Blood

The Inverness sun rose bright and fogless, then shortly after 7 AM it descended into a meteorological stupor. By 8 AM the mist had re-asserted itself, rolling in from nowhere, muffling the morning in gray. I took my cues from it, waking, then sinking back into the high bed. And by the time I made it up the stairs, the clouds were breaking up, blue returning. Though not really. Point Reyes and all lands north and west had sunk into foggy invisibility. Here where the North American land mass and the Pacific collide, sky and cloud ricochet in all directions.

And the trees keep thinking about the winter. And the ferns flap their fronds in watery anticipation. And the vultures check in late for the day shift. And one would think that after five days here I would have cranked up my electric wheelchair and taken a little spin up the road. But I've been covering too much ground elsewhere. The distance doesn't turn up on any odometer...unless one counts the solar plexus. The latter being drained.

The post-Marlou period, now stretching into five months, no longer feels like something new, but has become something permanent. A friend gave me one of the O'Brian sea epics to read on holiday, and I had a go at the mizzen-masts and topsails, and ran out of interest. When two sea hands wound up dead in a riproaring but otherwise pointless encounter with another ship, I decided to let the sails flap and the canons blaze without me. Which is odd. I go for adventure escapism. I eagerly await the next James Bond epic. Or I think I do. It's hard to say. Marlou's death has narrowed and sobered my focus. My interest in, and patience for, much of life, including some serious aspects, has waned. I can barely read the news, or even think about it. This fact mildly horrifies me, for I see it as disconnecting from community life, retreating into old age...but maybe not. My attention is elsewhere.

'I can feel it.' Marlou said this, perhaps as we were going to bed, in December or January. The cancer. Her words surprised me. What else would she be feeling? Yet until then, what she had been feeling was the chemotherapy, the drugs, the treatments. You look great, people would tell her. And she kept repeating this observation, as though baffled at her own disease. As though hoping the perception of others would supplant the diagnosis.

And then she could feel it. And all I could feel was her fear. Or imagine her fear. No, I could not feel what she was feeling, nor fear what she was fearing. Call it deep introversion or essential mistrust, but Marlou was going to reveal what she wanted. And my job was to accept and to listen and to meet her wherever she wanted to meet. I can feel it, she said. And I could barely imagine. Being invaded. Taken over. Weakened. Bloated. Seared with fiery jabs. Consumed with glowing aches.

And beyond the sensations, the rest. I understand about being traumatized, paralyzed, trapped in bed. But for Marlou, save for a surgery or two, the reality of physical collapse was all new. Everything came tumbling down at once. And there wasn't much possibility of comfort. She told me my presence did something. She wanted me there. We met where we met. Opening up, expressing all her fears and thereby...what? This is some fantasy of mine. It all happened in three, more accurately two, months. And she trusted and expressed herself as best she could. And it's hard to say if I could have helped her deal with fear...or coul not come to terms with the gulf that was opening between us. She was going somewhere else. We were separating.

At least, five months later, I am less consumed by fear. Though I cannot, even now, answer the obvious question: fear of what? Nor can I explain how something like a giant eraser has swept across my spirit. There's a vast array of things I no longer enjoy, or still enjoy but can't get started. I am sure that if the DVD, high resolution yet, of Eugene Onegin performed at Glyndebourne actually got inserted into my player and someone pressed 'start' an enjoyable evening would unfold. Instead, this Netflix offering arrived in May, sat around while I paid rentals on it through the months of June and July and August, and still remains unwatched. There is no particular reason. Some things have stopped, others slowed, a few faded away.

It's a new world. Stripped down, simplified, unvarnished. It's like the deck of O'Brian's dinky naval schooner. And, yes, doubtless it's not a schooner. But my attention began to waver when the deck filled with blood. There's no escaping blood. It gets shed, for various reasons, large and small. Just don't tell me that it doesn't linger, doesn't stain and doesn't resonate or accuse. Blood isn't just blood, but a set of questions. Most of which can't be answered, but all of which have to be asked.