"I was feeling sad
Can't help looking back
Highways flew by
Run, run away
No sense of time
Want you to stay
Want to keep you inside
Run, run, run away
Lost, lost, lost my mind
Like you to stay
Want you to be my prize"
"Runaway" Yeah Yeah Yeahs
By default, headed out for a walk; a hot and humid weeknight, but something about the house seemed lonely, with the two little ones in bed, the older one at a friend's house, and the new wife, nearly seven months pregnant, exhausted from a long day of trying to save the world, or at least a few of its most forlorn, exhausted and already asleep for the night, knocked out for good at not even half past eight.
Eight thirty at the most, but still plenty of light in the sky this time of year; total darkness doesn't come down until nearly ten. We're up north.
Went right up Grand, headed north for two blocks, then left onto Sixth, a lap around the park, making a good pace, legs feeling loose and limber, the mind wandering, feeling for a few moments a little younger than the forty-five I turned a week prior, starting to sweat already, a good sweat, and then out of the park and south onto Third, the sound of my feet banging against the pavement slowly drowning out the sounds of other voices, of traffic, of other people, a right on the corner of Third and South, up the hill, steep, halfway up my legs start to groan in protest, they feel heavy and the sweat starts to drip more heavily from my forehead and down onto my cheeks, my forearms, my hands, I keep pushing, hit the top of the hill, shit, sundown's here, maybe I shouldn't go in, ah, what the hell, I look to the right, then the left, no cars coming, crossed the road and walked up into the Hudson View Cemetery.
&&&&
Up the hill, the narrow road splits into two paths, straight and to the right, went right, past the old maple struck down by lightning last year, only the bottom fifty feet or so of it left in the ground, the rest already converted into firewood or something else, I don't know.
Reached the crest of the hill, and now fully broken out into a sweat, the sweet sounds of a melody heard earlier in the day ringing around my head, feeling sad, looking back, no sense of time, it all seems so close, the days and nights of my youth, the night she died, wishing she had stayed, feeling proud, looking back, no sense of time, feeling proud in the knowledge that I'd made the best of the aftermath of her leaving, made something good out of it, tombstones all around as I turned slightly to the right, the town's not that old, not really, but some of the stones old enough that time has worn them into illegibility, just the vague shapes of letters and dates and nothing but the bones laying inside rotting wooden boxes six feet below the grass.
Turn left, a long bend in the path, and then down a hill, and below me, a large open field, a nearly dead oak in the middle of it and a twelve stories high pine on the far right, freshly mowed, nothing like the smell of fresh-cut grass, a large open field where I once played as a child, all this open space, we made use of it as children, we turned the open field and the area around it into a playground, a baseball field, a football field, a soccer field, hell, we even built a nine-hole par-three golf course into it, held our own seasons and Olympics and US Opens up here, and in the rhythm of my feet pounding on the gravel path I can hear that past calling out to me, as close as the mosquitoes swarming my sweaty neck, right there.
Turn left again, off to my right I see a memorial stone reaching high into the dusk, the grave of our town's Civil War hero, the sesquicentennial of his death just past, the first Union officer killed, they say. Is there anything I'd die for, right this minute, the way he died, willingly, to remove a Confederate flag flying in full view of the White House, to Lincoln's irritation? The question makes me uncomfortable and I am sorry I asked it of myself.
I don't know.
Certainly things are dire, there must be something worth dying for, our country seems to be on life support at the moment. I turn left again, up another hill, panting, feeling myself drawing fresh breath from the depths of my lungs, certain that this is a good thing, I have been in all sorts of shape in my life and I know that physically, I am in good shape, and this pleases me, but I can't shake that question, no matter how fast I walk up that hill.
To the right, older gravestones, and I look at them, thinking, foolishly perhaps, that I am honoring the buried by doing so. Thomas Greig, born in Scotland, died in the Hoosac Tunnel, reads one. The Hoosac Tunnel was once an important section of American railway , built in the olden times, back when we still built things in America. We don't anymore, and it seems we never will; seems we have lost our will, the people who run things blinded by either greed or cowardice, or both, and the rest of us blinded by the gut-wrenching fear we're not going to make the rent next month, so we do what we must and don't think about the rest. I wonder what happened to Thomas in that tunnel, I wonder, selfishly I suppose, if his story would make a good book.
I walk on and spot another stone: Tommy Turner. Born in England, died in America at the age of six, in 1912. A hundred years ago, everyone who knew him long gone, but for some reason it breaks my heart. I think of my first wife, born in England also, and buried in the cemetery next door to this one, and a hundred years from now she won't matter and neither will the rest of us, but she does now, so long as people who loved her walk around in various sunsets. Six years old, it breaks my heart, I think of a kid, lying in a bed, sick, tired, in pain, did he know he was dying somehow, oh God almighty, if you are there, you can't be there, how could you be there and let a six year old sweat and shake to death, you look around at the old stones and see children died young, mothers died in childbirth, young men died in war, there seems absolutely no sense to it.
You turn left, left again, down the hill, back toward the open field, in full cry, the upper Hudson Valley in full view, nothing but greenery, a river snaking through a landscape of lushness beyond words, you see nothing but green and black, the green grass and innumerable green leaves on innumerable trees in full bloom, and you think of a child in the Niger Delta, just as alive and as sensitive as you, but cursed to never seeing anything as beautiful, as lush and as peaceful, as this, you hear birds and crickets and nothing else, you think of that child, sweating and thirsty and living among a landscape ruined by pollution caused by your own desire to drive your car tomorrow, to drive your car next week, to drive your fucking car until the end of time, and you look out at the Hudson and its valley, green, verdant, idyllic, laid out there seemingly just for you, and you dig down for fresh breath, your body feeling good but your soul sad, you know what you've done to that child halfway across the world, you didn't mean to and you try to ease the guilt by telling yourself you didn't know any better, but you do know what lies just ahead, you know the world you live in depends on things that soon will disappear, things like cheap and plentiful oil, and you know goddamn well that you live in the dying days of the American Empire, and that soon life will change and become something bewildering and difficult, and you know you should do something about it, but you don't, you just breathe deep and keep on walking, you breathe in the almost unimaginable yet, for a few last moments, still extant beauty of the upper Hudson Valley at dusk, you know there is so much more you could and should do, but you are tired, so you breathe in that beauty and you just keep on walking, for perhaps one of the last times, and you lament the fact that you just keep on walking, you lament the fact that you are not up to the task at hand.