THE WALK
It is December 1930.
My father is walking across West 14th Street, and it is 3:00 AM.
That is all I know and even that is a fiction. I'm not there. I will
be there some night far in the future, walking not in my father's
shoes but in the shoes I made for myself. But in December 1930 I am
not even a thought or a good hard-on.
It will take me a long time to come to that walk of shame on a night
that could freeze alcohol.
Some day, Thomas Pynchon will describe 14th Street in winter as having
the widest, tallest wind on earth.
Unlike my father, unlike his son, Pynchon told the truth. The
difference between a novelist and a liar is the novelist can write
down the fiction instead of having to live it.
My father who is not yet my father wants to kill something, someone.
Merely enraged, he has not been drinking. One cannot deny or disprize
the existence of the God who prevented a sober monster from being a
killer drunk.
The man who will be my father is walking toward me, three years from
his second marriage and almost 14 years from my birth. No, he is not
coming to kill me. He does not have Saturn's power and even if he
did, there is time enough for that. He walks right through me on his
way toward a future I cannot see. I am a ghost on the pavement, the
grieving, patient shadow in my mother's womb.
KW/8-5-06
--
--------------------
Ken Wolman rainermaria.typepad.com
We're neither pure, nor wise, nor good
We'll do the best we know.
We'll build our house and chop our wood
And make our garden grow...
Bernstein/Wilbur, "Candide"
|