Fears

What is is so rare as a day in June? Good question, but it's an American question, asked by an American poet. And the real issue in Britain has to do with the rarity of summer days in June...at least this June...much of the month having been imported from the Californian winter. I woke up today still dreading my return to the bedroom where Marlou died. In a typical English home, predominantly from the Victorian era, as my cousin points out, every room in the house would have been the scene of multiple births, deaths and illnesses. I feel my cousin is on the way to making a point here, a point I am trying to make myself...but continuously fail at...a way to normalize and make routine this most familiar of human experience. But it's hopeless. I fear the return to memories in California.

The only answer is tea. Being that rarity, a warm June day, Caroline suggests we have breakfast 'al fiasco'. This includes baked beans, eggs and toast. Caroline would like me to have the beans on the toast, British style, but I decline. We get stuck in our ways, set on a certain course in life, and I have unshakable bean expectations. The British version of baked beans is a milder, lighter one that works well as an egg accompaniment. In fact, I see the essential wisdom in this marriage of baked beans and eggs. Still, I prefer the American pork and beans. I can't help it. Furthermore, beans on toast flies in the face of logic. Beans, even baked ones, belong with tortillas. But in these parts, a tortilla is a Spanish omelette with potatoes...so the issue gets muddy.

This is the essence of travel, clinging to bits of the familiar while awash in the foreign. The whole thing seems an exercise in facing fear. My muscular world keeps shrinking. The less my limbs move, the more my proprioception evaporates, the more I can get into trouble. This morning, unaccountably while shaving, I was listening a little too hard to Radio 4 and began losing my balance. Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, it took only a second to drift off my center of gravity and slam against the wall. Not that this mattered. I grabbed the edge of the sink, righted myself and dropped into the wheelchair.

But there was collateral damage. For in the course of falling, my elbow slammed against open containers of toothpaste and lotion, sending them flying upon my cousin's authentic Cotswolds sandstone floor. Along with one comb and a bar of soap. Knocking things about throws me into a frenzy of self-flagellation. How could anyone be so stupid? The objects on the floor have rolled about, and I roll about in my wheelchair, conscious that if I don't get my anger in check the inevitable will happen...rolling over, say, the toothpaste. Compounding an already annoying situation and providing further evidence of my incompetence and doomed state.

All of which masks a larger reality. That I am on my own again and frightened. Climbing wheelchair curb inclines in London things tilt at a steep angle, the possibility of going over backwards seems real. And I am alone. What would happen if I toppled backwards in Tottenham Court Road?

It seemed like a great idea at the time, booking a wheelchair-accessible room at the University of London residence halls for the next few days. I have already had a dream about my Friday arrival. I show my e-mail receipt to the bursar, and he begins showing me about. There is a lounge. A dining commons. Up one hallway, down another, everything glassy and airy and suspiciously California looking. But, nevermind, this is a dream, and what keeps happening is that things keep happening. The bursar showing me this, showing me that. And where is the room? The bursar keeps disappearing, I keep making my way back to his desk. We start out again, as though heading for a room...but he, or I, forget. Eventually I am out of the wheelchair, fighting my way up and down hallways with my crutch. My shoes have fallen off. My socks are wearing out.

Thus, my fears. The best travel, perhaps the only travel, occurs in the mind.