Dancing with Tombstones by Michael Aronovitz

Author:Michael Aronovitz [Aronovitz, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-10-14T23:00:00+00:00

MARTYRS

AND

SACRIFICIAL

LAMBS

The Echo

J.F.K. is dead. Judy Garland, King James, Chaucer, Hitler, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Nostradamus, all dead like a trillion others. So am I, but don’t ask if I’ve seen your long lost great uncle or anything. It’s not like that. There’s just foliage out here, vague images and dark outlines in the passing windows, a lot of roadway.

I drive an old Nissan Sentra, and it’s a junkyard on wheels. Members of my family tease me about it: the pitted back bumper, the broken driver’s side door handle that makes you lower the window and claw out to flip up the exterior release, the worn seat cushions marbled like dough.

Oh, and don’t fret over the fact that I refer to my wife and kids in the present tense. I engage in this practice only because I think I am trapped in a moment that keeps being played out as if in live time, and my family is no more concerned about me than they were in terms of their “yesterday” or the day before that. And though I cannot be utterly sure in terms of hard proof, I am fairly certain that I am indeed deceased because I don’t get hungry anymore. Moreover, I can only recall universalities. I know that killing is wrong and that getting a girl pregnant before you marry her can put a real dent in your plans. I know that The Who translated better to the seventies than The Beatles, The Stones, The Airplane, and The Kinks, but I don’t remember what I had for dinner last night (if there is such a thing as an “evening” for me any longer).

As I alluded to before, I know I have kids, but can’t recall how many. I know my wife is a pale brunette, but I can’t recollect her laugh. I know she has sun freckles dusted across her cleavage, a nondescript suburban ass, and Mediterranean cheekbones she accents with lavender blush, but I can’t remember her maiden name. My whole life, or past life if you will, has been reduced to wallet-sized black and whites, faded and out of order.

Thing is, I don’t miss it. My life. Because even though it seems I am stuck for eternity in this shitty charcoal gray Nissan, there is also a feeling about me (or in me) that I am in transit to a destination. Now, please don’t interpret that as something spiritual, like I am on some cosmic pilgrimage to meet the almighty. I am saying that the feeling about me (or maybe imposed on me) is one of casual indifference, like I am on my way to work, or the Crate and Barrel, or the driving range for a quick bucket, and it doesn’t feel anything like “death.” The window is open, my elbow up on the rim, and the sky is that pale broad canopy of the lightest blue that fills us all with hope and longing; images of sailboats inching along sun spangled waters…carnivals, picnics, graduations, promises.

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