RSS SPIRIT

Visual Metaphor Alert



We live as we breathe. With great joy one moment and in the worst condition imaginable the next.

I was thinking about this as I was bouncing down the street on a wonderful day this week. The sun was out, there was much pleasing to the eye walking the sidewalk. It was one of those days where it was like - you know it's nice out here for a pimp.

Then I thought about all the gazillions of people in terrible circumstances. People who are starving, sick and living in Iraq. I thought about the unspeakable tragedies that can affect decent fun people who just want to live and love and make the world a better place. Without notice you can get wasted in this world, whether by natural or man-made horror. Nobody is immune. Not in today's world. Small after all is the circumference required to wreck a thousand lives in a moment.

I am not sure this is a word that will make it into the OED anytime soon, but it popped into my head while I walked the street in a dialectic stupor.

Perildise

function: noun

etymology: a compound of peril and paradise

1. A state of loving life but knowing full well tragedy can arrive without warning or mercy.

2. A philosophical state or conclusion that accepts every part of life and still embraces life in the present moment.

Sentence: While in the Green Zone drinking a smuggled cold beer and watching ESPN in an airconditioned mess hall while eating fried chicken, Corporal John Doe felt acute perildise as he considered the insufferably hot road to the Baghdad airport, how dangerous it was and how much dread and fear roared just outside the gates.

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