I’m beginning to wake nights with the screaming meemies.
It’s its own thing. An old onomatopoeia from the 50’s. Not just an alternative
to the heebie-jeebies as I thought of it when I was a kid. You need to get
older to realize what it is, you will need to wake some nights screaming, “Me,
me!” There’s no way around it. So give
up trying. Surrender. What’s the point if you can’t lose your mind now. The
meemies are strictly an approaching-the-end disorder. Known from here on out as
ATE. Acute fear of losing oneself, for good, for ever. It’s the half-examined
life taking a last look at itself. Saying goodbye. Remembering, no longer
wanting to forget, but approaching that encroaching wave that’s gonna sweep the
shingled sands of your mind clean, into a flat, broad beach spreading toward the
endless slate of the sea and the infinite plank of the horizon…
Anyway, I’m trying to get up for these. The day games.
Forget about the me-mes, the meemies, the memes, whatever. It’s game day once
again. Let’s get this life out in order. Watching from the outfield, thinking,
it’s always been game day. No reason to stop playing just cause yer old.
There’s memories coming to your plate. Pound yer mitt. It’s coming your way. What you’ve seen is part
of everything you’ve been through, who you are, what you missed. What you
missed? I mean, what I missed. Why is
this such an awful question, why do I read it with loathing and why is it so
universal? What did we miss? What did I miss. So much. But with age I find I’m
denied access to it. The palpable feeling that everything could change around
the next corner. The other lives I still could have. Gone now. Instead, it’s as if a crew has been
slowly spreading around my town invisible and unbeknownst to me, sealing the
manhole covers on every street. Like in The Third Man. With this difference.
There are no longer any other lives for me to escape into, other selves, unlived
lives, the ghosts of wives not married, trips not taken, careers not pursued,
of loves not indulged… They are down there now, in the sewers, rotting, dying
into that primordial ooze from neglect. And not only can’t I do anything for
them, I’m kept from their company. No longer even protesting, too old, too
tired, too long ignored, they turn away from the manhole covers, go back down
the stairs to the floor of the sewer. It’s me who’s barred from opening up the
manhole and letting them out. Like I used to, taking one of them for a sunset
walk along the river’s edge, sharing the end of a perfect day in another life.
Those days are no more. Instead, if
you’re lucky you’ll catch a towering memory, lofted high, circling under it,
waiting for it…