. . . loose ends . . . .

 . . . loose ends . . . 

I like loose ends. They are one difference between life and fiction. So, I tend not to tie them up here. But in answer to two readers’ questions . . . .

            1.    “Your Uncle Albert was commiserating not long ago [See here.] because Roz’s 
          mother Patsy was visiting. What happened with that?”

            2.    “You didn’t go to lunch with Sundstøm and Fjeldheim (or Pettersen). Then what?”

The answer to the first question. Nothing happened. One of the many things I hadn’t thought of, one of the many things I wouldn’t anticipate: Patsy didn’t come.

Re the second [See here.] : Sundstrøm called this morning: “I’m sorry you missed Lonnevig," he said.  “He’s friends with your hero, Ezra Nehemiah.”

     “Ezra Nehemiah who?”

     “Give me a break. The author of that commentary on Ecclesiastes you read - you wouldn’t stop talking about it. It couldn’t have been more than a year ago.”

     “Oh.”

I went to my shelves - I have six of biblical commentaries, many of which I've actually read. There was a time in my life when I read commentaries like novels, from page one to the end - difficult novels admittedly, like Ulysses (though not like Finnegan’s Wake).

     Sundstrøm was close to right. It was a year ago the middle of this month that I finished Nehemiah on Ecclesiastes: I put the date (11/16) on the inside back cover. That was about a month before I woke up in Bedlam.* And that was in the middle of December of last year. And I remember little if anything from weeks before then.

     In short, late-November/early-December 2016 is mostly a blank. Even when I open Nehemiah’s book and look at my underlines and the things I’ve written in the margin: Here I’ve underlined a quote from Augustine, “True wisdom is such that no evil use can ever be made of it.” And I’ve written beside it, “But we marvel at technology.” I don’t know what either of us was thinking. The note doesn’t even look like I wrote it - it’s my writing but as if written with someone else’s hand.
     “Oh,” I said.

     “Nehemiah was in school with Jon Bill Swiftmahr.”

     “Oh,” I said.

     “The commentator on Revelation.”

     “Yes,” I said. I remembered yesterday. Or, was it the day before?

11.04.17

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 * For that story, begin here. I do remember pieces of this.