The night’s as hot as hell. It’s a lousy room in a lousy part of a lousy town - I’m staring at a goddess. She’s telling me she wants me. I’m not going to waste one more minute wondering how I’ve gotten this lucky. She smells like angels ought to smell, the perfect woman… the Goddess. Goldie. She says her name is Goldie.
I recall a thought I had on the morning of my laparoscopic cholecystectomy, it repeated itself in my mind like a broken record. “I can die today,” I thought. Typical things I’d think about never included death but more asinine ideas like what I want for lunch or whether I should wear pants.
When you’ve looked at death, things are never the same. You can lose it all, and then in a blink, it’s all given back to you. In those moments where you reflect on everything you have to lose, you realize that your life wasn’t worth much to begin with. The things I had to lose were tangible and insignificant like clothes, books, or various gadgets. For the first time ever, the notion of “You’ve got nothing to lose” made perfect sense. I find myself now with a new assertiveness based upon the idea that I have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
What we call the beginning is often the end, and to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.
- TS Elliot
