I was rock climbing. Once in Yosemite on Sentinal on a nasty ledge called Bishop's, and then again in Joshua Tree, on a chunk of sandstone that nobody ever bothered to name.

Both times I got into trouble on the rock and thought I was going to die.

Bishop's Ledge is the most scenic and the nastiest. It's about a 12 foot overhang and the old school way of doing it was to chock in some nuts and the swing out on the rope to the edge of it where you would then keep a foot in a rope loop while you mantled up on to a lumpy 80 degree granite slope. This all happens a few hundred feet above the ground.


Click images for desktop size: "Splash" by Apple Inc My climbing partner, another David, decided it would be a meaningless climb unless we did it free. That meant no ropes and jamming in nuts to swing from. It meant being natural and increasing the chance of death a ridiculous amount. I have no idea why it seemed a good idea.

At the ledge this meant we would jam our hands and fingers into the crack and use nothing but muscle.

So I was hanging there with my muscles feeling like water. I thought it was a beautiful view while I dangled there above it. Convinced that I couldn't move or hold on much longer and my life flashed in front of my eyes.

It was great!

I loved my life.

That time spent seeing all I'd done relaxed me and I found I was strong enough and had enough juice left to make it.

When we got to the bottom, afterwards, we found out that another climber, John, had fallen and died. He was a much better climber than me.

And I feel foolish, the only thing I thought was that I was more than lucky. I was blessed by the giant hand of god that tumbles down from the sky.

Almost all of us did, at least at one time or another.

Inveterate gamblers have a common thread. They all view luck as a vessel. It finite and when it pours you have to run with it. (Interesting how no matter what odd diversion you give your life to you can always make it seem to fit life itself).

Maybe all my luck was used up all the way back then. Or maybe I should have used it to win the lottery.

Nah.

I'm still damn lucky.

Maybe still blessed.

I have a dog who loves me. Who celebrates in me and brings me nothing but the purest joy.

I have a friend who does the same thing. We rejoice in one another and keep the clambering darkness at bay.

I don't think you can get luckier or more blessed than that.