I found myself –

I found –

I’m making my way along this bridge. Huge bridge. Gold, Bridge of Gold, something. I knew its name when I started out, but it’s long and it’s been a while and I’m getting old. Cold. Tired, I meant to say tired.

So I’m moving along this bridge, enjoying the view. The chaos below, the smell of brain. Brine. Wind tousling the hair, as they say. Weird hum, a humming from the cables.

No idea what I’m doing here.

I’m hoping if I keep walking it’ll come to me. It always does, if memory serves. A big If. In the meantime, I’ll just keep walking. Stay in the moment. Until that thing comes.

I hope it comes soon. Those brown hills ahead are getting closer. Looming. They’re starting to loom. Caution: The Moving Walkway is Ending. Where did I see that? No mind. Never. I could just keep going until I remember. This is a big country, and there’s a lot of beautiful land north of here. I assume there is. I have now . . . no . . . idea, really. But it never hurts to be positive.

The land ahead looks kind of ugly, to be honest. Barren, dry. The hills uneven, in need of editing. Unpeopled. The land leading up to it has been lovely, or at least the ocean, the whole ocean view thing. That raging below, it does command the attention. White striations, bubbles with their short, simple lives.

Look at me, waning poetic.

I think the tide is moving out, doing its title thing, all that energy flowing out that used to flow in. If I had something to throw, something that could float, like a flower or a piece of wood? I could tell you which way the wind’s blowing.

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First in a Series

(Adventure #1)

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The Hittites (/ˈhɪtaɪts/) were an Anatolian people who played an important role in establishing kingdoms in Kussara (before 1750 BC), the Kanesh or Nesha region (c. 1750–1650 BC), and yadda yadda yadda.

The Hittites, like most of us, grew strong, struggled, and got absorbed into the next thing. With or without violence.

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My heart going “Boom-boom-boom”
“Son,” he said
“Grab your things, I’ve come to take you home”

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Forgotten but Not Gone

(Adventure #1)

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A retired or retiring professor of one liberal art or another suffers from memory loss, confusion, and other effects from years of sleep meds, anti-depressants, anti-anxiety pills, and most recently early onset dementia. Slowly, through trial and growing confusion, he manages to set his affairs in order. Writes a will. Locks his house and begins a cross-country drive to the Golden Gate Bridge to do you know what. Only, on the way, he keeps forgetting where he’s going. Why he’s even on the road. He loses his vehicle early, loses his wallet with his ATM number in it. He’s at the mercy of strangers and their kindness. Wakes up in unfamiliar houses, apartments, cars. Has a series of adventures. All of which he’ll forget.

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Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

His winter wasn’t so great

Mary had a little lamb

Her partner met his fate

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My heart going “Boom-boom-boom”
“Hey,” I said
“You can keep my things, they’ve come to take me home”

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To come. Or not.

(Adventure #1)

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My wife, my ex-wife. Kept telling me. Sorry, telling me she wasn’t my wife. Or ex. She could have been my wife. She could have been Doris Day, for all I know. This sentence is brought to you by the letter D.

She did look familiar in an unfamiliar kind of way. My real life – sorry, wife, not this one – would lie on top of me. I’d feel her weight pressing down. Keep you from flying off, she’d say.

Whoever this lady was, wife, ex-wife or no, didn’t like my plan. Didn’t approve of it. Whatever it was. It being plain. Plan. So you, meaning me, need to stick to your gums. That’s one of the lessons I’d learned. Hard, the learned hard lesson. To stay in your own skin. Harder than it sounds. You think you’re in your own skin? Boom! Seventeen years go by, you’re in someone else’s. Been there all along.

You you you must hope, hopefully, find a . . . something central, something . . . something to guide you, be your guide, gazing, your star guiding.

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And on his way to die one day,

Die one day, die one day?

On his way to die one day?

On his way he lives. (Boom boom.)

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The adventure continues.

(There is only one.)

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A faint, cat-like cry emerges from the other room, where Peter Gabriel on the boom box sings of packing his things and going home. A woman in cabled sweater and boxers walks barefoot past the couch where the man’s lying, glances down, assumes he’s asleep. Yawns, digs her fingers into her dreadlocks, scratches. Kept awake listening to the man talk, she feels the morning fatigue, though she’d slept longer than she has in weeks, a span in which she’d had little adult company.

She jostles the baby playfully and settles into a weathered La-Z-Boy. On the side table, a textbook on ancient Near East civilizations belonging to her partner, dead now for two months, lies beside A Golden Treasury of Nursery Rhymes. The baby’s head pivots with his mother’s turn, his eyes locate the stranger. She lifts her sweater, exposing a nipple.She feels for the bony old white man, with his scars, cataracts, and sunburned scalp. She’d taken him in the night before, appalled at his story about going to San Francisco. He’d complained about his shoulder, asked three times what her name was. Thinks she’s his wife. Or mother. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. She’d related the death of her partner, several times, the man continually asking, continually forgetting. With each iteration she added a detail or two. Eventually, as if she’d lucked onto the right combination, the tears came out. A weight she couldn’t bear began its slow descent into the world.

The window rattles slightly from the passing train. She finishes with the baby, lifts him to her shoulder. His eyes are blue, alert. Alive. Fixed on the man, seeing what his mother has yet to see. She carries her baby to the window, draws the curtain, and cracks the blinds with her free hand, letting in some light.