daily prompt

Near-Life Experiences

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“Shall not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.” I heard that somewhere. Recently a friend was bemoaning the lack of romantic exploits in his past, that he could have cheated on past companions but did not; he said that he still regrets that he had been “too shy.”

“Why create regrets about mistakes you did not make?” I asked. Because I live in a comic book in my head, I added, “That’s some deathbed scene, telling your wife and kids that you only regret that you hadn’t screwed up more.” My friend did not invite me to leave his moving vehicle.

Perhaps mistakes are the spice that makes life interesting, but it seems to me that I do not need to be anyone else’s mistake.

My present relationship is the longest I have experienced, three years last week. I am 46, so this statement represents a lot of dumb work on my part. A quarter-century of it. A lot of effort went into the fight to remain self-obsessed and increasingly isolated.
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Begin in Dreams

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

In one dream, a dream encountered once each month or so, a password to an email service or to the office desktop itself can not be remembered. Or interruptions prevent typing it in within a fifteen-second countdown. He has been away from the office for so long—a decade—and he sees the voice mail light flashing on his phone, but he can not remember the four-digit access code. How many messages? he wonders.

Even without the password, he catches a glimpse of the waiting emails and they scroll without him touching the mouse, and he has a deadline to meet that somehow exists simultaneously as “just missed,” “about to be missed,” and “missed a decade ago, so why are you dreaming about a job that was three or four jobs ago”? Is this even his cubicle, anyway?

No bosses are visible, but unseen bosses are the only ones required in a nightmare.
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Dulce et Decorum Est

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“Their life consisted wholly and solely of war, for they were and always had been front-line infantrymen. They survived because the fates were kind to them, certainly—but also because they had become hard and immensely wise in animal-like ways of self-preservation.”—Ernie Pyle, World War II journalist, writing about what he saw at the front. Killed in action April 18, 1945.

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