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“You’re bein’ awful quiet over there.” Startled, a dozen possible replies zipped through my answer index, all of them true, but some of them real conversation-enders. In the end I gave a shy chuckle, nodded toward my dinner, and said, “Oh . . . I’m okay.” Then I wrote in my journal: “Perils of solitude #1: People talk to you. I’d rather listen.”
A strange and ironic part of my physical-mental interface was that although I had made my living playing drums for 20 years, with hands and feet doing this and that and the other thing, more-or-less independently of one another, all my life I had trouble with physical coordination — sports, for example, at which I had always been very poor.
My current struggles weren’t about creating or producing, or planning adventures, only about surviving. When I reflected on that old life I tended to think of the protagonist as “that guy,” for I shared only his memories. And some of those memories I was now trying to hide from, escape from, ride away from.
590 miles of healing today, maybe. “Isn’t it pretty to think so.” That closing line from Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises had acquired a fresh resonance for me lately, in the conscious irony of entertaining a wish without believing in its possibility.
Through those days and nights I wasn’t always feeling “better,” as the process of grieving oscillated, even through each day, from a little better to a little worse, from total existential despair to those occasional rays of hope and interest, which was definitely a spark of healing.
Lately my life has consisted of trying things I used to like, and seeing if they’re still any good.
A quote was posted on the wall, attributed to someone named Reggie Leach: “Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion; you must set yourself on fire.” Nice one, Reggie, whoever you are. (A hockey player back in the ’70s, apparently.)
And me, I’ve got to start all over. Not only build a new life, but construct a new person. I call my old self “that other guy,” for I share nothing but his memories, and everything he ever liked I’ve had to discover all over again, one by one,
coming back, and again on Saturday,
