Elmo and Anderson

A dispatch from bewilderness

In my first life, I parked one word next to the other and they stayed where I put them. This was called freelance writing and meant morphing so Elle would sound like Elle, Elmo would sound like Elmo, and Rolling Stone would sound — well, stoned.

I knew where to start, how to end and where to go in between. It wasn’t all the news. Just the hits, the misses, the hissy-fits, the highs, the lows, the pits. The hip little shake, the little hip shake, plus what raises hemlines, what raises heart rates, what raises hell.

Then a doctor arrived. She said something about not wanting to pressure me. That almost seemed funny. She added something like I could decide what I wanted to know, or how much I wanted to know, or when I wanted to know it. That seemed almost funny, too.

In between the freelance life, and the doctor arriving, I got hit by a truck. Sometimes I saw strange things. This tended to coincide with someone adding something to my IV.

One such time, I opened my eyes and saw Anderson Cooper standing at the foot of my bed. “Good evening,” he said. “ I’m Anderson Cooper.” If he hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t have known.

I have “more or less aphasia” combined with “more or less amnesia” at any given time. There is no conversation and no one comes over to say we’re sorry your brain broke, so here’s a casserole. I didn’t come with a warranty. Neither did my former mind. What didn’t blow up seems to stumble, tumble, and, at times, break down. That is called getting old.