I Do Not Count The Time

For who knows where the time goes? Who knows where the time goes? 

I ache, but for what I do not know. When does this solipsistic nonsense cease. I should be able to walk this off by now. Instead, I am in the dark. The Velvet Underground's Robert Yule is singing sweet nothings to me in his high pitched voice, while Lou Reed provides backup vocals. Meanwhile, I imagine--for no particular reason--what the streets of Manhattan must have looked like in 1971. I should be thankful I am not a slave to the needle like Lou Reed. It killed him eventually, as it does. Why it took him before that dreadful David Crosby, I do not know. That is neither here nor there. All those drugs poisoned his liver and  killed him. It's ironic that the tumors on Jenny's liver are what killed her, ultimately. Two of my favorite people killed by the organ that is supposed to filter poison out of the blood. 

On my first day in the Village for law school, I looked up and saw Lou Reed on the opposite side of La Guardia, right along Houston. I quietly pointed him out to Jenny, and I was next to her as they passed less than a couple feet from one another, each with their own ticking time bomb waiting to detonate. Given the experience of watching four people I loved die of cancer over the last 15 years, it really does seem like the tumors are like the bomb vest of an unwilling suicide bomber. There was not one loss that didn't send people reeling. Lives fell apart. Hopes were destroyed, illusions ended. The terribleness can't be overstated. Each loss changed us indelibly and ineluctably. John Donne was right. I memorized that poem back in high school. I found it profound at 14. A few years later, I think it seemed less so. Today, after all the death I have seen since high school, I believe I understand Donne better than both my teenage and twenty-something selves.

I have spent these many weeks alone. I've listened to so much music and watched so much bad Youtube content. I've cooked Willow enough hamburger that I never want to smell the aroma of cooked cow flesh again. I don't know when I will be whole again. I don't know when I will get my shit together.