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Blog Entry 5 of 7 The Rima File
Cosmic Observations from Castle Rock, The Universe, and Beyond...

Blog Url: http://denver.yourhub.com/~TheRimaFile

Just another Monday...
Contributed by: Sean Rima   on 3/4/2008

Today is Day 62.

It's a Monday, and not a particularly interesting one. I woke up this morning with no great plan to save the Human Race from poverty and war, nor did I feel any closer to God than I did the night before.

The daily mail offered no million-dollar contract for my latest novel, only bills, including an ominous-looking post from a collections service in Denver. I took my daughter to the Blockbuster Video, but nothing on the shelves looked good to me.

We came home, and I put a load of laundry into the machine, but I didn't fold the stuff in the dryer, just left it in there, mostly because I was simply too bored to do it. It was a beautiful afternoon in Castle Rock, and I'm sure there were all kinds of little miracles and bits of wonderfulness walking with me through my day, but, again, I was just too depressed and disinterested to notice.

That happens. There are moments when the universe, in all its wizened mystery, decides that a gray day must befall you, the kind of a day that offers no stunning victories or catastrophes, no visions and no poetry...only a generic plodding towards the night, a couch, a TV show, and maybe a couple of Tylenol PM's to speed up the process.

Bah. I really hate these damn days.

The phone rang a couple of hours ago. It was an old friend of mine from the east coast. He called to tell me that our buddy 'Mike' had died.

It seems that he drank himself to death. After his father passed a while back, he slipped into a patch of darkness, and never made it out again. It took about five years.

He packed on an extra hundred pounds, and his skin bloated like a sausage. He started showing up drunk to work, and eventually got fired. His girlfriend gave up on him. He stopped calling his friends, and, eventually, they gave up on him, too.

His neighborhood bar would send a cab to pick him up in the afternoon, then call him another to shuffle him home once he'd reached the cussing and belligerent stage. 'Mike' didn't ride the cab into town today, and I guess his buddies at the bar got worried.

The cops found him dead in his room. Another dead alcoholic, dead in his bed like a sausage. That happens, too.

I hung up the phone, smoked a full cigarette, and then went into my living room where my wife and daughter were on the couch, in their jammies, watching"Spongebob" with the cats curled up in their legs.

Between the curtains of the picture window, the black night peeked in like a vampire, and I thought about 'Mike', like all the rest of them, out there in their crappy, empty rooms, perhaps with a radio on by a single candle burning in the ashtray, reliving over and over and over again every taste and smell and sound of every bad night, every broken promise, every humiliation, until the silent cacophony of it is so deafening that it's all you can do to scream at the top of your lungs at no one, at nothing, at the cats, at God, at yourself.

I wondered how many more lives we'd lose this night, before the blue dawn creeps in through the shades. I wept for all my brothers and sisters out there in the night, all alone in their rooms, dying so very slowly for no good damned reason at all.

I hope that at least one of them reads this, and gets really, really scared, at least scared enough to get the hell out of that room before it's too late. Dying sucks. Just ask anybody who's done it.

For me, today is Day 62. Tomorrow is Day 63. For you, it could be the 1st Day in the rest of your brand new shiny right-out-of-the-package life.

Either way...I guess it wasn't such a bad day after all. I have to go watch TV with my wife and kid, now. Happily, on the couch.

Good night, 'Mike'. Rest, old friend. Rest, now.

Amen.




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Showing 1-7 of 7 comments
Submitted By: Kim Price
posted on 4/21/2008 @ 10:50:58 AM
Rated Blog Entry
sad.
[Report as objectionable]
Submitted By: Barbara Neff
posted on 4/8/2008 @ 2:29:18 PM
Rated Blog Entry
You're a fantastic writer, sad content and all. More, more.
[Report as objectionable]
Submitted By: William Boucher
posted on 3/30/2008 @ 9:20:15 PM
Rated Blog Entry
One day at a time, brother.
[Report as objectionable]
Submitted By: Michael Laffoon
posted on 3/17/2008 @ 2:51:22 PM
(Not Rated)
Sean. I am aghast that KFI replaced you! Have you caught on at another station? Blogging elsewhere?
[Report as objectionable]
Submitted By: Gladys Mercier
posted on 3/12/2008 @ 1:00:13 PM
Rated Blog Entry
Sorry about your friend but happy for you.
[Report as objectionable]
Submitted By: Joseph Kirchmer
posted on 3/5/2008 @ 12:19:12 PM
Rated Blog Entry
Take heed. Spring is right around the corner ...
[Report as objectionable]
Submitted By: Michael Rule
posted on 3/5/2008 @ 6:51:28 AM
Rated Blog Entry
Yup, we've all had those days. Losing a friend sucks. I've been there, too.
[Report as objectionable]
Showing 1-7 of 7 comments
CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Sean Rima

Castle Rock , CO

Sean Rima has posted 7 blog entries and 0 comments since joining on 12/18/2007. Sean Rima 's average blog rating is 5.
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