It was not death, for I stood up,
And all the dead lie down.
—Emily Dickinson
Late last night—on way back to the hotel—I walked into the mouth of a long empty alley full of dark doorways, a row of giant garage doors and a single cinematic loading dock laid out in a long shadow of lawn—Okay, I was a little drunk and stiff from a day crammed with pushing through an ever-shifting threshold of pain—walking between cars on a barreling train—and so was belligerent about my life—I can walk through the valley of Death if I want to, thank you. Don’t worry, no hopped-up murderer popped out of the shadows. Why chance it? I think I needed that brand of risk—here, inside the endless present: expectancy a kind of held-breath bravado, a ready-for-anything-bring-it-on, baby, within the body’s fuse box, its bank of sparks and shadows. I needed that runway of primordial fear, its allegorical blind alley, SOMETHING to parade my badass broken self along, stomping with brittle feet through shards of what ifs and you’re in the wrong place, brother, at the right time blues. Was I asking for trouble? You tell me. Maybe a wish to be wiped clean again—beautifully rebooted but not undone. I don’t know. Just that into that gap I had to go, tightrope walking the stations of danger’s church, taking risk a kind of prayer. How, for those few, un-parceled moments I was… let’s just say I disappeared into a dream rut full of bitter disasters—came out safe and clean like a washed car—a little less drunk, turned around, the hotel any which way… and the unmapped grid a vast maze, the elevated train rattling above and the cement under my feet singing (chorus after chorus) my unlucky and inevitable demise.