In the Fourth of July Moment

As I walk from the coffee pot to the bathroom, I appreciate every step. I feel the tissues squeezing around the soles of my feet, cushioning my skeleton from the hardwood floor. It feels good. I go Tom Hanks on the toilet. Most of it actually hits the water. Feels good. I wonder whether old Mad Matt is allowed up to pee. He’s down at the hospital, possibly in four-point restraints. He started having seizures this week and konked out. I understand he’s getting better and starting to piss them off. I’ve seen him pull his own I.V. and get dressed when he could barely stand. That’s when it’s best to just sit and stroke his hair and call him a dumbass. He doesn’t mind having his hair stroked.

We’ll go down and see him today if they haven’t let him out. Maybe I’ll get to watch him pull off his wrist restraints. That’s how they know when he’s ready to be discharged—when he can get his wrists out. Tessa and I watched him do it a few years back. He’s the only human-being I know who is part orangutan, part Mr. Goodwrench.

I sit at the table and experience every bite of my Strawberry-Orange Sunrise yogurt. I used to bitch about yogurt because of its gross name, but I actually love it. How stupid. I swallow. There are people right here in this town who can’t swallow. I don’t mean just old guys in nursing homes. I mean young, hot suburban housewives, too. Vibrant young bodybuilders who never expected the ladder to fall or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis to come visit. Right here. In your town.

It’s getting light outside. It’s really just close-up starlight—radiation from nuclear fusion. Five million metric tons of mass per second, converted to energy at the rate of E=mc2. It can kill me if I spend too much time in it. But it feels good to my eyes—the power of sight. That star will someday burn out, as surely as this yogurt cup will be empty in five minutes. It and I. We are stardust.

Today a bunch of rich guys who were tired of paying taxes pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to earn the right pay their taxes to themselves instead of to another country. Bless ‘em. All those soldiers would have eventually died anyway. What was it that old Chinese philosopher said? It is better to die like a tiger than to live like a pussy. Maybe it was Rahm Emmanuel. Doesn’t matter. We can never recall that enough, no matter who says it. Mad Matt says it every day with every step of his life. Dennis Jackson described Matt best when he said, “He’s free, Man. He’s fuckin’ free.”