September 2006 Archives

Marlou groaned as I rolled over and this morning and hit the "on" button for Morning Edition. She muttered something about back to the usual and rose from bed while I listened to the latest political news which, although promising, was too early to be really promising and, in any case, not truly satisfying. Simply because I was back. Back in suburbia. Back on the brink of the next thing. When I was already missing the last thing. Inverness.

We had no milk in the house, so I minimally dressed, boarded my wheelchair and headed outside. After all, who can face the day without adequate levels of caffeine, which requires, in the complex chemistry of domestic life, milk. So, I was, for the first time in two vacation weeks, back in the suburban saddle, bouncing over the pavements heading for the local supermarket. My street of apartments is normally thronged with comings and goings, but not this morning. I could have fired a cannon down Roble Avenue and hit another guy firing a cannon down Roble Avenue, both of us staring at the other in disbelief. Mixed with a certain amount of admiration for having the experimental wisdom to fire a cannon anywhere at this hour, while secretly fearing that his cannon ball might hit my cannon ball, the two more or less fusing in midair in a manner unpleasantly reminiscent of the first atom bombs, their uranium halves being blasted at each other until they achieved an explosive mass. Which no one likes to think about, particularly without having had their morning coffee, which, you will recall, requires milk.

Milk requires either a cow or a store. At Inverness, there were plenty of the former. Could one obtain their milk? Hard to say. After all, a store is either open or shut. How does one know if a cow is open or shut? Its eyes? Do the beseeching eyes of a cow indicate a desire to share milk or a wish for company? How would one provide company for a cow, except by parking a car and asking one's wife to traipse across a boggy field to, acting as the husband's emissary, plant an affectionate kiss on the bovine cheek? Why not do it oneself? Because oneself is in an advanced neurological state that pretty much precludes cow kissing. It doesn't do much for walking, either, and I did an awful lot of that sort of thing in Inverness. Because the truth was that Inverness was a major physical challenge. Parking my massive wheelchair-lift-equipped van was not exactly easy. Getting the electric wheelchair down a slope and over a succession of tree roots proved impossible. So, the daily routine involved lowering the quadriplegic out of the van, throwing a tarp over the wheelchair, then crutching the way down the trail to the succession of railroad ties that constituted the steps to the front door. Beyond which there were more steps and, at the end of the day, or the beginning, an entire additional staircase leading to the bedrooms, on the semi-subterranean level below. The living room-dining-room-kitchen-everything-else, with its redwood decks at either end, forced me to cover a bit of ground during the day. I haven't walked so much in years. Which, anyone worth his quadriplegic salt will tell you, is a very good thing. Got a crutch? Use it or lose it, to quote all the great medical authorities.

This level of physical hardship meant that I was virtually useless about the vacation house. Marlou did all the schlepping, all of the cooking, all the everything. Once I got myself seated, often with her help, the modern furniture being perilously low, I always needed something else. I such as a book, which I had no way of carrying, my one usable hand at being occupied with the crutch. Was this driving her nuts? Or just driving me nuts? Actually, the mutual dependency never seemed to rise above the level of background annoyance. In the foreground was the experience itself, Tomales Bay hanging beyond the trees, the brown, blank hills beyond, the fog either advancing or retreating, time passing. No television. Lots of books and time. The occasional CD. A discussion of going outside on the deck or staying inside by the picture windows. What to do? The sun moved throughout the day. It has a way of doing that, but one is generally unaware. The phone rang every few days. Not the cell phone, which doesn't work in Inverness, but the vacation number of the house, supplied by the realtor, and carelessly shared with a couple of friends and family.

The afternoon was distinct from the morning in that the sun rose on one deck and set on the other. Also, there was tea in the afternoon. Coffee in the morning. Milk for both. Tea for two. Or, briefly, five, for we did have one set of overnight guests. They included a three-year-old who romped about the place just enough to remind us that romping is good, and the end of romping is also good. Some contrast, a ripple of extroversion in a river of introversion. And things kept flowing. They were certainly flowing through my laptop computer, for the words came spewing out of my writer's mind during those two weeks. More importantly, when they weren't spewing, I wasn't worrying. Well, I was worrying a little, for what else are Jewish genes for? But mostly when the words stopped, or wouldn't even start, there were someone else's. I read Laurie Lee. I read John Banville. I read the Chronicle twice in two weeks. I read the Book of Life in the needles of the Bishop Pines. I wondered who, in fact, wrote the Book of Love.

Then this morning, on the way back from securing two small lattes in paper cups from the neighborhood espresso outlet, I noticed that I wasn't spilling coffee as much as usual. In the normal course of wheelchair events, bouncing over city streets in a vehicle that is sprung like a forklift, coffee jiggles out of the plastic lids' drink holes. Actually, precisely the same thing happened this morning, now that I think about it. After all, I was rolling homeward at approximately the usual battery-powered rate. Perhaps I was rolling a bit slower. But not much. It wasn't the wheelchair that had really slowed down -- it was me. Because I was spilling the same amount of coffee without the same amount of stress. It wasn't that I didn't care. It was that I didn't accuse -- myself. Slowing down. The secret, almost pornographic, truth at Inverness brought me face-to-face with this: I am a lazy person. There is nothing I have to do, including writing, and nothing I have to prove, including writing, nothing I have to achieve, including writing. So, write me off. I had, in those two weeks, written my self off -- at least, in terms of productivity. Yes, I can still bite the mercantile bullet when required. Actually, I need work. And once the shock of my essential laziness sinks in, it may just be that I need a rest. From time to time. That there are times when one needs to park ambition, just as I park my wheelchair overnight, plugging it in to the battery charger. Charge! Or no charge at all-- free this week, except for postage and tax. Laze and drift and dream. Then work.

Which explains why my street was so empty this morning. This is Labor Day. All day. Not every day is about labor. And not every labor is laborious. And two weeks at Inverness ends with a year at Outverness...which has its own story...just beginning.