Who—Or What—Is Next?

 It’s been said that the deaths of famous people come in threes. Within the past two weeks, we lost two of the most amazing women: Dolly Parton and Gloria Steinem.  Some (including me) would count Tim Curry, who died the same day as Dolly. Others might Robin Morgan, who passed yesterday, in the group. Perhaps we should make it four:  In Japanese and other cultures, the number is associated with death.

Strange times we’re in (as if we weren’t before). One of my neighbors, whom I usually encountered while smoking with other neighbors just outside our building, has kicked the habit. That’s a good thing, of course (unless you have stock in Philip-Morris), but the circumstances that brought him to that decision weren’t delightful:  While in a store, he started gasping and was rushed to the emergency room.  Oh, and someone else I know was ordered to the hospital immediately when tests revealed liver damage.

Somehow I knew change was gonna come (apologies to Sam Cooke) as I set out for Point Lookout, a ride I have taken many times. The weather was almost too perfect:  temperature-wise, more like a day later in this month or even next month, preternaturally blue skies and white, puffy clouds. Waves rolled in, echoing streams of flapping egrets’ wings. Perhaps it had to do with hearing, before I set out to ride, about a news item about an event to commemorate the 25th anniversary of 9/11. Like almost everybody else who lived through that day, I remember how beautiful it was right before the planes flew toward the towers: much like yesterday.

Movies and TV programs never show disasters happening on days like yesterday or, for that matter, 11 September 2001. But the times before, if not the disaster itself, then the loss of innocence, always seem to be idyllic, even Edenic, shown through a scrim, or perhaps a gauze, of dreamlike haze. Even the sunset, when seen through that mist, wispy clouds drifting about, does not seem to portend the coming of the moment when it all becomes a memory—and nobody in the scene knows what’s coming. The audience does, but they can’t tell.