Movements

It is one of those memories the body distorts, playing it down, trying to half forget, certainly minimize, as though to make room.  Room for the journey.  Journeying in a room, or at least a compartment, being what the overnight train to Seattle is all about.  It's about 24 hours too, long enough to encounter every anomaly that freight trains pounding tons of bauxite, Toyotas and winter wheat can do to the track below.  It's an entire day sampling the violent jerking that occurs over the occasional loose rail or ancient junction.  

And ancient, it is.  In fact, the Union Pacific's line from Los Angeles to San Jose still relies on hand switches.  That is, UP personnel get in pickup trucks, drive to some point in the track and manually pull a lever to enable, say, a train to shift into a siding or the Coast Starlight to pass a freight.  Very retro.  Very 19th century.  Very Third World, and very contemporary America.  Never mind.  For the wild track only adds to the effect.  Particularly moving between cars where metal floor plates slide like drifting continents, while leaping up and down in remarkable simulation of an earthquake.  Particularly thrilling as one tries to stumble into the dining car.  

But one forgets, fortunately, the ticket bought, trip begun.  And the train starts rocking, stopping only occasionally when the Starlight berths at major stations.  Otherwise, it shakes one all the way to Seattle.  Movement about the train feels like a lateral mountain climbing expedition.  A handhold here, bracing the crutch there.  And in the end, the scenic ordeal drifts into Seattle's King Street Station and forgets itself.  Until the next trip.

Fortunately, the body remembers.  It remembers everything.  It remembers that it's a long way from Tipperary.  It remembers where Tipperary is, how to spell it and why it's different from Topiary.  It remembers its a long way from last year to this one, and to pay attention when you rummage about the refrigerator.  

It's the silly shelves, isn't it?  They hang off the refrigerator door like balconies on a tacky hotel.  Some jars and bottles are too tall, and others are too low.  The quadriplegic hand, its guidance system ever failing, reaches for one and invariably knocks over the other.  And always at the worst possible time.  Such as a leisurely dinner of the bachelor sort, not so much cooked as assembled on the Masonite 1950s breakfast bar strategically across from the refrigerator.  So while the mind is on NPR's becalming account of the nation's decline, whomp goes the black bean sauce, the jar not only tilting on its side but losing its top.  Just as the quadriplegic loses his neuromuscular way, and in questing after the metal top, knocks over ancient bottles of tartar sauce, Russian dressing, and miscellaneous dreck that really and truly belongs deep in the Palo Alto landfill.

Unfortunately, all these experiences, judgments and observations stream past faster than tracer bullets.  The bottom of the refrigerator shelf has been slicked, greased down like the hair of a 1950s high school boy.  The jars fly every which way.  The top to the black bean sauce is hard to distinguish from the enamel shelf underneath it, bad neurology being what it is.  I've got it.  No I don't.  Yes I do.  The top, and along with it a small cardboard box.  I know immediately what it is, or fear I do, and for once I am right.

And it is a long way to last year.  As the days tick down to 2 April, and the horrors of Marlou's dying come at me, so does the fact of the year.  All 365 days of it, one after the next, and the worst of it encapsulated here in this cardboard.  What's inside?  Enough phenobarbital to kill anyone several times.  Why?  Because a year ago the hospice nurses made ready for an unpleasant alternative.  Unpleasant.  That is my word.  An eventuality, let us say.  That Marlou could, if she wanted, allow herself to be knocked out until she died.  The facts are as stark as described.  And thus the box.  The optional phenobarbital.  Forgotten, having slipped behind semi-empty mustards and soy sauces.

I made it a point at the time to request that the hospice nurse have a thorough go at the refrigerator.  Marlou had just died, and I had the presence of mind to say this.  Sorrowing over the one awaiting the hearse, I could feel the pull toward the crematorium.  As though it seemed the best place for me.  A frame of mind in which spare doses of phenobarbital were best out of reach.

So there it is, back in reach.  And here I am fresh from what has become my transformational ritual.  A journey, not a trip.  Hardly a way to get to Seattle.  A scenic ordeal that mimics rebirth.  All of which may sound a little overblown.  But it's what I need.  A reminder that what left me weakened to the point of helpless a year ago, has transmuted.  Now it seems an outrage.  Outrageous fortune.  And fortunately I am raging.  Quietly of course.  But active, tangible and present.

The Coast Starlight covers almost 1400 miles in its 36-hour run from Los Angeles to Seattle, but this doesn't account for the total movement.  For every mile the train moves north, it must make measurable progress east, west and upwards.  These are the useless motions, the rattles, jerks and lurches over the rough track.  Would I enjoy having the whole thing smoothed out?  Well, yes.  Or maybe not.  The rigors are part of the experience.  I opted for the train, not for the death.  Yet each has throw me off schedule, imperiled life and limb and, I must admit, taken me places.