Catch Me

My daily running ritual came to an abrupt end last week when I found myself hurtling through the air, wondering whether I should give in to physics or fight my way to some kind of survival.  It was one of those moments where time literally hiccups and allows your brain to review various scenarios.  In the end, it wasn't quite the Humpty Dumpty thing, but enough to shake up my runner's denial of clinical age... with blood, a knee-dislocation and general banging.  Like a piece of bruised fruit I limped home, realized I needed some x-rays and reluctantly checked into the ER for an inordinate time.

Of course, in a medical institution, one must be patient and polite-- grateful for a simple chair and an icepack, uncomplaining that the overnight queue for an x-ray seemed absurd given staff appeared to vastly outnumber us-the-sick-and-wounded.  Plenty of time to mull over the well-documented shortage of supplies and simple drugs-- the astounding poor quality of the small accessories they provide, while thanking Jesus I was able to think and move my fingers.  

As though life had not slowed enough, it's now snail-ish.  I am well aware the running thing was like some kind of illusion of speed-- an antidote to pandemic reality, not to mention a kind of meditative salve.  We are profoundly changed, many of us... yes, the covid years aged the ageless rockers, deprived us of our lifelong passions... dethroned our heroes, even took away our sense of smell, as though fading vision isn't quite insulting enough.

But there are people-- some of them friends-- who buried themselves in the pandemic-- crawled into its salty covers and hid.  They dressed in its camouflage, the way narcissists and drama queens slip unnoticed into parades and march and sing without rehearsal in the uniform of histrionics. People who are dangerously gifted, prone to isolation-- they wrapped themselves in bedsheets of nostalgia and their past, binged and fooled themselves on Facebook.  

And now what? Like Rip Van Winkles they sit at their windows, their long beards the only hint of existence-gap.  Procrastination, not cancel-culture; our physical age has for now become the tortoise that beat the hare of creativity and production.  We arrived-- disheveled, unshowered and like bewildered dogs without scent--  at some unmarked finish line.

We have grieved, we have lost-- directly or indirectly-- Alan, Buzzy, Ian, Howie Pyro, Andy Storey... Naomi Judd whose three weeks in the same nightclothes didn't faze us at all.  We were right there with her, a whole race of unwashed people wrapped in our own stench, baptized into the comfortably numb by the new religion of covid. 

Not to mention the climate of unsettled mistrust-- the fear and skepticism we have acquired from following bad instructions.  No wonder crime is up-- there are few outlets for public screaming... the protests have for the most part died down... across the ocean, the horror of war has far eclipsed covid.  We feel helpless and guilty-- lucky and cursed at the same time.  We wait for directions... and no one seems to agree.  

A couple of generations ago, I wrote a novel-- a post-911 narration in the voice of a teenage girl.  Last week I was sending it to a friend and I noticed at the opening of a chapter... 'so it just happens that the first years of the 21st century are turning out to be the Age of Personal Mediocrity-- no punks, no graffiti, no more Nirvana, no elephant-shit-smeared Christ-images at the Brooklyn Museum, no presidential blow-jobs.  Like those terrorists have taken the edge off us, scared us into a round corner.' 

It felt like a refrain.  How profoundly changed we were by the 2001 political climate.  We happily engaged in wars that made no sense and gave up our personal privacy in exchange for the sense of protection.  But where are we now?  As if the endless rippling of this virus wasn't enough, we have shooters and-- Curious George disciples, we-- monkey-pox.  We line up to have sticks stuck in our noses and receive the gifts of Big Pharma in our arm-- again and again. We want to be safe, and are anything but, we who have honed only our procrastination skills and are about as sharp as an old butter-knife. Of course a few of us leaked ink from hearts, gushed lyrics on the telephone, but for the most part we remained as we were, which in the language of physics translates as traveling backward. 

As I tripped and spilled and waited for the final verdict, I thought how close the words falling and failing--  undoubtedly lifelong neighbors on the dictionary page and to the average clouded senior eye virtually indistinguishable.  I will heal, I suppose-- a little worse for wear, but our culture-- my context-- my heroes... too many have stopped answering phones and hearing doorbells.  On the streets people are smoking themselves into a kind of oblivion.  This summer will have no landmark title... I will name it 'another'.  

There are days when I almost believe we must go back to the past to go forward-- to find our old vinyl and remember how we watched these oracles spin on repeat until we were changed.  And then there are the nights when I find the prayer of poetry and swear I will walk-- maybe even run into some future.  Amen.