Evermore Revisited

Originally written March 1, 2009

These stories, my gifts to each of us and no one in particular, our vain attempt to take flight in all that beautiful madness that swirls around our lives. Instead of internalizing these thoughts, suppressing them to the breaking point, somewhere along the line I thought it was appropriate to share the imaginary and unbelievable with you. Once upon a time, we wrote about a loss that spun us out into some delusional dream state. A reality I could not accept to be my own. So we ran away from it all, escaped in the vices that spun me out of control for months on end. And in our more lucent moments together, I found an outlet for the voices, those that we would come to call the ghosts of my imagination. As real to me as I am to you, they walked with me, the inevitable consequences for what I have done.

Our stories began with a more fantastical flair than what they later would evolve into. I never had shown much enthusiasm for creativity, and so our first attempts at writing were confusing to even the closest around me. But these images of the leprechauns and mythical adventures, they were appearing in my reality, and what had been written was found again as those daylight hours washed over us.

As the curtains came down on our time in Kansas, there was a restlessness that was growing out of control. That idea of who we are and who we should be had not come to pass, and there were no promises for what we had in store. The rush of being everything to everyone at the same time, of living up to all that potential in the junior circuit, it was toxic to everyone around us. And it was a glow I could no longer live without. With nothing more than our arrogant attitude and hostile temper, I found myself on the other side of the world looking for that glow once more.

The Battle of Evermore became our contact with the western world as the adventure would continue in Hong Kong. I had found myself in the middle of one of my fantastical stories, imaginary and impossible as it all seems to us now. The higher you are, the farther you will fall, and that return to the States, back to reality, was a long way down from the lights of the dark side of the moon.

Then there was nothing. Nothing at all.

Then everything.

And just like that, the nightmare, the fantasy, that one idea of who you are and who you were meant to be, it all came to pass. Once upon a time there was a great battle for my life. The ghosts of the days thought past fought with our resolve to find a way to that day then. We could be the hero, the villain, politician, recluse, reckless, playboy, barrister, the American psycho; everything you have ever wanted to be has come true then. And here we are, in that high rise in Gold Coast, the corporate attorney, looking out across the lights of the city by the lake.

The higher you are they say, but not today.

In this moment together, we look upon those stories still to be told, from where we are now, and where we will be when that day then comes once more. The Battle of Evermore once had a purpose; to be a witness to the most unimaginable story that has been my life. And it’s with that purpose we continue our story together.

The end of the second chapter of The Battle of Evermore.
The Blackout - March 1, 2009