| Early morning, January 12, 1997 My computer is broken this morning. Odd loss. I am thrown out of my routine, my pursuits as I wait the rest of the world waking this Sunday morning. I write longhand, a nearly forgotten pleasure. I worry about my computer growing ancient even as it rests strewn about beneath the table next to me. Life is cold blooded calculation sometimes - do I repair or do I replace? History and future rest in an uneasy truce here today. My kids are asleep. Today they both head back to school. Their road trips terrify me. There is a quirky calculation. I almost wish they stay away than risk life in their coming and going. No, I don’t almost wish it - I do wish it. But life doesn’t allow the trading places, the trading risks, of me moving about for them. Each heart beat is a grasping and letting go - grasp, let go, grasp, let go. It is a hard lesson. Thursday the kids and I went to the John Lennon art exhibit. His sketches on tour - several good drawings, worth the time. Yet there is necrophilia in the air, a trade on celebrity and death, there is a ringing unheard hovering over the credit card machine working quietly next to the stacks of T-shirts and calendars on sale. The pictures are titled and the card has an “explanation” - some PR person’s touching explanation - saccharine and icky. After we leave, we have coffee as we wait the theater time - we see *The English Patient* - a richly complex story blending love in its variety within the kaleidoscope of life during wartime. We come out stunned almost past conversation. A brilliant movie. Laura was to head out Friday (that is why we spent Thursday afternoon together) but she hasn’t packed, another gathering of friends beckons (it is Friday night) so she stays. Saturday is lanquid, I research online all morning The kids have coffee with their mom and later they return and we watch *Beautiful Women* - another movie about relationship; crazy family, crazy love - choice, the returning to what can’t be returned to. Pauline had called just before to see if I’d heard about Karen H. She tells me that she’d heard from J., who’d heard from B., who’d heard from… well, the word was that Karen killed herself Thursday. And I’m not surprised. I mean, I am that Pauline called with this and it isn’t something expected or that seemed merely a matter of time. There was no forewarning for me. Yet there is this arc in knowing Karen - there is an arc not fully seen that leads the eyes to rest here without questioning. Without surprise. Wonder, yes, wonder. And sadness, grief and introspection - what could have, would have deflected this trajectory. And nothing comes to mind. This morning I remember meeting Karen a few years ago - poetry of course - a reading in a used bookstore and then again a couple of weeks later. I see her here and there over two or three months - and (I must confess) - I think of asking her out - but I don’t - there is some hesitation - and then I’m out of town a week or two, spend another week or two catching up with work - I don’t remember what it was - holiday? - but when I resurface Karen is with Mitch and they are sweethearts straight out of a movie - tender and excited and tentative. It is a joy to watch them - tenderness, holding hands at times, the silent, unseen sighs. I wish to have what they have, I see them at Planet Earth theater events, performance art gigs at the ‘Bobe, places. But gradually less and less, they seem happy but settling in, sorting out life stuff - work, schedules, blending lives and routines together. I don’t think much about it. I imaging nights at home - TV, reading writing, talking - movies and eating out - twosome things rather than crowd things. It feels ok. And I see them less and less - rarely. And the smiles recede, they smile but not broadly, quietly now and only on que. Something is happening. I sense some cloud but can’t guess what - illness, work or money - something between them. I don’t know and can’t inquire. Time passes, slides away and then I see them a few months ago in the bookstore that the kids and I will have coffee in later this morning. Mitch and Karen - we talk, visit - but it is brief and surface - while they aren’t remote they are removed. There is only historic connection and I do not keep them, do not feel a grasping to try to reconnect. They do not push away but they do not approach or invite approach. A couple of days later, I see them there again - having coffee with another couple. They don’t see me and I go on about my own sipping coffee and perusing books. Then, at different times, they each walk past my table without appearing to notice me. Then again when they all leave - a movie perhaps - and they truly act like they don’t see me. And that’s odd, but ok. They have another life. There are people in it. I know the boundary between couples and everyone else - I know both sides of it and this is ok. Then yesterday Pauline calls and we talk. She’s tried to find out about the service but without luck. This morning’s paper lists the obit - survived by her companion, her parents, three sisters and a brother. No service planned. And I worry about no service. There is more tragedy building, a sand storm on the horizon shifts with the wind and billows this way. I woke this morning glad to awake. There is so much in life. There is each day, each week, month, season and year. And larger, unnamed cycles - seasons of life filled with storms but with springs too, all the cliches of spring. And I think this morning about eyes, the stories within eyes. We think we can read them but we see broad strokes. We see the arc and not the underlying impulse propelling this life through this story. I read Karen’s eyes and saw seasons; sometimes hurt and sadness, sometimes joy and humor. I saw her love Mitch and he her. They cared and struggled, of this I am certain. They were not foolish or flippant toward life. Still, somewhere in the facts of this story that I do not fully know, there was an impulse neither, in all their diligence, could deflect. Sometimes that uneasy truce between history and future is lost. And I grieve for both of them. |
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RD Savage
01/12/97 © 1997 |