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Home at last, arm in a sling. The ablation procedure went so well that the docs had a clear view of some other stuff: “so how about we put in a pacemaker… for long-term success?”

I’m all about long-term these days I said with way more calm than I actually felt. Not too long after that, my new sling and I emerged from the electro-physio lab and home we went walking with a steady step and enjoying the fine companionship of my brother-in-law Jerry Adler and my sister Beth Lebowitz. I might add that my heartbeat was and is steady today. When we got there, I hit the couch, held tight to my unexpected tears and watched while Jerry and Beth put together beef stew and vegetables for the days ahead while I recover.

My little house was alive with family, laughter and food.

Photo Credit

Why should not old men be mad?
William Butler Yeats

Why should not old men be mad?
Some have known a likely lad
That had a sound fly-fisher’s wrist
Turn to a drunken journalist;
A girl that knew all Dante once
Live to bear children to a dunce;
A Helen of social welfare dream,
Climb on a wagonette to scream.
Some think it a matter of course that chance
Should starve good men and bad advance,
That if their neighbours figured plain,
As though upon a lighted screen,
No single story would they find
Of an unbroken happy mind,
A finish worthy of the start.
Young men know nothing of this sort,
Observant old men know it well;
And when they know what old books tell
And that no better can be had,
Know why an old man should be mad.

WB Yeats said all that.

I came into my office this morning and sat down at my desk only to discover there was a dirty sock on the right corner of the desk “sleeping” on top of the unopened mail. In my old days this might not have struck me as unusual but these days I rarely find articles of clothing lying around the house and office where they should not be. I decided not to take a picture of it and realized that I am not yet socially media literate,  meaning that I would still like to write a thousand words that are worth a picture. I have been trying to write something for a few days now about what’s going on but it has not been easy going as I have been finding it difficult to connect my thoughts with my words; as is often the case the blank page finally wins.

I have been looking at this picture below and thinking about why I find it so appealing. I like the texture of the reeds. The action on the water awakens my sense of a storm coming in and my hope that the reeds will survive the worst of the storm and that they will be here when I come back again … whenever that may be.

There is no guarantee of my returning to this place that I may renew my acquaintance with these reeds. In truth it may never happen. Not because of some personally fatal occurrence but because the running event that would bring me back to this particular lake has been canceled for the foreseeable future. Unlike the reeds, the event itself eventually broke down as a storm of demands were made and something of value came to an end except as memory and stories to tell in the places where absent friends gather. There is something in the reflection that I find appealing almost as if discovering a secret harbor, refuge in a Kingdom of distance and dreams. The reflection itself is dislocating because it is so close to the surface of the water as if the sky and water had finally merged. I find it peaceful with the ruffled surface of the water under the cloud disappearing into the reeds I shot it in a quiet moment during a very active day and so when I look at it now , I remember the peace of that moment made up as it was of stolen time and the drifting memory of someone I loved who was no longer there.

I took the sock off the desk and tossed it into the laundry basket and so today began.

Photo Credits

Down the road from me there is well-lit open space that looks a lot like a football field in a ring of lights. It is in fact a park filled with softball fields that is lit up all summer long and often in the fall though I don’t know why since the games are long over having become the stuff of beer fueled stories amid much laughter.

The lights are very bright and can be seen from from a great distance away. In the fall the fog rolls in from the ocean. The light disperses in the fog leaving an arch in the night air. On these nights, I sometimes imagine that I can hear the sounds of shouts and cheering riding the night wind and I imagine folks who are young and for whom the future is filled with endless summers of softball and water skiing and star filled nights at the beach.

I remember that it was once like that for me. On these nights I can remember my friend Phil and I leaving a softball game at 9 PM in a Canadian city that became synonymous with the draft resistance during the Vietnam War. We were carrying our baseball gloves and chatting about our plans. I remember that the air was velvet soft and redolent with summer flowers. It was pretty clear to both of us that we were going to live forever. It didn’t work out that way. Phil died four years ago and these days I spend a great deal of time doing what I can do to stoke the fires to keep the darkness at bay. Every photograph I take is part of the process as is the writing which is no longer easy if it ever was. Dictating is complicated because the words are sometimes garbled. I am about to teach myself how to type properly because when I am dictating, my fingers keep moving as though I was typing. It is as if they are my Marines at the point of attack bringing the words to the blank page. Sometimes I see the arc of light in the distance as an invitation to something better … a promised land like in “Somewhere over the rainbow bluebirds fly”. I have always thought that song was not for children but rather a junkies’ lament but I know deep down that I must keep writing. I must if only because it’s what I can do everyday to stoke the fire and take another step.

I am swimming upstream in a river of fog, I am wrecked on shoals carved by indifferent time. The meds are having a fiesta with my sanity and my clarity. Possibly too, my vocabulary. Hopefully the re-write is useful and on target. The other draft read as if it had been written by a crew of monkeys in search of Hamlet in the original English.

Photo Credit

Photo is © Michael Lebowitz – All Rights Reserved

First Posted At – Tarmac Meditations – Voices from The Middle of the Pack