Eddie Connor was
getting old. He feared the independence
he had maintained to some extent throughout his life might soon be lost in an
institution where he could no longer enjoy his relative freedom nor continue
his attempts at artistic work which he preferred to call play. But, perhaps, by that time neither work nor
freedom would interest him. Eddie liked
to play music, write down his ideas and things he called ‘poems,’ and paint
watercolors. His efforts were known only
to his few acquaintances and even fewer friends; none of whom considered his
attempts of any particular importance but some did feel they were more or less
honest efforts. In his younger days had
been encouraged by, Marcel, with whom he lived for fifteen years. She was a poet and artist, a decade older
than Eddie, and was his artistic mentor during their cohabitation. After he left her and was no longer able to
send her an occasional monetary pittance, she asked him to reduce any further
correspondence to infrequent birthday or holiday greetings. She said the door was closed. But now Marcel was gone, passed on in her
late 80’s. Eddie is ten years her
junior. May she rest in peace.
For a long time Eddie
considered his identity to be, ‘Artist’ but after he emerged from what has to this
day proved to be successful rehabilitation from alcohol addiction he changed
that identity to ‘human being.’ This, of
course, did not exclude participation in several activities; sexual, and, otherwise,
which are often considered to constitute an ‘identity’ these days. However, Eddie considered ‘human being’ to be
primary and the most inclusive; although not very commendable, certainly not at
all fashionable. After all there were
over seven billion of them.
“But that’s it,”
thought Eddie, “I’m essentially a human being, just like the seven plus billion
others.” He did not mean that he was like
anyone else. He simply felt that he was
of the human kind; susceptible, active to some extent in all its internal and
external actions and variegations. That
was not a comforting thought.
When as a child, not
having yet reached the age of reason (whenever that might be), Eddie, while
just falling asleep, would start back awake from the horror of having to lift
the Impossible Weight! He would lie
there watching the reflections of headlights drifting across the ceiling of his
room through branches of the cottonwood tree in the back yard. Trucks bore lowing cattle and squealing hogs
to the stockyards and their imminent slaughter down Westwind Boulevard .
Eddie folded a corner of the sheet into a triangle and held it between
the thumb and ring finger of his right hand and was soothed by the movement of his
mid and index fingers on the point; back
and forth, back and forth. He sucked his
left thumb gently. A little song
repeated in his mind:
Bop, bop, a dillya dop/ I
wonder who I am?
Eddie knew very early,
certainly long before his father asked him if he would ever amount to anything,
that he had been assigned The Impossible Task.
He was required to lift the Impossible Weight. The strain was enormous, the result nil. Eddie fell back into wakefulness filled with
terror and shock -- defeated.
Bop bop adillya dop . . . .
His father, August, was
a modestly successful physician. He sold
as many pills as he could.
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