Thoughts in the Middle of the Day
Contemplation
I just rewatched the 1996 film The Basketball Diaries—Leonardo DiCaprio—based off the memoir told in diaries of the same name by Jim Carroll about his
Wild teen NYC junky years, published
In 1978.
My wife is out of town, in Japan
And I am alone, in Lompoc
Town of agriculture, mountains and
Nothing.
After the film ended—just as excellent as the two other times I’ve seen it—
I looked up Jim Carroll on Apple Music
The Jim Carroll Band.
Curious.
Wanting to know.
I listened to a song and it reminded me of
Lou Reed and
The Velvet Underground,
That 60s, 70s urban NYC stuff
A little Ramones, Patti Smith mixed in.
It was a little after 6pm.
Saturday,
Two days after the fourth of July,
Thank God.
Sunlight gleamed in through the open windows, fragmented through the plants outside
And the screens.
Cool air leaked in like a dream.
I thought about the similarities between Carroll and me, when we were teens.
The drinking, the fighting, the drugs, the rebellion,
The anger, the grief, the loss, the untrustworthy adults.
All of it.
And then, without warning—
This is how it always comes—my thoughts drifted to my
Dead sweet father.
I remembered his sickness, 23 months,
How he almost died that one time, early morning, 5 am and my mom called me
In a flummoxed panic.
I threw the covers off my damp, sweaty body,
Grabbed a few things
Dressed and was out the door.
I prayed on that 50 minute drive:
Dear Lord, please don’t take him now. Not yet. I’m not quite ready yet.
He lived, barely. He lasted six more days.
We said everything we needed to say. Nonverbal and verbal. Conscious and unconscious. I thanked my father for letting me take care of him.
But when he said, crying, “I tried to be better with you than my own father was with me”
I didn’t respond. I let it linger. I allowed the curtain of silence to descend.
It wasn’t anger.
No, not that.
Nor confusion, nor resentment, nor pain, nor sadness.
I just didn’t know what to say.