Happyhedonic

I start to roam the parking lot with a twelve-pack of beer, but I couldn’t find my car anywhere. It then occurs to me: did I even bring a car, or was I riding the bike? If I was riding the bike, which motorcycle did I own at the time? Didn’t I, in fact, now drive a RAV4 SUV? Or did I still have the BMW Z4? What had happened to the Celica? I realized that I had no idea what I had driven to the store. To be honest, I wasn't entirely sure, there had ever been a store. Still, I had the twelve-pack in my hand. I opened up a beer and began to drink it. I just needed to settle my nerves, I surmised. I was fairly sure I lived near the store, so, I began to walk, continuing to drink beers along the way. Nothing looked familiar. I decided I had better call my wife and get to the bottom of it all. She answered and told me that we were no longer married and I had moved out of the state. This was quite baffling, so, I opened another beer. Someone pulled up next

There was the accident. It replayed itself nightly in my dreams. I remember the sounds, the horrid, terrible sounds: GLASS SHATTERING A SCREAM METAL TWISTING I can still see myself lying there... White. Cold. With no expression. I remember the ambulance driver calling my name, but I kept drifting farther and farther away. But it wasn't real. The accident had never occurred. Or had it? It certainly never happened to me in this life, but perhaps it occurred in another. Something always seemed weird about this world, like it was a fabrication, a construct stitched together by my own imagination. I felt I had lived many times before, but after each death I would return to a world that was becoming more and more peculiar. It was as though the order that once existed had deteriorated. Logic had become a forgotten language. Everything was almost comically insane, but it was also terribly, heartbreakingly sad. I became convinced that every death returned me to

It was the first real snow, and everything was beautiful, especially you. I had known you for years. This was our first real date. We were walking the trails near a reservoir. Surrounding us were pines, with snow falling everywhere. It was cold. You made me feel warm. When we made it to the water, we checked the ice, and it seemed it would support our weight. We started sliding across the ice. Everything seemed magical. Then we saw a fire burning deep in the woods. Somewhere near that fire, I became groggy and started losing my footing on the ice. I heard a loud thud and a crack when I landed. Everything changed then. It felt as if I had crossed into a different world entirely. I got lost within myself. The ice no longer felt solid beneath my feet. There were many more spills. I needed to get to the shore. When I got there, I felt a force pull me toward the fire. The people there were strange and seemed to be performing some type of

Before anything had names and stars had yet to appear, matter and antimatter met within the silence They were supposed to cancel into light completely, but one small particle waited longer than the rest. That extra moment changed everything that came after. Galaxies formed Mountains stopped. Rivers kept going. Even you ended up here because of it It feels like such a tiny thing, but that is exactly what allowed everything to remain as it is. The darkness had this pause that turned into all we know. It was a miracle and to this day it cannot be explained. We now all live within this pause. It just was, and therefore we just are.