iceberg lettuce and salty, limp vegetables in mouth and memory, slowly I came to realize this. She wasn’t about to come back from the grave, reemerge from history’s undiscovered country, float to the top of the lake, swim to shore and shamble, slaking away the whole time, towards wherever it was I’d gone on with my life. None of it had been a dream as, coming to, I’d first believed. Only another of society’s makeshift facsimiles of dream, rags and tatters of movies, media, popular literature, this new mythology, that my homeless soul had taken for its own and worn into the street. Precious little protection. And how much shame could a man bear?
At the time I’m writing of, though, time of the storm and Alouette’s second baby rather than that of hospital walkways like cloisters and young men of power with piggish red eyes (I’ve just read back through the past dozen or so pages to see where we’ve got to in all this), Deborah and I remained in sight of one another though borne steadily apart, Don and Jeanette were content on their island, David soon would return from scouting out copses and caves. New lives for us all rattled doors in frames. And I, freshly become a museum diorama, New Age man in his natural habitat, hunched not over campfires but before computers, sat inert in a circle of light at 3 a.m.
I had decided again, after an evening with Deborah, to get some work done. Write the Fearing review at least, since it was due or well past. Maybe start something else, who knows. Even pursue the notion for a novel I’d had a few weeks back in which the narrator would present himself to each of the other characters as a wholly different person. See which way, how far and how fast, that notion ran when chased full throttle. As always, the very idea of such work necessitated my removing to the slave quarters and sitting there staring out through windows so darkened with dust and grime that you could safely watch eclipses through them. Consisted, eventually, of turning on the computer. Its small dynamo whirred and began a rapidly accelerating dialog with itself as Bat minnowed through the half-open doorway to join me, lugging in his wake a contingent of winged insects. With age he’d become a semi-mobile solar battery. Besides food, only sunlight drew him, his days a progression from food bowl to sunshine spot and back. Sunlight was far and away best, but if that proved unavailable, if he had to, he’d make do with artificial sources. One favorite spot was at the back of my desk about three inches below the desk lamp. Hoisting him up there, most of the insects he’d brought in coming along, I keyed in Microsoft Word and began reading my notes for the novel. Halfway down the second page, the ground gave way.
I have no idea when you might find this—tonight, tomorrow, next week. I don’t even know, really, how to begin it. Dad? Lew? I’ve never known what to call you. Are we friends? peers? father and son? A bit of all those, I suppose. And a bit of none.
I remember something you told me Dylan Thomas said, That he’d lived with it a long time and knew it horribly well and couldn’t explain it—whatever it was that drove him, beached him, bedeviled him. Much as I’d like to lay claim to something of that nature, my own situation, I’m afraid, is far less dramatic, far simpler: this simple, desperate need to be alone that comes up within and overtakes me. Whatever the reason, I seem to be unable to remain myself when around others for too long a time. I lose focus, take on those others’ properties and character, their presence, their values and ambitions, while my own, fought for so hard—not only the exercise of them, but the very recognition of them—begin to fade away.
I do love you, Lew. Dad. And these four years (four years!) have been amazing. I never thought I’d ever know anything like this. And I guess I must understand what families are about, now, for the first (I won’t say the last)
At the time I’m writing of, though, time of the storm and Alouette’s second baby rather than that of hospital walkways like cloisters and young men of power with piggish red eyes (I’ve just read back through the past dozen or so pages to see where we’ve got to in all this), Deborah and I remained in sight of one another though borne steadily apart, Don and Jeanette were content on their island, David soon would return from scouting out copses and caves. New lives for us all rattled doors in frames. And I, freshly become a museum diorama, New Age man in his natural habitat, hunched not over campfires but before computers, sat inert in a circle of light at 3 a.m.
I had decided again, after an evening with Deborah, to get some work done. Write the Fearing review at least, since it was due or well past. Maybe start something else, who knows. Even pursue the notion for a novel I’d had a few weeks back in which the narrator would present himself to each of the other characters as a wholly different person. See which way, how far and how fast, that notion ran when chased full throttle. As always, the very idea of such work necessitated my removing to the slave quarters and sitting there staring out through windows so darkened with dust and grime that you could safely watch eclipses through them. Consisted, eventually, of turning on the computer. Its small dynamo whirred and began a rapidly accelerating dialog with itself as Bat minnowed through the half-open doorway to join me, lugging in his wake a contingent of winged insects. With age he’d become a semi-mobile solar battery. Besides food, only sunlight drew him, his days a progression from food bowl to sunshine spot and back. Sunlight was far and away best, but if that proved unavailable, if he had to, he’d make do with artificial sources. One favorite spot was at the back of my desk about three inches below the desk lamp. Hoisting him up there, most of the insects he’d brought in coming along, I keyed in Microsoft Word and began reading my notes for the novel. Halfway down the second page, the ground gave way.
I have no idea when you might find this—tonight, tomorrow, next week. I don’t even know, really, how to begin it. Dad? Lew? I’ve never known what to call you. Are we friends? peers? father and son? A bit of all those, I suppose. And a bit of none.
I remember something you told me Dylan Thomas said, That he’d lived with it a long time and knew it horribly well and couldn’t explain it—whatever it was that drove him, beached him, bedeviled him. Much as I’d like to lay claim to something of that nature, my own situation, I’m afraid, is far less dramatic, far simpler: this simple, desperate need to be alone that comes up within and overtakes me. Whatever the reason, I seem to be unable to remain myself when around others for too long a time. I lose focus, take on those others’ properties and character, their presence, their values and ambitions, while my own, fought for so hard—not only the exercise of them, but the very recognition of them—begin to fade away.
I do love you, Lew. Dad. And these four years (four years!) have been amazing. I never thought I’d ever know anything like this. And I guess I must understand what families are about, now, for the first (I won’t say the last)
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