Oh, wow. I just looked at Bourdain’s Twitter page. His location is “In transit .”
The last time I talked to my father our conversation started with those words. I had seen a truck with giant letters on its side that read “NORMANDIN TRANSIT”. My dad’s middle initial was D., so when I saw it I read “NORMAN D. IN TRANSIT”. For a laugh I sent him a picture of the truck. He responded almost immediately, which itself was unusual. He usually responded to e-mails after a few days, like they were postal letters.
His response was “I may well be in transit.” Then he said to call him so we could go over some estate-related things. His comment about possibly being in transit was the only clue he gave that he knew the end was near, and I didn’t get it. He didn’t say he was sick, but he was. As far as us having anything to discuss about the estate there was nothing new. He just wanted to say goodbye, without actually saying those words, and he wanted to know if I was OK in life.
I followed up on Bourdain to see if results from toxicology or whatever else they performed on him revealed anything to say he was terminally sick in ways no one knew, or driven to impulsive action like this on account of drugs. I think it’s a law, or at least a medical custom, that autopsies are done on all suicides, however obvious the cause of death might have been. Obviously they knew what got my dad but the autopsy revealed for the record what he already knew, that he was too sick to go on living without some kind of life support.
We are all in transit, are we not? In transit through the universe, in transit from here to the grocery store and back, in transit to that only other certainty besides life itself. I’ve been reading The Hour Of Our Death, which I’ve tried repeatedly to get into. I’m having better luck this time. The author’s contends that as a race our attitudes toward death have only changed in recent generations, having remained the same since the dawn of time. That is an amazing claim, one which I would think has parallels in other realms. Do we, as a race, think about diurnal routines the same as we did in past millennia? Not even routines but common human tics, like scratching one’s crotch and feeling embarrassed about it, or how some people regard the act of blowing their nose to be almost intimate, while others have no scruples at all.
In transit yesterday I spotted someone who I am about 80% is who I thought she was. I could not for the life of me remember her name or her husband’s name. I was at their wedding 4 years ago, and remember how the husband-to-be regarded me somewhat curiously, which is understandable. It’s the biggest day of his life and here he is asking who the hell this is. I mean it was not stupidly awkward or inappropriate. But after a brief conversation I felt like part of the crowd. I have a few reasons for thinking that the woman I saw was not who I might have thought she was. As far as I knew she lived in Boston, but grew up in these parts, at the Ravenswood Houses. She was one of the only people from my ex’s circle of friends who would even talk to me. She looked a tiny bit pregnant. I don’t know who she was, and to that crowd of which she is a part I am a narcissistic sociopathic pig. So I didn’t say anything.
The Payphone Playlist looks promising… to me. There will have to be multiple playlists, and I now face the daunting possibility of culling hours upon hours of editing and dealing with the avalanche of audio I have created.
