The Screaming Meemies

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…