Life in Reverse
I don’t know how else to say it: I’ve lived backwards. I blame the 1960s.
I believed the mantras that seemed so true to me like Peace Now, Freedom Now, Question Authority. . . And of course, there was all that LSD to go with it—windowpane, blotter, blue somethings, and more I forget. All of it was expansive and kind of wonderful fun. I never had a bad trip.
Enlightened, until the wonder wore off, I watched the eagles on the shower curtains at somebody’s family cabin on some lake somewhere in Michigan. They came to life so smooth to fly off the curtain, those gold eagles, as I occupied the commode. Gentle eagles. I watched them and wasn’t afraid. Neither was I afraid of the lions and tigers someone said he saw out there on the iced-over lake that I suddenly wanted to go out and walk on. You’ll be ok, he said, just watch out for them.
I believed him. And the wisdom of bumper stickers made an impression on me, too. I had a black-outline fist on a white background stuck carefully on one side of the trunk of my Karmann Ghia convertible. A black on white peace symbol sticker was on the other side. I was a tasteful revolutionary.
Tune in, Turn on, Drop out was a cool mantra. But I really did it. And it stuck. I’m decades too old, and I still live tuned out. Not consciously, but like aiming at a target without looking. That’s the way Zen masters say you should live—I think. Let your soul take over, that unconscious thing, our silent director. It’s indelible, like the way we walk or the pitch of our voice. And so now, not having aimed, when others are ending careers I still bear the marks of believing in Don’t Be Part of the System. What else accounts for my driving the wrong way toward the exit ramp, all those skeletal hands beckoning in front of me? I’m speeding toward them while I try to slow down enough to pick up the rewards I should have thought about on my way out here—when I was young goddamnit.
I am sextupled in years and still only playing with plans like, Do I need somebody? In general? Or, who do I know who can help me get my writing out there, sell my new book? I’ve thought about it, but not enough. No follow-through. No cultivating people for favors, only friendship. So now, frightened by the reality of boney hands dragging me forward to the grave, I obstinately steer off the road like a twenty-year old desperate to grab flowers along the way for my own funeral. Proof of life. Proof of some goal, something planned. But I didn’t.
I should have taken those jobs, the tenured positions I ran from as if academic Deans were slave owners come to drag me to some plantation. No adjunct slaves here, no part-timers. But anyway, madam, you’re too old to be running anywhere. Look in the mirror, faux Faust. See anyone offering eternity? And that coke-crutch that made you talkative and the fantasized fixer of all worldly wrongs while you paced and breathed cigarettes. . . That kind of thing would kill you now. Grow up.
I see myself cruising toward Dante’s worst ring of Hell. It’s the one where I’m forever conscious of all my mistakes, forever cranky about the blunders I can’t take back and the wrongs I can never correct. But if I’m lucky all those tiresome religions are wrong and there’s only darkness after death anyway.
Is it ok to smile all the way to the exit? It's better than the alternative.
Or they are right and there is only light.