Connecticut 1974

New Canaan 1974
Originally uploaded by Charlie Roberts

my right foot

my right foot
Originally uploaded by Charlie Roberts

SILLY hopes SILLY love songs

I am stuck.

I am stuck in my hotelish one bedroom apartment. I am caged in my newish air tight high-rise that shadows the aged Hudson River.

I am glued to a bar-stool poking away on my laptop.
I have made the switch from the couch to the kitchen counter.
(Once I fall into the couch, there is very little that will get me up)

I surf the world wide web searching for diversion, but instead, I am made aware (through banner ads like “ Best Summer Vacation Deals for the End of Summer" or the anxiety inducing (back to school ads) I am made to understand that this is the end of summer. This is the week before Labor day.

Ah, yes!

I scan my memory for justification of my last three months.

June, July and August have been about giving into the couch, giving into the rain, and giving into the drama of my terrible disease.

This summer has been about the complications of returning a vacuum cleaner, buying a battery operated bike, signing up for disability.

All the big ideas for my life, all of my nervous and angry ambitions have been reduced to making the kind of small practical decisions a very old person makes.

(I must remember to pick up milk for my morning coffee...Where shall I get it? How shall I get it?)

Poking at my mac, it is clear to me that I must leave the city for the last week of August, if only to be like everyone else.

How to do it?

I often have focus/attention problems, bumping into my own thoughts, my relentless interior dialogue reducing me to the ball of a pinball machine. I'm flipped and propelled in different directions but I never really maintain a clear course.

So I always make a list. I make a list of 20 things to do in the apartment RIGHT NOW.
(I don't rate the tasks in order of importance, thinking, would allow me to spin, to bounce, to ding! ding! ding!

I scrawl a "to do" list and tape it to the kitchen counter. I set the oven timer for one hour.

Go!

Counters are scrubbed, newspapers stacked, dishes tossed in the dish washer, the sink and faucet in the bathroom wiped clean, my bed neatly made, the cat's water replaced.

When the kitchen timer beeps I’m still lost, but enough clutter has been cleared that I'm able to consider my paralysis more objectively.

I need to experience summer.
I need to go to TRURO to visit my YOUTH HOSTEL that I've gone to (by myself) for the past ten years.

It’s in an old farm house on the National Sea Shore! It’s so rundown and shabby chic that (to me) it is sublime elegance.
And the surrounding dunes, the views of that great sea shore, are stunning!

One year George Bush had a campaign party in a house near this hostel.

All of the European types, the budget minded Americans, reading old National Geographics on terrible, wonderful, dated, donated couches in ]this roomy old farmhouse planted by the enormous sea, while an upscale party for the president glows in the dunes nearby... this to me, is perfection.

However,
To get to my hostel, I will need to drive.
I haven't driven a car in a year.
I will need to rent a car that is large enough to stow my over-sized battery operated bike.

Fear rears its ugly head.

I am afraid that when I get in the car, my lame right leg, my STUPID drop foot, will not give me the proper reflexes in bumper to bumper traffic.

I am afraid that I will walk into Avis and the man behind the counter will see me limp to the check-in desk and whisper " we can not allow you to rent this vehicle Mr. Roberts, given your disability".

I will nod and walk away with solemnity, as if the Avis man himself had reaffirmed, made sure that I understood the ramifications of my diagnosis. YOU HAVE ALS, PEOPLE WITH ALS DON'T' DRIVE!

But I KNOW that fear is error. I KNOW this from life experience, and I KNOW this from the teachings of the Christian Science
Chruch.

I know that,

"Where there is a will there is a way".

and I know

" G-d hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."

I will seize the day. The day will be about discovering my driving capabilities.
Lets deal with this, shall we?

I make a reservation at Avis in Stamford.

I take a cab to Grand Central. I train to Stamford. I walk to the Avis across from the Stamford train station.
At Avis, there is a Toyota SUV waiting for me, big enough to transport two or three battery operated bikes.
I (in fact) have an "Avis wizard number" so the rental requires zero paper work.

The car is big, high, roomy, and silver. it looks just like what all the other folks are driving these days!

(I will fit in)

It doesn't have a key, more like a key chain you insert in a hole. There is an on off button!

I take my leg brace off, and maneuver my way around the cavernous, dark AVIS garage.

It’s okay.
My feet respond on cue. I am on point. I am still in the game.
I can do this!

My shaky, old man, adrenaline kicks in (this shakiness that I've always had, which I had as a twelve year old) but I am driving fine.

And I am on I-95 with the rest of humanity. F*ck it. I will drive this SUV across the country!

(But instead) I drive into Manhattan. It’s a breeze.

I nap.

I get up from my nap and I set the oven timer for an hour and tape a list to the kitchen. This list is a list of twenty things to do in no particular order.

When I have completed my twenty things, I am back on the Henry Hudson, this time driving North.

My drive includes periods of (bumper to bumper) traffic, of multiple car accidents, and of a down-pour so thick and frightening that I'm forced to pull off the road.

And for much of the trip, I sit in silence. I let my mind go. I think about people. I argue with people.

I decide, I imagine, that this diagnosis, these projections for my illness, rudely forced on me by the web, lectured (with condolence) to me by somber health professionals -

(I told the head nurse at Hopkins that I know it may sound silly, but I still had hope that I would recover from "this" or at least maintain my health, and she said... "if that's what gets you through the day, good for you!")

- these people, these expectations are wrong. They are wrong.

I construct hopeful scenarios, tiny dreams of success and accomplishments. Less than what I (dreamt of) for myself before, but still, larger than what much of the healthy population hopes for.

Near the end of my car ride (after Providence before Fall River) I flip on the radio. I find, I listen to George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue". This is a man with dreams. This music is divine.

And then I come across Paul McCartney's "Silly Love Songs".

This song transports me to station wagons with wind-down windows, to a New York suburbia of unlocked doors, little traffic, and plenty of undeveloped land for dogs to roam freely, to a time (for me) where disease and disappointment happened to OTHER people, people who just had the wrong idea, to a time when the future was unknowable, without ending, and mine for the taking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK9QVN0bpa4