"and I know you're somewhere
I always did feel it
I got a new song
you might never hear
Goodnight Irene
I got your trouble
I read your letters
You sent like a bomb
and when you're gone
we're all gonna miss you
your perfume like cigarettes and the sea..."
Brian Fallon, "Goodnight Irene"
A Friday that one could convince oneself a benevolent God had sent down from some unknown paradise just for kicks; blue skies, not a cloud anywhere, warm but not too warm, and with all the misery and suffering and starvation in the world, myself sat at some cushy desk job, enough work to keep me busy until quittin' time but easy enough to get done, and enough money for food and booze, not much money but enough to spare me the deprivation and sorrows that plague untold millions as I speak, no wondering where I'd lay down my head to sleep at the end of the day.
I worked the morning away; they got their money's worth out of me but the minutes passed by quickly enough and I took a quick break to eat a banana with peanut butter and later on I slowed down enough to drink a cup of coffee loaded with cream and sugar, and I could feel a breeze through the open window every now and then. Healthy children at home and a loving wife, safety, comfort; really, I thought, I've suffered a bit for sure, but still, I've had it better than any of the untold billions of people who have come and gone across the face of the planet these past few hundred centuries.
&&&
I played some music in the background as I worked.
Songs played randomly.
Some of them I noticed, some of them I did not.
One caught some of my attention. I heard snippets of it as I wrote my queries.
"I know you're somewhere...I got a new song...Goodnight Irene...I got your trouble...and when you're gone...we're all gonna miss you...your perfume...cigarettes and the sea..."
And then noon-time came 'round.
Every day at lunch, and yes, as ridiculous as it sounds, I get an hour for lunch, but anyway, every day at lunch, I change into an old t-shirt and a hideous pair of bright white sneakers my folks bought me, and I walk, as fast as I can, for sixty minutes. I walk fast, trying, foolishly I know, to walk faster than old age and heart disease and cancer, oh, I know in the end one of those bastards will get me, oh, obviously I hope it's old age rather than heart disease and cancer, but heart disease got my Papa in his forties and cancer got more blood relatives than I can even count, for fuck's sake, it just seems like we're all gonna get cancer eventually, doesn't it?
So I don the old t-shirt and the sad-sack shoes and I head south down North Broadway, a gorgeous day, I think of the poor bastards putting together hipster-devices in some prison-like sunless structure half a world away, I think guiltily about the fact how few people who have ever had to work to pay the rent in the history of humanity ever got to work in a place anywhere near as nice as North Broadway in Saratoga Springs, and I start to make my paces away from the office on into my lunch hour.
The sun beat down upon me, and I walked as fast I could, and within half a mile sweat began beading up on my forehead, and when I got to the intersection of North Broadway and East and I turned left, and I just didn't feel right, but I kept walking, I headed east and then turned right onto Catherine, and I headed south, and it was so quiet all I could hear was the sound of my shoes snapping down upon the asphalt, and the sound of that damn song kept coming back to me, haunting me.
I hit the end of Catherine and then reversed back north up Maple, and somewhere in those first few steps, words it was, first, that came back to me, perfume, cigarettes, the sea, and I walked and then I saw a figure, off in the distance, off in the mist of seventeen long years, I saw her, standing on the beach of the sea, the auburn hair flowing down from underneath a brown hat, oh she loved the hats, the auburn hair flowed down over her shoulders and halfway down her back, and she smiled at me as I stood with a camera a few yards away, the mist of the sea rising behind her, and I walked up Maple and, with no one around, I gave in, and let the surprising tears out of my eyes and down across my cheeks, I really didn't care anymore, I wanted to lean against a telephone pole and let it all out, and let out a scream, and enough tears to drown a village, but I kept walking for some reason.
&&&
I thought about words: about the words "perfume" and "sea." Every last one of them loaded to the gills. Lauren wore perfume like no one I've ever met before or since: on her, it just reeked of beauty. I've smelled a lot of perfume on a lot of women, but I've never smelled anything like the smell of perfume on her. It was otherworldly.
I thought about the sea, and the memories of it that lie intertwined with her. In our younger days, we seemed to find our way to the sea, whether we wanted to or not. When I think of Lauren, so often I think of her standing on the shores of the Atlantic, her side or ours; so often, I think of her standing, smiling, on the sands of the Atlantic.
&&&
Must have been a couple of days ago.
Riley, five now, graduating from pre-school.
I thought, for a moment, of Lauren, waiting for guests to arrive at his first birthday party, way back in 2007. I thought of her in a white silk shirt and a long, flowing, red and white skirt. I felt her nervousness, her fear that she might be witnessing, for the last time, the birthdays of one of her children. We were waiting, then, for the diagnosis. When we got it, that it was a benign brain tumor, that she would, with the assistance of a capable surgeon, survive, she turned to me and said, oh, I thought they were going to tell me I had six months to live and that I wouldn't live to see my kids grow up.
She didn't know it then, thankfully, but she had three months to live, and she in fact would not live to see her kids grow up.
&&&
So, Riley, graduating from pre-school, is with some friends, and he turns toward Sheila and I, and he says, hey guys, there's my mom. There's my dad.
&&&
I think of this as I dry my tears heading down Maple.
I think of one of the great mysteries of existence: how such great sorrow can live among such great joy. I think of my love for Sheila: fierce, beyond words, I would die for her, and I mean that in the most literal manner possible.
In spite of that, my past, my sorrow, comes out to play, seemingly from nowhere, with no warning.
I walk up Second, all hills, I begin to pant and sweat. The sun bears down upon me mercilessly. I think of Lauren, of Sheila, of Riley, of the tears words like perfume and sea have brought down upon me. I feel ambivalent. I owe the living more than the dead, I think, but goddamnit, I earned those tears, I think. I watched that woman bleed to death, and no one who has lived before or since will ever be able to appreciate how fucking hard that was.
But it's Friday, and the sun is shining, and the beauty of this world, in this moment, is too much to deny.
I owe the living more than the dead. The dead, I hope to see them again when I cross over, and if all that is nonsense, I'll never know the difference.
The living, though, aren't thinking about the crossing over. They love me and they are simply waiting for me to come home. They want smiles and kisses and hugs, and that is what the deserve, and that is what they will get.
I dry my tears and let the sun rain down. I dry my tears and get ready to come back into the here and now.