At the corner of Honey and Vine
...a dispatch from bewilderness
There was a philosopher named Nothing Doing. That is not true. I forget his name. He recommended doing nothing. Sometimes I take his advice. But mostly I don’t. Giving up is not in my DNA. However, there is a little Spanish, a little Hungarian, a little Russian, plus strokes, cancer and heart disease.
Sometimes people ask me questions. Here are the answers. I don’t know. I don’t remember. I have a brain injury. Ah, now, someone else is asking if I’ve lost my mind. And the answer is yes. And one year later, someone asks if I have still lost my mind, and the answer is yes. And the year after that. And the year after that.
International Asteroid Day, which occurs each year on June 30, is meant to teach humans about the hazards of planet-destroying rocks. The asteroid that ended the dinosaurs struck like a pebble in a pond, landing with such force that it essentially liquefied the surface of the Earth. Within seconds, it tore a hole more than 100 miles wide and spewed rock as high as Mount Everest. Sounds a bit like brain damage.
I used to be a writer. Then I was hit by a drunk with a truck. Some things happen rarely, say, once in a few million years. Case in point: the vast midsection of North America is ancient, crystalline bedrock—set in stone for a billion years. Not quite along those lines, there was a week a few years back that was far from average, too.
Faults “accumulate stress” over time. Scientists are studying “fault structure” and damage future quakes could do. People can fracture and rupture, too, and rarely deal well with faults. Someone asks how I am.
I say, “Life is a bowl of cherries. Clothes take themselves out of the washer, march themselves into the dryer, fold themselves. Dishes march to the dishwasher and put themselves in just the right place in just the right way. Plants live forever. So do trees, pets, people, and all living things you like.
People have the food they need, the money they need, plus the faith, love, and strength they need. Books write themselves and find their own agent. Nothing stalls, busts, bursts, cracks, fails or falls apart. Hearts don’t get broken. Neither do heads.”
In that week, there was a big earthquake which cracked the foundation of my home, and cracked quite a few ceilings and walls, and threw bricks out of whack and down into the chimney, and knocked lots of stuff off shelves.
But the most remarkable thing? On the day of the quake, my daughter sent me a text. I had wondered what it would take to hear from her, and I guess one answer would be “the worst earthquake to hit the East Coast in a century.”
Scientists say the East is riddled with old faults, the legacy of the pushing and pulling that created the Appalachian Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean a few hundred million years ago. Those faults sit in the middle of the North American tectonic plate—and so do mine.
Judith,
Several years ago, my mother had a massive stroke. It knocked out her understanding of geography and distance, it made her forget that her parents were dead, but her bedrock personality: creative, anti-authority, domineering, convinced that she was the most fascinating person in the room, remained. Although I am only meeting you now, through your writing, I feel that the basic you must have been a strikingly original, clean, beautiful writer, because here it is, every time.
J,
Your prose is a triumph of brevity and wit. The two paragraphs describing our imperfect world by stating the exact opposite are stunning; you created really pointed satire without saying one negative word but by stating gracefully the existence of an ideal world that clearly does not exist.
Brilliant.