Transcendence Lasts As Long As Until You Get Hungry Again

I ❤️ writing about transcendence. It's a big word that sounds so mystical and it can really vault your status into rarefied air: so fancy! In college, I had no car, no job, no money, no plan, so, as a suitor, I'd just throw that word out there and hope for the best. One can always hope, or so I have been told.

I once found transcendence:

• At the bottom of a bottle of red wine.

• On the first day after all my breakups.

• Understanding that when somebody else does it, it's skill and when you do it, it's luck.

• Realizing that black olives are Top 40 and green olives are punk.

• On page 179 of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (*possibly other pages).

• Inside a home in Tempane, Ghana, where the words written on the wall: "in times of difficulty, lovers are few," couldn't have spoken anymore loudly.

• After listening to the similar drum fill intros on songs 1 and 2 of Tom Petty's Damn the Torpedoes. 

• At the top of the west side of Retzer Nature Center.

• Losing a shit (and possibly metric) ton of money.

• On the point of Stevens Point, WI, specifically pizza from long gone Aldo's, doughnuts & whole milk from the long gone bakery, and occasionally from the Elbow Room, which occasionally led to meta-transcendence, like winter post-midnight brat-fry indulgences.

• Listening to Cliff Burton's Orion.

• Being mesmerized, circa age 2, by the street lamps of Plymouth, WI

• Once having a handful of blog readers, which is better than none -- it's 2019, wtf is a blog anyway, I guess?  🤦‍♂️

• Watching Wyatt go for help in Easy Rider and/or watching part 1 of the Deer Hunter.

• Finally acquiring health care.

• After writing "champagne everywhere" in a letter, which possibly burst the dam of everything me -- I only wanted the object of that letter and the universe gave me everything else instead.

• After writing about its consequences: "I'm Lost In Transcendence, That's Why I Never Get Laid"

But seriously, and -- discounting anything and everything previously written as serious (except for what is in the list) -- transcendence! It enjoys being elusive. You find it; it moves. You tell your friends about it and it's gone. You pick a number and someone else picks a bigger number. You see certain things and then you can never go back. You can be faulted if you're wrong or exalted if you're right, but you never get to go back.

This is track #3 but you can get over it: