We are all victims
Excerpt from Some Stones Don't Roll
What is reliable to me? The rhythm of the vertical line after each just-witten word. It has the beat of life. They call all this computer stuff virtual but it is as real as me driving Bill up to town silently seeing that everything will be alright as long as I can forget I've ever known him. My then-wife was not reliable. She was one of those early ministers, those pioneers, the generation that would catch the wasp churches on their way down, projecting smiling wisdom in place of the scrimped faces of the men who suffered the end of their era. She told me Bill was a bright fellow over in the rehab place (where she is chaplain) who just wanted to play music and write songs, a perfect fit with laid-back me mouldering in the Bershires still in exile, my future murdered long ago. And so we wrote for some months and performed. I cannot remember a word. A title. A thing. Just Bill in the car. Or Bill unleashing a mad pool shot at Mundy's Silver City in Glendale. Or Bill in my kitchen the evening of the night he disappeared saying he was not getting what he needed from our relationship and me saying well I give what I can give you know. And that fading into the meal the kids and my ex and Bill and me. Yep. We fail without looking. No hands. She never told me he was a paranoid schizophrenic who had gone naked down the street from McLean's a year before, after trying to assault someone with a knife. It's that confidentiality right. What would I have done if I had known. Did she know? We do not lock people up just because they ... Or do we? In the last analysis, the only real victim was Bill. No wait. We are all victims.
What is reliable to me? The rhythm of the vertical line after each just-witten word. It has the beat of life. They call all this computer stuff virtual but it is as real as me driving Bill up to town silently seeing that everything will be alright as long as I can forget I've ever known him. My then-wife was not reliable. She was one of those early ministers, those pioneers, the generation that would catch the wasp churches on their way down, projecting smiling wisdom in place of the scrimped faces of the men who suffered the end of their era. She told me Bill was a bright fellow over in the rehab place (where she is chaplain) who just wanted to play music and write songs, a perfect fit with laid-back me mouldering in the Bershires still in exile, my future murdered long ago. And so we wrote for some months and performed. I cannot remember a word. A title. A thing. Just Bill in the car. Or Bill unleashing a mad pool shot at Mundy's Silver City in Glendale. Or Bill in my kitchen the evening of the night he disappeared saying he was not getting what he needed from our relationship and me saying well I give what I can give you know. And that fading into the meal the kids and my ex and Bill and me. Yep. We fail without looking. No hands. She never told me he was a paranoid schizophrenic who had gone naked down the street from McLean's a year before, after trying to assault someone with a knife. It's that confidentiality right. What would I have done if I had known. Did she know? We do not lock people up just because they ... Or do we? In the last analysis, the only real victim was Bill. No wait. We are all victims.
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