Sometime around thirty years ago I dropped off a large manila envelope at the post office. That envelope contained the last mailing of a manuscript after all the submissions, edits, comments, revisions, galley proofs and messages it took to make a bunch of my scribblings into something of a published work. As I walked the two or three blocks to my favorite watering hole to celebrate, I began to realize the envelope also contained a fairly sizable collection of friends I had visited often over the previous dozen years or so. By the time I reached the bar and found a chair and lifted the first glass, the celebration had dissipated into an empty sensation of loss. It apparently was so noticeable the bartender who knew me and my story asked what was wrong. Without thinking, I told her I had just lost a bunch of friends. She knew immediately what it was and over the evening left me alone, replacing empty bottles with full ones and even guided others away from me. I could only think that in the morning when I woke up all those friends wouldn’t be there to play with for the first time in so many years. They could have been flesh and blood considering the depth of my sense of loss was so deep. Instead of celebrating just once, one by one I recalled as many as I could and lifted a glass to each one So, fast forward those thirty years to this miserable summer which for the large part I have spent alone in a dark travel trailer parked in the yard of a Catholic church in Talkeetna, Alaska. As sit here I can see the world drive by on the street 50 feet away or hear the whistle, the rumble and the roar of the trains that pass nearby every so often day and night. I read, I write, I water flowers, not totally unpleasant but I can only think of a few happy moments all summer, those being the Saturdays when I spend an hour on Facetime reading books to my grandson. Oh yeah also in those first blurry moments as I come out of anesthesia in the, now, four surgical procedures I’ve endured so far. Other than that the depression deepened as the weeks passed. Now, in my world depression isn’t always a negative. I have found great moments of creative inspiration in my depressed states. This went beyond that into something of a downward spiral.
That was until one day a week or so ago as I stared blankly at my computer screen, my gaze fell on a folder I hadn’t looked into for some time. With nothing better to do I opened it, opened a file and started reading. About halfway through the document I began to think this was pretty good, better than I’d remembered it being. And then it hit me. Hello Old Friend! This didn’t involve a crowd, just one person, someone I had been involved with online in reality and in writing for more than 15 years. I kept reading eventually now and then correcting some spelling which then evolved into rewriting a couple of poorly stated sentences. It didn’t end at that one visit either. I have revisited every day since, reaching a point of seriously reorganizing and rewriting major passages. Today without even thinking about it I spent the better part of eight hours at it. Since that first visit, to date I have organized 62 chapters, that’s 475 pages, 142,856 words. Hello old friend indeed.
The whole thing is, it’s not the physical progress, it’s the reunion, the reconnection with a character (this one based in real life), whom I realize now I have missed as a part of my life for a long time. Each day now I look forward to joining her again and reliving our life together, even adding to it and, too, reliving some happy times while creating new ones.
No comments:
Post a Comment