multiplied itself to feed a crowd of five thousand.
I look toward the window I have come to think of as my bird window. No sign of activity there. I look at the other three windows and see that dusk is already beginning to sink into the trees in the backyard, filling in the spaces between them. A small table stands beside the recliner at my bird window, the Book of North American Birds sitting within easy reach. In addition to this table and the round one where I take my meals, there are two others in my apartment: the nightstand beside my bed and an end table beside the sofa where I now sit. I see several issues of Time magazine on this table. They are random back issues, but this is of no concern to me. I have come to view time as a circle that repeats itself. One can skip a lap of the circle without missing anything of importance. Or as waves of the ocean. One more or fewer makes no difference in the rolling expanse of the water. Today’s news is not to be prized over last week’s or last year’s. It has all happened before and will happen again.
I reach forward and pick up the magazine on top. “DIED: JULIUS DIXON, 90, rock-’n’-roll songwriter; in New York City.” When no cause of death is given, as in the case of Julius Dixon, I assume that the person’s time on earth exceeded man’s normal life span and he expired, simply put, of old age. Or “of natural causes,” as is often said.
I try to imagine what a ninety-year-old former rock-’n’-roll songwriter would be like. While spooning Metamucil over his All-Bran every morning, would he hum snatches of his biggest hits from the 1950s? Would he tap out the rhythms with the end of his cane? Time magazine reports that Julius Dixon’s first hit was “Dim, Dim the Lights (I Want Some Atmosphere).” Did he think of those words as he lay dying? Did he think the atmosphere was appropriate for a death scene? His most popular song was “Lollipop,” performed by a group called the Chordettes. Time describes it as a “buoyant” song. I wonder what Julius Dixon thought of his life’s work as he drew his last breath. I wonder if the memory of his song “Lollipop” played through his mind and gave him a feeling of buoyancy as he stepped from the shores of life into the waters of death.
When one is eighty years old, as I am, the handling of time is her greatest challenge. There is no place to rest comfortably. The present is an empty waiting room. The past is a narrow corridor, along which doors open into examining rooms too brightly lit, full of frightening instruments to inflict pain. The future is a black closet at the end of the corridor. No one knows what is inside this dark cubicle. The possibility of nothingness is a terror. If present, past, and future seem out of order in this analogy, it is no wonder. There is no tidy sequence of time when one is eighty and waiting to die.
One keeps wandering into the corridor without meaning to, then stumbling back to the waiting room, then later somehow finding herself stretched out in one of the examining rooms, stopping her ears with her hands to block out the echoes of time, starting up and groping for the door to get back to the waiting room, where there are windows, stacks of old magazines, and a television to fill the deadly silence. And always, always as one flees back to the present, she carries with her the knowledge that at the end of the long corridor is the black closet. It is unlocked, and the hinges of its door are oiled. They swing easily.
But it is November, I remind myself now, and a quarter of a century has passed since the night in Eliot’s study. I look at the telephone on the small table beside my bed. I have used it one time since my arrival to call the automated bank service, to verify that my money was transferred successfully from the bank in Kentucky to the one here in Greenville, Mississippi. I look at the wall beside the doorway into Rachel’s kitchen, and I see the electric clock
I look toward the window I have come to think of as my bird window. No sign of activity there. I look at the other three windows and see that dusk is already beginning to sink into the trees in the backyard, filling in the spaces between them. A small table stands beside the recliner at my bird window, the Book of North American Birds sitting within easy reach. In addition to this table and the round one where I take my meals, there are two others in my apartment: the nightstand beside my bed and an end table beside the sofa where I now sit. I see several issues of Time magazine on this table. They are random back issues, but this is of no concern to me. I have come to view time as a circle that repeats itself. One can skip a lap of the circle without missing anything of importance. Or as waves of the ocean. One more or fewer makes no difference in the rolling expanse of the water. Today’s news is not to be prized over last week’s or last year’s. It has all happened before and will happen again.
I reach forward and pick up the magazine on top. “DIED: JULIUS DIXON, 90, rock-’n’-roll songwriter; in New York City.” When no cause of death is given, as in the case of Julius Dixon, I assume that the person’s time on earth exceeded man’s normal life span and he expired, simply put, of old age. Or “of natural causes,” as is often said.
I try to imagine what a ninety-year-old former rock-’n’-roll songwriter would be like. While spooning Metamucil over his All-Bran every morning, would he hum snatches of his biggest hits from the 1950s? Would he tap out the rhythms with the end of his cane? Time magazine reports that Julius Dixon’s first hit was “Dim, Dim the Lights (I Want Some Atmosphere).” Did he think of those words as he lay dying? Did he think the atmosphere was appropriate for a death scene? His most popular song was “Lollipop,” performed by a group called the Chordettes. Time describes it as a “buoyant” song. I wonder what Julius Dixon thought of his life’s work as he drew his last breath. I wonder if the memory of his song “Lollipop” played through his mind and gave him a feeling of buoyancy as he stepped from the shores of life into the waters of death.
When one is eighty years old, as I am, the handling of time is her greatest challenge. There is no place to rest comfortably. The present is an empty waiting room. The past is a narrow corridor, along which doors open into examining rooms too brightly lit, full of frightening instruments to inflict pain. The future is a black closet at the end of the corridor. No one knows what is inside this dark cubicle. The possibility of nothingness is a terror. If present, past, and future seem out of order in this analogy, it is no wonder. There is no tidy sequence of time when one is eighty and waiting to die.
One keeps wandering into the corridor without meaning to, then stumbling back to the waiting room, then later somehow finding herself stretched out in one of the examining rooms, stopping her ears with her hands to block out the echoes of time, starting up and groping for the door to get back to the waiting room, where there are windows, stacks of old magazines, and a television to fill the deadly silence. And always, always as one flees back to the present, she carries with her the knowledge that at the end of the long corridor is the black closet. It is unlocked, and the hinges of its door are oiled. They swing easily.
But it is November, I remind myself now, and a quarter of a century has passed since the night in Eliot’s study. I look at the telephone on the small table beside my bed. I have used it one time since my arrival to call the automated bank service, to verify that my money was transferred successfully from the bank in Kentucky to the one here in Greenville, Mississippi. I look at the wall beside the doorway into Rachel’s kitchen, and I see the electric clock
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