legion368

@@@@@And I didn't go far, no Great Beach Walk that day, I wanted to make sure I could get back to my crutch, but that was still the firstI remember turning around and marveling at my own footprints in the sandIn the morning light each left one was as firm and bold as something produced by a stamping-pressMost of the right ones were blurry, because I had a tendency to drag that foot, but setting out, even those had been clearI counted my steps backThe total was thirty-eightBy then my hip was throbbingI was 99 more than ready to go in, grab a yogurt cup from the fridge, and see if the cable TV worked as well as Jack Cantori claimed iii And that became my morning routine: orange juice, walk, yogurt, current eventsI became quite chummy with Robin Meade, the young woman who anchors Headline News from six to ten AMBoring routine, right? But the surface events of a country laboring under a dictatorship can appear boring, too - dictators like boring, dictators love boring - even as great changes are approaching beneath the surface A hurt body and mind aren't just like a dictatorship; they are a dictatorshipThere is no tyrant as merciless as pain, no despot so cruel as confusionThat my mind had been as badly hurt as my body was a thing I only came to realize once I was alone and all other voices dropped awayThe fact that I had tried to choke my wife of twentyfive years for doing no more than trying to wipe 100 the sweat off my forehead after I told her to leave the room was the very least of itThe fact that we hadn't made love a single time in the months between the accident and the separation, didn't even try, wasn't at the heart of it, either, although I thought it was suggestive of the larger problemEven the sudden and distressing bursts of anger weren't at the heart of the matter That heart was a kind of pulling-awayI don't know how else to describe itMy wife had come to seem like someoneMost of the people in my life also felt other, and the dismaying thing was that I didn't much careIn the beginning I had tried to tell myself that the otherness I felt when I thought about my wife and my life was probably natural enough in a man who sometimes couldn't even remember the name of that thing you pulled up to close your pants - the zoomer, the zimmer, the zippity-doo-dahI told myself it would pass, and when it didn't and Pam told me she wanted a divorce, what followed my anger was reliefBecause now that other feeling was okay to have, at least toward herNow she really was 101 othe