Mere Mortals: Collapse.

You know the deal...but if you don't, read this thing here for background on these ramblings. 

Track Ten: Collapse.

I can touch your skin and feel the passing of time. I can stare into your eyes and see you in your prime. I can listen to your stories and hear the struggle of your climb. The weight of the world on your shoulders and still you moved mountains. A god among men, no quandary you couldn't amend. We thought you'd live forever, that you'd carry us into the sunset. We hoped you'd bury us as ash and dust. I’ll never forget that trembling voice that stripped away all illusions. Eternity’s time and pressure exacted in one foul measure. The earth opened up and swallowed my world whole. Will you see me passing time? Will you know me in my prime? Can you help me find the courage, the courage to climb? We thought you'd live forever. We hoped you'd bury us, we hoped you'd bury us as ash and dust. You may be gone but you're no mere mortal in my mind.


It was a regular morning: Stocking products on the shelf, yucking it up with coworkers, drinking too much coffee and scrounging for something that would resemble breakfast. The phone rang. This early in the morning it's usually someone calling in sick. Over the intercom I heard: "Angela, you have a phone call on line one." My heart sunk. If it were a phone call for Ben I would've assumed it was his wife asking him to bring home boneless chicken, or whatever the fuck she calls the store to ask him to bring home, rather than texting him like the rest of us do in 2016. But it wasn't for Ben, it was for Angela. She answered. Her response stopped all of us in our tracks. Something was very wrong. Unsure I was the right person to approach her, I opened the office door to find her on the floor with her head in her hands. Her body trembling, she told me her dad had died.

Not three days prior she'd told me her dad was the sort of man who, still, even in his seventies, worked the farm sun-up to sun-down, ate eggs, bacon, and buttermilk everyday and had a clean bill of health. She jokingly said something along the lines of "I'm pretty sure he'll outlive me."

The past few days I've been tumbling down a nihilistic rabbit hole. Sunday we watched the latest episode of Game of Thrones, now I won't give anything away, but perhaps if you saw it you'll catch my drift. I came away from it imagining a God-like view of humanity, where everyone who has lived, is living, and will live are all scurrying around at the same time, overlapping each other, microscopic dots on a sprawling map fluttering about. Back in my Theology studying days in college we talked about God being outside of time, that everything in the universe is happening at the same time and God knows all the results. This idea of God existing outside of time, our understanding of time that is, is also mashed up with some other ideas relating to God's omnipotence (all-knowing-ness), immutability (un-changeable-ness), and probably a few other large words implying larger ideas in order to have everything make sense with all the other things theologians "know" about God...which for me makes no sense at all. In this God's-eye-view I've been imagining I can't escape a sense of futility. All of us dots, scurrying to find fulfillment, or purpose. Trampling to make our mark, or being trampled bearing the marks of others. Our time, place, and brain-wirings dictating what sort of lives we may be able to lead until life leaves us. Some of us a blip on the radar so quick it hardly registers.

Then some of us, perhaps the luckiest of us, live well and long enough to experience a genuine sense of love. A dot not on some cosmic radar, but on the hearts and minds of some of whom we cross paths with. Some of us leave an impression so dense that our departure rips holes in those who loved us. Perhaps the luckiest of us leave such a mark that even the friends of those who loved us feel inspired to write songs and spend time wondering about our lives. Perhaps we'll be lucky enough to transcend our time and be perceived as no mere mortal in someone's mind. 

(Names above changed for reasons you already understand. Image stolen from here.)