October 4, 2020 (the week of his Covid-19 diagnosis, the day before we left for Rome)
I’d like to stop thinking about Donald Trump. I thought about him all day yesTERDAY and the day before that and it’s getting kind of ridiculous. I would like to get to the point that I don’t care if he lives or dies. But I keep watching CNN. I would like to stop thinking about what other people say about Donald Trump’s medical condition. I would like Donald Trump’s medical condition to be some private matter of a man who is somewhere far away, with his own concerns.
I would like to be fishing on a stream in the mountains. I would like to be way up in the hills surrounding the Val di Chio, somewhere up there among the olive trees, smelling the smoke of the burning branches, hearing the cinghiali, the hunters. Last night in Regiro eating pizza with our friend Paula, I described our vacuum cleaner as a little cinghiale, that wild pig that we make the bolognese sauce with, though we don’t call it that, we call it ragù di cinghiale, or pasta with cinghiale sauce.
We drag that vacuum cleaner around like a little cinghiale.
I haven’t written anything all week. Oh, wait, I wrote the column yesterday. That’s right. Oh Jesus that was a pile of worry. I was right back in the worry cage, freaking out about it.
I guess I need to get the routine going again. Nick Tedford asked me about the book. Coming, coming, arrivo!
I write the column and then I run away. Like a boy leaving a note on somebody’s doorstep, afraid of what they’ll say.
What is certain is that a bunch of shit is going to happen.
Trump isn’t exactly your paragon of physical health and stamina. But you know how some people survive through sheer orneriness.
Who am I writing to ? Who am I talking to?
One of the other prompts: the earlier self. I’m skirting something, I’m avoiding something, some feeling. Writing is so much in the head. I’d like to dance this out.
I’d like to be digging a hole up there in the mountains to bury a goat. I dunno why. Why’d that goat appear, a dead goat, lying on his side, white, with whiskers, the horns, and me with the shovel, the tarpaulin, up there in the hills, buring a goat. What? Freud? Calling Dr. Freud. My dream, the boardwalk on the beach, that girl, Cinthia? Carol, Kathleen, Crimson and Clover, Tommy James and the Shondells, I think we’re alone now, the beating of our hearts is the only sound, John Coltrane’s wife Alice Coltrane taping his session at the Five Spot with a shitty portable, and that’s the only live tape of that quartet with Thelonious Monk. I feel like now I could start collecting all the music again, and listen to it over and over: Monk, Mingus, Coltrane. Who am I? What is certain?
Nothing is certain. Nothing. That’s what’s so galling. Nothing is certain.
You know what haunts me? When you get right up to the end, or if you get right up to the end, and you’re going No, I’m not ready yet, no, Not yet. That’s what I fear. At the end of Mystic River—is that the name of that movie with Sean Penn?—the guy they murder by mistake, he’s going, “I’m not ready.” That’s so awful. So I guess you’ve just got to be ready every day, all the time, any minute, be ready. I was like that when I was looking at the cancer. I got to that point of OK, take me, any time, I’m ready. That was a good place to be. I’d like to always be there, always be ready, any moment, a swerve of the wheel, a stray cough, a stray bullet, infarction, embolism, unexplained cardiac arrest, unknown cause, man, just be ready, loosen up, live life as it comes, don’t fight it, don’t hang on. That would be the worst, to be hanging on, like, I’m not ready, I have to pay the phone bill, I have to call my sister about that painting, where are my socks, I didn’t put my socks in the hamper, I’m not ready, my room is a mess, they’ll find my porn, I’m not ready, that song is only half done, the novel is a mess, oh god they’ll find out I’m a terrible writer, I’ve got to shred everything first, I have to make up with my sister, I never told certain people certain things … oh man I hope not. Just let it go. Because then when you’re gone there’s no bills, no worrying about anything. It’s out of your hands! And that’s for certain.
I think I’m going to Rome tomorrow.
