10/11/12 (6 x 6)

[Michael Brown]

02/01/00
The way I remember it, it was a warm winter, though it might have been colder. I think we were wearing jackets. His difficulty in breathing had reached the point where he could not easily manage the few steps from the bedroom to the kitchen in our small apartment for a glass of water, and he asked me to help him in getting up to the clinic to see his regular doctor, who advised a brief stay in the hospital would be the most beneficial course to take. Unfortunately, the taxi left us on the other side of the building away from the entrance to Emergency, and with his stopping to catch his breath, it took us almost thirty minutes to walk around the block. They checked him quickly through triage because he was in such bad condition, but even at that point I still believed he would emerge in a week or two and we would be able to celebrate our twenty-eighth anniversary in better spirits. Two and half months later, four days after my forty-seventh birthday, in the early morning hours before they were set to move him to a hospice because as they said, they could do nothing more for him, and the morphine was no longer helping, an attendant called and asked me to come over as soon as possible, for John had passed away in his sleep.

01/02/03
I had spent New Year’s Eve with Horacio’s family watching the fireworks sizzling and bursting in the sky over Tuxtla with plenty more beers in the cooler and conviviality flowing among those in attendance like some kind of velvet stoppage. Both heartache in remembrance and soothing hope for renewal came easily in those days. My third semester as an English teacher would begin in two days, and having won an award of merit after an unremarkable start in my new career, I was looking forward to fresh, inspired classes, so perhaps overdid the celebrating as I paid for it the next day with one of the worst hangovers I had suffered in a long time. That evening, Horacio and his old friends, my new amigos were still up for drinking, but I backed out, choosing to stay home, and tried to shake off a bout of melancholia. I fell into a fitful sleep and woke from a nightmare of being unable to breathe under water. I was wearing an apparatus, but it weighed me down so heavily, I could no longer see the light from above, and then, waking in the darkened room, it took more than a few minutes to accustom myself to the gothic silence.

04/05/06
I was worried about turning fifty-three and associating with a group of thirty-five year olds, most of whom did not teach, rarely experimented with my language, knew nothing of my previous lifestyle, and with whom I had little or nothing in common save for the readiness to toss back a few evening beverages and put problems off to the side for a while. It was when their preferred activities seeped into daylight, and over time required fewer excuses to be happening that I began to withdraw. I could still see the need to let loose on weekends, but Monday to Friday I had an awful lot of work to do, and what with traveling up to New York now and again to visit my brother and sister, having more than once to replace equipment stolen in Mexico, and paying rent here and up there (just in case things did not work out), my small savings dwindled further. I was trying to participate in something I thought I had finished with years earlier, and though in physical appearance I did not stand out so much, on the inside I was growing weary. For the next few years I sought an answer I had forgotten I knew all along.

07/08/09
A month before I found the group of writers, which has expanded, and to which I am still so very much attached, I pulled out and polished up my old notebooks, and decided to revive the one hobby that supplied my greatest satisfaction. There were sad and happy tales of my life in New York with John, adventurous explorations of time spent with Horacio and friends, early experiences relating to the rash, and not always wisely chosen decisions made concerning teaching in such an exotic place, and some pointless pondering only requiring a bit of plot, characters, dialogue, and setting to make it whole. By the end of the year, I was discharging a healthy flow of what I liked to think had some literary merit at a rapid clip. Acquaintances who took to calling me The Phantom, as I more and more avoided party nights, hinted they thought I was suffering from verbal diarrhea in a tongue which held no sway in these parts, and thus I might just as well have remained silent, lifted my cup in good cheer, smiling and nodding at jokes from whose punch lines I still had trouble deducing the humor. I taught English, wrote in English, dreamed in my native language, yet, though admittedly not so much as before, cavorted in Spanish. If I thought about it, I had difficulty in discerning the foreign element, so decided not to think about it much, which may have constrained me from winning any more awards from my paying job while I gleaned some recognition in the other.

10/11/12
I had two good classes, with an uncustomary dynamic activity and a mediocre one today, and realized how one bad apple can indeed spoil the desire to bite into any of the others in the barrel. That old adage, which is supposed to make us take heart in the bright moment, overlooking bitterness and reproach, is only true to a point. Over morning coffee, I had noted the mathematical configuration of the date, and left the house, the new house, believing I had done my numbers, could thereby count on fate’s beneficence, and would glide through an uplifting afternoon. In truth, were it not for my daily coffee and cigarette break, and filling spare moments with fictionalizing my rather dreary extra-murals, I doubt I would have stayed at this for this long. I may have drifted, or may not have done, depending on how my viewpoint is affected by the uneven sunlight, but I am going to be sixty years old next April, already experience more than occasional achiness in joints of which I was formerly unaware, and predict beach retirement days, will not be interminable, filled with nothingness. There may not be so many of them.

TOMORROW
I will wake around six-twenty, just before the alarm goes off, will trudge downstairs to prepare a large cup of coffee in the microwave as fresh-brewed is for the weekends, and will smoke one or two cigarettes while I sit and stare out at the back garden, and do absolutely nothing else for maybe a half hour—forty minutes. Then, I will shit, shower, and shave, pack a lunch in order to save a few pesos, meet up with Horacio, and he will drive us to the school. I cannot afford to maintain a car. I will have one or two good classes, smile and say something noting the time of day to about twenty-five other people, and catch a ride home somewhere between six-thirty and eight o’clock. If it’s early enough, I will try to get some writing done, although I sometimes think I have just about disinterred all of the personal experience I feel comfortable putting into words. I will probably do much the same the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that for years to come if my luck holds out.

[Sandra Davies]

Gita, Rob and Mike, who know you as I do, have said what I would have said.   Paul says 'insightful', and this makes us aware of so much, reminding and increasing our self-knowledge.

[Nicole E Hirschi aka CJT]

I've been away so long and so damn busy that its nice to have the reprieve of reading a great friends work. I'm sorry for my absenteeism and hope that life here will soon settle down for me so I can get back to thethings I love, but that's my wish for tomorrow and the many days after yet. Your sentiments I can feel so closely for they seem at moments to relate and say others feel so distant. I'm rambling I know, its later here but wanted you to know I'm rooting for you!
Always the best for you my friend!

[Paul de Denus]

This is an insightful piece Michael and the fact that you are writing it down and
talking about it is key. I know the sense of drifting, like most of us do in
life. I’m 62 and generally happy to be where I am now (things in the past were
not great.) There was a dramatic change upon my sixtieth birthday, more so than
turning 40 or 50, that sense of now looking back in a more reflective mode and
that sixtieth seems like it was literally yesterday; it’s cliché to say how
quickly they go past but it’s true… at least for me. I’ve decided it’s the
small steps taken everyday that pay off in the long run- a little will add up
to ‘a body of work’ or accomplishment or at least attempting it. (Can’t look
back and have regrets at never trying.) Your contributions on this site and
even more so on MudJob have been a great inspiration for me to continue my
writing though I don’t know where it is taking me. Oh and no- the ‘beach days’
are not interminable:)

[Mike Handley]

I wish I was sharing coffee and cigarettes with you right now. Beautiful job, Mud.

[Diana E. Backhouse]

I've never met you but I feel I know you well, but I didn't realise until now that you were nearer to my age than I had imagined. I had imagined Stephen Torelli also to be a great deal younger until he updated his profile picture. I suppose that goes for quite a few out there. I just chicken out altogether.

[Robert Crisman]

"beach retirment days...interminable, filled with nothingness." This to me is a scary piece. You seem like a stranger in a strange land, the loneliest place in the world to be. 

[Angela]

I feel as if I have been alone with you many times.  This is true for nearly all you write, but the post above may be the best example of the emotion you evoke.  It is most tender and conveys a sense of longing that resonates.  Hope you don't mind this gush.

[Jamie Hogan]

I just love the consideration behind this. I want to know how it occurred to you to choose these sequentials, see what you could remember of your state on those dates, and write it down. I don't have to ask how it is written with such humble brilliance - there's no answer save that it is just your gift.

[Gita]

Part one broke my heart. Twenty-eight years! I did the math. You were 19 when you met him.
Parts two through five speak poignantly of a stranger in a strange land and they feel deeply lonely. But they also speak to a breakthrough, which is you creating both your own writings and creating a space for others. (The achiness in the joints comes from not walking and dancing enough.)

Part six is like a mini portrait of the artist -- sitting with coffee and smoking and staring into the middle distance, warming your engines. This is familiar: I have seen you do this at HoW in the mornings, three summers in a row. I agree with Bill Floyd: You do this writing thing very well.

[Bill Floyd]

It is the writer's job to make the ordinary extraordinary.  You've done so here.  Here's hoping all our luck holds out, for 11/12/13 and much longer.