Paint the porch in it, the as-yet once and future mythical porch.

Once. A long while back I was assigned to read a particular story. In my memory it was by one of the grand southern Femmes: Shirl Jackson, Miz Flannery … Welty ….

Nothing much seemed to happen in it. An old sick lady in her abundantly appointed empty house, her vague troubles. I filed it Read and moved on to the next thing on the list.

In class the prof lectured its veiled layers to us. It was a story about the indomitable human spirit of the best kind of human person it seemed.

Basically she was addicted to morphine, and she knew that kicking it would cost her her life, and she was kicking it anyway.

Dying clean–nominally free–was the only thing left that mattered to her to care about. So she cared deeply, skillfully and with what they used to call Character. One of those words you were invited to think you could build your life around in those days, as if any word could bear the weight of such a thing alone.

The prof’s exegesis was far more inspiring to me than the story itself. He clearly bought into what he said were her motivations, her methods, and her creed. I tried on his beliefs and they fit for a time.

Time. A river sure. You can’t step in to the same moment twice. Except by the crude neurochemical prop of memory, and let’s be real.

I have no short-term concrete reason to believe I’m dying. I have no long-term reason to believe it won’t happen much sooner than later. So I’ve thought for all those lost days about what the Morphine is, for me personally, and what the Character is, for us all.

The future. Is uncertain but the end is always near. That one attributed to Mr. Mojo Risin’ and I’ll try it on too. I think it’s the same as what Don Juan Matus meant when he said that a warrior was careful to make death his advisor.

Which fits terrifyingly well. The starved assets must be spent anyway in the service of acquiring opportunities for freedom as well as style. In an anonymous dressing room with pins all over the floor, the circuitous logic path reveals itself in foglift and an unseen door opens in the hitherto blank wall.

It’s spooky as all fuck, yeah. You know what to do.