Yesterday I began writing my next book. Back in the literary saddle. No wonder I had been avoiding the start. Of course, I am writing about the past, specifically the years after my injury. I know there’s a story there. But as soon as I began putting myself in my body, in the time, a deep unease took over. Uneasy about what? Everything. Because in retrospect, something in me doesn’t quite know how I made it through those years. When the answer is that I did what everyone does, blinkered myself and charged ahead. No sense in distracting oneself with perils to the right or the left. Just set course for straight and go for it.

And still, it’s like replaying a near car crash. Yes, you didn’t hit anything. But who knows what happened on the roadway behind you. Good thing you weren’t looking in the rearview mirror. Because the rearview wasn’t pretty. Something like that. Enough to make me feel pervasively anxious. For the last 24 hours or so, give or take a day.

We didn’t go to the San Francisco Symphony last night. Although the temptation was overwhelming. But the temptation represented a highbrow version of the sirens luring Ulysses to the rocks. Or so it seemed last night. No one really knows, of course. And anyway, we missed Messrs. Prokofiev and Shostakovich, not to mention Tilson Thomas. And I felt sad. 

Instead, for what might be said to pass for recreation, we went to a funeral. Today.

An Episcopalian minister had died. He had worked in one of the suburban churches in southern San Mateo County and close to where Jane was posted for years. Actually, I don’t do it justice. Portola Valley is a hilly, redwood enclave sort of wedged between Stanford’s campus and the coast range. Several Silicon Valley billionaires live there. But despite the unfortunate sociology, it is a magnificent place. Jane drove, of course. And in my current mood, all I could think was loss. I used to drive. I don’t drive anymore. An that, I hadn’t been down the Peninsula foothill motorway, Interstate 280, in something like a year. And there they were, the reservoirs built into the rift valley of the San Andreas Fault, water storage for San Francisco. And the hills along the seismic line. And then off the freeway and into the lush redwood pseudo-country, and the church. 

The rector who had died didn’t want a eulogy. The presiding priest complied, which left people like me ever slightly mystified. Who was the deceased? So instead of praise and remembrance, there was a lot of Episcopalian ritual. The latter I find mystifying. But this is a realm the Jane interprets symbolically, and it feels her and it fuels our relationship. So I respect what I don’t understand, and can’t really relate to.

Anyway, the whole thing was only about an hour. Then we went outside and, in the shade of the magnificent redwoods, the deceased’s ashes were poured beneath a memorial tile. I liked that part. Dust to dust. This is the moment of the death ritual that I understand and can relate to. There is no talk of another life. At that instant there was just the mineral remains of this particular man, joining the mineral world of Portola Valley. And so it goes for all of us. And why not take a moment to acknowledge this in ritual?

Which doesn’t do much for my mood, if that is the thing to call it. Because what I really take away from the writing experience is a constant, perhaps excessive, awareness of the fragility of every moment. I woke up this morning painfully aware of how little I can do these days. And, yes, this could also be recast as how much I could do with a gross neurological undersupply. But my thoughts did not turn in that direction.

There is the possibility that I am simply in touch with reality. The whole thing is an existential house of cards. American democracy feels that way at the moment. And I’m not sure what keeps my metabolic engine turning at all. But something does. And while that something may be utterly elusive, at least it’s good to see the miracle of it, the fact that the plastic bag of gray powder was ever something more…well that is definitely a cosmic conjuring trick, pulled off by forces way beyond our ken. So let’s clap, and sing and generally declaim. It’s pretty cool. And as for the fact that it’s not forever, I’ve got one message for myself. Get over it.