I remember the sky was clear and the sun was warm on my back. I was maybe 5 years old. My family had recently moved to a house with a swimming pool. It had one of those slides that does a half-twist and spits you out into the middle, between the deep and shallow ends. It was our little slice of the suburban American dream. My mother was afraid to let my brother and I go in it without proper supervision. She enrolled us in swimming lessons to alleviate her panic. I failed the beginner course that first summer, then learned on my own when fall was rolling in and the pool had to be closed. I climbed to the top of the ladder and surveyed the cool chlorine kissed water from my perch, eager to enjoy the slide again. It always put me right at the line where my feet could touch and I could keep my head above water. That is until this one time it pushed me out a little further. There is a stillness in my memory though I know I was splashing around wildly. My older brother dove in after me and took me to safety. The ladder was permanently stowed away behind our shed some time after. Sometimes I would ask why we didn’t use it anymore and my mother just waved me away, like it didn’t need explaining, or I was too young to understand. I never talked to my brother about that day; or my mother, come to think of it. I don’t know if it’s something they even remember. I certainly do. At the time it didn’t register as noteworthy.
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There is a joke about New Jersey, only funny to those who’ve never been there, where someone who is from New Jersey gets asked what exit they’re from. The idea, I think, is that the state is overrun with highways and the question alone alludes to that widely held perception and says something about the person from there, but the one asking doesn’t care about the answer. I’m not even sure what highway people are referring in that question. I used to think it was the Turnpike. Though now I think it may be the Garden State Parkway. It also runs the length of the state and the exits correspond to mile markers. The Turnpike was the main highway running through the state from my vantage point. The Parkway wasn’t on my radar. I remember my first car was a little Toyota coupe equipped with an engine built to run laps around the Energizer bunny. It had over three hundred thousand miles on the odometer when I finally had to let it go. Highway driving, windows down, wind blowing, radio at full blast, has a tinge of nostalgia for me, or what I think of as the American dream. Not the mythology of ‘up by the boot strap’ success. Instead it’s Dean Moriarity, Sal Paradise, and the rest of the thinly-disguised Beat Generation in On the Road. That mad drive and desperation of “who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity,” as Allen Ginsberg put it in Howl. It was the America I dreamed of in my cloistered little part of the world and the highway seemed to make possible. That was until I got slightly distracted when exiting the Turnpike somewhere in central New Jersey and temporarily lost control of my car. The exact moment I can’t remember. I have a brief mental picture of spinning around, donut style, at least three or four times then coming to a stop. The engine went dead. I surveyed my surroundings. There was absolutely nothing else on the road, not even a sound. I got my bearings, turned the key in the ignition and the car started right up. I drove away slowly and went to my destination. It was like a tree falling down in the forest kind of paradoxical experience. I was the only one there and sometimes even I question if it really happened. In my mind the landscape was like a desert, and I know that can’t be true.
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Hospitals seem to be taking over every square block of Center City Philadelphia. Some day in the future we may see Jefferson and University of Pennsylvania grow to the point where their buildings meet each other somewhere near Rittenhouse Square and they will be forced to declare a detente. It’s also possible that through a series of annexes we could be both in a giant stretch of Center City and one amalgamated, inter-connected super hospital system. From the outside it looks like a form of progress, a warren of high rises spiraling out in all directions. Inside it’s a different story. One time I was playing a sport and an opposing player hit me hard in the back by surprise. I don’t remember if I did anything to instigate that reaction. When I hit the ground I thought I had gotten the wind knocked out of me. Instead of recovering I started to breathe and speak like I was continuously out of breath. I got in my car and rushed myself to the emergency room. On the road I felt a weird calm, like I was on the cusp of some end. I would have assumed I’d be in a panic. It was the exact opposite. When I got to the ER they rushed me past reception. Inside I had an endless cascade of people who didn’t identify themselves nor tell me what they did ask me the same set of questions over and over again. I ended up staying the night for observation. I had a collapsed lung that was mild enough to only require time to heal on its own. I had a roommate, separated by a screen. He was in for a heart issue. He watched his television at the highest volume. In the morning I walked a lap around the floor, determined to demonstrate to whoever my doctor was that I was ready to leave. Nothing inspires the desire to be mobile like idling in a hospital bed watching the odd patient in backless gown pass in the door way.
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We take a lot for granted when we give ourselves over to the airlines. I think everything at the airport it designed to sap your strength, make you as docile as possible for the flight. I’ve seen the horror stories of unruly passengers. I feel for the flight attendants that have to deal with the outsize expectations of the average passenger and the sardine can conditions their corporate overlords have imposed on them. The two don’t mix and I don’t blame the staff. Maybe the over-priced everything in the terminals, the glut of people mildly inconvenienced by the stampede of people rushing in every direction, and the roaming bands of people who seem lost or willfully defy any rules related to boarding or exiting a plane sometimes push passengers to their breaking point instead of knocking them out. Unintended consequences can be difficult to deal with. I’ve read recently how there is a shortage of air traffic controllers and it’s making close calls on the runway and in the sky more common. It reminded me of a flight to San Francisco where after a smooth flight and descent we touched down for a millisecond before taking back off and circling the airport again. I remember looking out the window when we leapt back into the sky and saw a plane on what I presume was our landing runway. Was it a near miss? The pilot and crew said nothing. To this day I don’t know what happened.
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If you’ve never taken a walk around the city in the middle of the night then I recommend you do it at least once. There is a dystopian feeling, an eerie cool, to having the streets to yourself. It’s like being part of a secret crevice in time that shows you a place that never looks like it would at any other hour. It’s like seeing a candid moment on social media. I would only advise that you take all necessary precautions. One time I found myself walking home, across the city, alone at four AM. I was walking north along a vacant stretch of 15th street when a car passed me. It was no big deal. Or maybe not. They stopped half a block up past me. I guess they were considering their options. Then they started backing up. Not sure what else to do, I ran as fast I could. I ran like I’ve never run before. I didn’t stop until I reached my apartment. I didn’t even look back to see when they stopped chasing. I don’t even know if they were chasing me. With the new year upon us I think about near misses and weird occurrences. I’m not going to be melodramatic and say I’m lucky or invigorated or my life has been changed in profound ways by these moments. I leave you only with these random stories, some real, some made-up, that I offer to you as fodder in search of resolution.
GLAZ 