7 - Battle Cry

    The sun was just a little bit brighter this morning.  The machines
ran quietly allowing thoughts to flow freely through the gray matter
with uncompromising speed.  I think the worst thing about entering into
my thirties is the silence with which it approaches.  The day
simply came and went.  There was no fanfare, no great celebrations, no
overt recognition of any kind.
    I think that is one of the things I've grown to love about the
machines, they have their own moments of realization.  The fourth decade.  I
turned thirty.  I never really expected to live passed the age of
eighteen.  I remember sitting in my room as a child listening to the
grinding of the wheels and wondering if I was crazy.
    I remember realizing my own mortality around age seven.  That's when
my grand- mother left this plane of reality to travel on her own
journey.  It wasn't her death that gripped me it was the desperate look
in my father's eyes as he realized that there was nothing he could do to
undo the words that were just spoken to him by my aunt.
    The shock wave resonated through our house like an erupting volcano
and left nothing but emotional destruction in it's wake.
     I as I grew I came to believe that I couldn't die.  The reality
check came in 1992.
     I learned to quiet the machines.  The dreams of youth were too far away
to even to attempt to comprehend and the grinding, had I allowed it to
continue, would have been a constant reminder of failure.
    The road looked fine for a late winter's day and I was on my way to
shitty job number one.  I looked down at the radio for a moment and felt
the wheel catch.  The immediate response was to grip it tighter but I
was too late.  The 1978 Ford Thunderbird was already into it's second
full spin.
    When you realize you are going to die the seconds move like hours,
all that can be done is forgotten and all that will be is.  The moments
that you dread, the last seconds of your life, confront you and dare you
to defy them with your lame excuses for not living.  The angels stand
before you, not in judgment, but in waiting.
    I corrected the skid before the third spin but could not avoid the
fast approaching telephone pole.  The road at this point was thick with
ice and the brakes were useless.  I locked my arms and released a battle
cry as the nose of the the Thunderbird cut through the snow bank like
butter and slammed into the telephone.
    I don't remember getting out of the car.  I don't know how long I
stood looking through the windshield of the car trying to see if my luck
had finally run out.  I expected my last vision to be my own lifeless
body sandwiched between metal and shattered glass.
    I do remember pain, not a physical pain from the accident; something
deeper.  The machines had awakened.  All of the dreams that had been
buried rushed to the surface.  This is the day the rains began.  This is
how I began my twenties.

That Beautiful Black Man