Kings of Leon "pickup truck" was more then likely on the stereo...
Getting ready to make the left hand turn I've been making since I got my license at 16, something happened.
The next thing I remember, i was in a bubble of stillness though half of my car was gone and the rest was still spinning and screaching... I smelled smoke, heard panicked screams and saw blood all over tawney's face as she somehow leapt out of the passenger seat and collapsed on the corner curb.
I turned around to see Josh, still in the back seat holding my guitar in a white knuckled grip. His beanie was now somewhere in the middle of Ocean Avenue after flying off his head during the collision.
I had finished my Emergency Medical technician license 2 days before and felt myself just barely wading through a familiar dream as the ambulance arrived and EMTs "c-spined" my friend... A procedure I had just done that week while on my ride-alongs working with the ambulance company.
I had borrowed a collared white shirt and watch from Josh and a black jacket from Tawney's house - leaving the compound at 7am to go work in the ambulance that week. Josh & Tawney were my two friends who had helped prepare me and were now beside me in this weird surreal nightmare.
I was trained to know what to do... And instead, i just sat there shaking, in shock, unable to formulate coherent thoughts, but rather floating somewhere beside this reality that was hazily painted before of me...
In that moment i remember feeling more detached from reality than I had ever been before... And this was culminating a year where my feet barely touched the earth.
Why did this happen?
I know... I know...
Why ask why? It just makes you crazy. But ironically, out of all my friends, Tawney and Josh are the two friends who I have the most "why" conversations with... Together uncovering clues and ever-present cosmic symbolism in all that we do and experience.
We read and follow signs and omens, like The Alchemist.
For his birthday, I actually gave Josh a pouch with 2 stones- one a piece of black jade from Big Sur and the other, a piece of pinkish-white quartz from Santa Fe... To act like the Umim and Thurmin (yes/no amulets from The Alchemist) To help guide him through troubling decisions, which is essentially an artsy hippie way of flipping a coin...
Though in all my answer seeking during the weeks leading up to the accident, I wrote a poem that would remind me to let go of the "why"...
I had just finished a particularly amazing day at UCLA's EMT program where we had been studying neurology... Awakening every cell in my body... Igniting the insatiable appetite for this kind of knowledge inside me. Blowing my mind in a million glorious pieces.
I left class and got in my little blue convertible, put the top down and started writing with the engine running. The poem just ran out of me... coming out in one long stream of very conscious consciousness.
Within a week I found myself at the hospital bedside of Tawney, holding a bucket for her to spit blood into and helping the doctor put temporary stitches in her face that would last until her reconstructive surgery.
Josh stood in the hallway and looked in at me from behind a pale face and bloodshot eyes.
My feet scrambled to touch the earth like a toddler being held in the air against his wishes.
Did the why even matter?
Were we just rearranging matter here? Smashing the reality we thought we knew... The reality I so desperately ached for in that moment.
We were alive... I think.
I was still high off "who cares" from a day spent riding bikes with Josh and feeling alive... Spreading out arms out wide at the pacific ocean and feeling grateful to be alive before riding over to Tawney's house and piling into my car.
Suddenly, the gratitude became significantly more real, having brushed death on the corner of Ocean & Navy.
I left for Indonesia 2 weeks later and we all continued to search for meaning... Emailing one another to check in and touch base and make sure we were still alive.
Its one year to the day.... We are still alive and still without a why.
I am on a train en route to LA to celebrate life with Tawney, Josh and all the amazing lights who turned on and came to the compound during the healing process... Musicians, healers and friends... We are gathering for a sound bath and dinner to celebrate being alove.
(that was a typo... And I really really like it so that's staying there and totally coming into my vocabulary.)
The poem:
January 26, 2011
"The Art of the Healing Art"
The perpetual edge I find myself upon...
Tip toes on the tip of 'I've got it. I'm there.'...
Forever at dawn.
Into breaking light, I stare...
Finding a key and unlocking a door...
We enter to find just ten thousand more...
Creation in life, the constant metaphor...
Unparalleled beauty, and yet always more...
I find myself dumbfounded by each truth I explore...
Reminding us to remember what exactly dreams are for...
The brush has that painted from the very earth's core...
The selfsame hand has sketched our souls...
Written poems in the sky, in medicine, in all beings born...
A loosley tied bow holding life's fragile form.
All it takes is a gentle breeze...
Someone to sneeze...
And the next mystical mystery is released...
I let my mind swim towards the enigma and try...
To quench this insatiable thirst for the "why"...
Clarity so clear, yet so clearly awry...
Abstractions in the science of why birds fly...
Lessons abounding that beg us to try...
Books written... songs sung... prayers chanted...
How could anyone ever take this life for granted?
The elation of creation.
We are creatures of this magnificence upon an unseen canvas ball.
It is the prophetic, anonymous poet who is writing the ALL.
With gratitude and awe, on this earth, my tears fall
But does the "why" even matter?
For that's all we are anyways, right?
Just matter.
So, know that YOU matter.
You ARE matter.
the perpetual pun is probably intended.
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