(Note–I am certain that this will be the first of a great many enlightening Sunday columns for Dale in the Springs. He has the talent and determination; therefore the sky is the limit!–Leila)
The Other Side
“Study yourself frequently in the mirror, without vanity.
It is a profound self-portrait.” – Socrates
“…Before I am old / I shall have written him one / Poem maybe as cold / And passionate as the dawn.” – William Butler Yeats
“The bird that flies in front of you is not for no reason.”
– Chingachgook
In September of 2024, I saw the 91-year-old Willie Nelson walk out onto a stage somewhere outside Chicago and wave at the large crowd in the seats and spread out farther back all over the green, sprawling hills of this midsized stadium.
You could see Willie pretty clearly from where I was on the hills with my family, and you could see him even more clearly on the screens that were elevated above the stage like they are everywhere now.
Great waves of goodhearted cheers and applause went up from the crowd in spontaneous honor of iconic Willie. My guess is that Willie always receives that kind of welcome, except not quite so enthusiastic and dramatic as now – because it was well known in Willie Land that Willie had almost passed out of this mortal sphere – again – recently.
And yet now here he was – again – standing on the edge of the stage holding Trigger (his guitar) and waving with great strength, resilience, friendliness, and Willie-style openness at this hugely appreciative – even tearful in some cases as I looked around – Illinois crowd.
Four months earlier, my humble self had also come very close to biting the dust of this mortal world, not for the first time, so the reappearance of Willie this way held a certain magic for me, especially since he is a lifelong hero of mine.
At the age of 57, in May of 2024, after a sleepless night previously, then staying up all day (no naps), arguing for several hours with everyone around me about all sorts of things (we’re all a bit bipolar or more), and then after lots of excessive celebratory activities with my kids on my ex-wife’s birthday, I suddenly found myself sitting in a chair alone a bit before midnight, completely unable to speak. (I had been thinking about calling out to one of my kids about something even though we’d already been talking to each other all day long.)
Not only was I unable to speak.
I was even unable to think of a single word, at any level of my mind, no matter how hard I awkwardly tried, and kept on desperately trying – and this was after a lifetime of words, words, words, and the Word, obsessive, nonstop reading and writing, life as an English teacher in college, and the ability to speak so rapidly and for so long, at times, that I’d been known to talk nonstop for 24 hours, or more, to a lucky few (and generous) souls (who must’ve spent a lot of time tuning me out, as well, during those interminable, adrenaline-fueled, sometimes chemical-fueled, half-mad monologues about anything and everything under the sun).
(It was like the tale of the apostle Paul talking all night long, until one of his listeners fell asleep, and then fell out of the window. Paul was able to pull it off and save the young man’s life only because of the faith of everyone around him.)
I couldn’t think of even a single word.
And suddenly I very much, and very deeply, realized the fact that – I couldn’t think of even a single word!
My mind was a blank vaster and whiter, and more elusive, than Moby Dick.
My daughters walked into the room together (twins).
I tried to rise from the chair.
I collapsed and hit the deck very hard – but when I heard the fear in their voices, something helped me bounce right back up again.
Amid the confusion, terror, and total horror, worse than what Mr. Kurtz talked about perhaps, of not being able to find the words, something had buoyed me up – when I heard my daughters’ sweet voices in fear and dread for me.
After an ambulance ride with some chill kids who looked like they were about sixteen years of age doing everything they could to help me out, I found myself in the emergency room staring into a screen hanging above me, where the distorted face of a concerned doctor with technological eyes like Lex Luthor, and pale, dark, glistening skin, was weirdly informing me (his mouth seemed to be going every which way), in his echoing, distorted voice, through the screen, that I was in the middle of having a stroke.
That was the moment when I realized it felt like the White-Light Fingertip of God Himself had reached out earlier, out of nowhere (or out of air – out of thin, thin air) and TOUCHED ME on the brain (or in the brain) in a very biblical way.
I knew now that this was some kind of wake-up call.
Twenty-three years before, in September of 2001, two weeks after the terror attacks on the Twin Towers, I’d fallen on a switchblade knife while doing tricks with it in the yard in the middle of the night after a long day (and night) of drinking.
I’d almost killed myself with a switchblade (and not on purpose). The feeling of being stabbed (perhaps especially by yourself) is almost impossible to describe.
The horrific irony there was that two weeks before the Towers were brought down, I’d been doing nothing other than standing on top of one of them with a close writer friend from Brooklyn and looking down, in awe, at the skyline of Manhattan.
September 11, 2001, means many things to all of us, and different things to every one of us, whether we were alive at the time or not.
To me, 9/11 will forever be tied up with that bizarre, drunken, fateful incident, in which I fell on the switchblade knife in a drunken, manic, and exhausted glee, and almost killed myself without meaning to; and the time two weeks before the Towers were brought down, when I had stood, literally, on top of one of them.
(Falling on the knife like the Towers had fallen.)
(Stabbed in the side like Him.)
When I arrived at the hospital after the knife accident and took the rag away from the wound in my side to show the nurse, great gouts of blood literally SPAT and SHOT out of my body and SPLATTERED all over the wall – straight out of the worst horror movie ever made, so much so that the nurse immediately ran from the room in terror to go get a doctor – and somehow I survived.
And not only did I survive the stroke as well; but I also began somehow to THRIVE, very quickly after it ended.
When the stroke came, I’d just been starting to emerge from a wicked, vicious, six-months-long melancholia, one of the worst in my life in a life of long, horrible, periodic depressions.
After I had the stroke, after I “woke up” in the hospital, I realized that the depression was gone – it had vanished; had lifted; had disappeared, like the morning mist suddenly going away off the face of a beautiful lake.
One moment you look and it’s there – then when you turn around again, it’s just gone.
I had a lot of bad habits before the stroke which contributed to it (none of which shall be gone into here for various reasons).
But it also turned out that I had something going on with an artery in the right side of my neck, a small but very significant abnormality that had caused the stroke, something so rare that only less than three hundred, three hundred, cases, have ever been documented.
It required an endless-seeming series of tests to discover the problem, then surgery to take care of it.
In the middle of the surgery, I left my body.
I didn’t die – but I, quite literally, left my body and wandered around the surgery room (my spirit did), watching the surgeons, doctors, and nurses perform their work, but mostly watching myself, lying there on the table.
I was studying myself very closely while hovering in and among the people who were working on me.
And I realized that there were and are two me’s, one of whom resides solely in this body made of dust, this mortal coil – and one of whom does not.
That brings me back to Willie. I don’t recall all the circumstances off the top of my head, but I do know that he’s almost died before many times.
And I do know that this summer, so far anyway (which is way more than enough), he’s back out on tour – at the age of ninety-two.
Every moment we breathe on this side of the Grim Reaper’s scythe is another chance at living our lives to the fullest, maybe for the last time here.
One thing I know for certain – we will all find out what happens to us, even if that is only peaceful sleeping (which I doubt) – on the other side.
Sign-off: “The Drifter” is bowing out for now, off to walk his sidekicks and assistants, two Siberian Huskies and one Pit Bull whose names shall remain anonymous in this place (for now), in a local forest preserve outside Chicago along the Des Plaines River, where Hemingway used to hunt as a kid, and John Wayne Gacy used to dump bodies; an area filled with deer, coyotes, foxes, birds of prey, snakes, river otters, and lots of other wild creatures, including more than a few of the humans who hang out there.
“The Drifter” shall re-emerge next Sunday with a plunge into his personal relationship with the life and work of Bob Marley, as well as wild tales from his honeymoon with his ex-wife all over the island of Jamaica in the Year of Our Lord, 1994 (thirty-one years ago at the age of 27).
The title of next week’s column is (unless it gets changed) “Jamaican Flashbacks Extraordinaire.”
Saragun Springs 
Drifter
Congratulations on surviving yourself. Playing with a switchblade?Tsk tsk.
Still, you got to have the steel in you in another sense, and I think that is well stated here!
The journey begins…
Great opener!
Leila
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Dearest Irene
Thank you for everything! None of this could have been begun WITHOUT YOU.
I wish to add one quotation here. From John Milton:
“The better fortitude / Of patience and heroic martyrdom / Unsung.”
D
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PS
I attended the NO KINGS Protest in downtown Chicago with my daughters and a few of their friends yesterday.
Several horrifying things, and many cool and good things, happened during this outing.
Therefore, my column about Bob Marley, Jamaica and a very wild honeymoon in the summer of 1994 will be postponed until a slightly later date.
Next week’s Sunday column will be a “hot off the press” literary report about the No Kings protest in downtown Chicago yesterday, based on eyewitness testimony from myself. Written by invoking the spirits of Hunter S. Thompson and Norman Mailer, two whose fierce honesty and courage can and should be an inspiration, and a consolation, for all of us in these bad days.
To America: we can get through this.
Signed,
The Drifter
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I certainly look forward to that. The No Kings thing (although I agree) has snuck up on me. I hate to think I am that out of touch!
Leila
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Happy BLOOMSDAY, Leila!
Today is the 1 Year Anniversary of the day I received your acceptance of my short story “The Old Guitarist” for Literally and you told me you also had a poster of “The Old Guitarist” by Picasso on your wall!
So I want THANK YOU for a great year and looking forward to lots more in the coming year and way beyond then, as well!
There is a Central Incident that happened at the No Kings protest in Chicago on Saturday, a horrifying event as scary as anything that’s happened to me since I had the stroke. That event will be the highlight of my Sunday column for next week. If I can tell it right, it will be communicated as horrifying as anything in Orwell’s 1984. Even if I can’t tell it right, it will still be scary – and a warning.
But I will also attempt to draw the Life Lessons out of it and look on the bright side like I always (try to) do!
Thanks again! And happy days for Bloom, Nora, Picasso, You, Me, and Everyone!
Dale
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Hi Dale
Happy Bloomsday back at you! Right now a bit too woozy on cold medecine to speak properly of it, but it is a great anniversary for you!
Leila
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Hi Dale
This was exceptional! Powerful! Realms of the next world tied to an aging country music legend, and so much more…
The way you painted Willie on the stage was a vision. “Wllie Land” is a place where the reaper comes again and again.” The effortless transition to your own life in peril was like riding in a car and you’re there. You have arrived at this other place. It’s otherworldly too. And it’s a bit horrific. There be dragons.
In the hands of a lesser writer… I could see this not working, but not so with DWB. He makes this remarkable journey very clear–describing a place that may lie between life and actual death–naming it. We’re seeing it through his eyes. Very impressive!
“The vast white whale of Moby Dick” was a really great comparison with this state of cerebral muteness and actual muteness. Powerful! Alarming and debilitating. The brain becoming like an unmovable whale is bizarre and wholly original!
Then he ties in 9/11 and this switchblade accident in a drunken midnight gleefulness. This is crazy! I could see myself doing this. I’ve hurt myself terribly in my drinking sprees. And true stories are this crazy involving booze, but to put it down on paper well there’s the rub… Only a few can do this so well that they become famous like Denis Johnson. That’s how this is! This is powerful and layered with insanity like DJ’s “Emergency.” That only alcoholics and drug addicts really know. And in your writing there’s always a hint of comedy. Which I really like!
Even though in this four week interval a time before and after 9/11 there is an overwhelming sadness. A six month desert of almost major depression is soul crushing. But the writer lifts our spirits up to the tower looking over the Manhattan cityscape. I felt like I was up there with a cold wind blowing. Two weeks later the towers came down. Two weeks after that his “body comes down like the towers.” Like Jesus speared in the side. A bloodbath at the hospital. Wow!
At the end I felt a sense of this living gratitude. Willie’s on stage again at 92. That makes me want to count the stars and walk with something bright in my mind.
Truly great work! I enjoyed this–not the pain–you know what I mean. The writing! Brillant!
Christopher
PS
The first quotes were profound! I’ve wondered how such a collection of the greatest minds the world has ever seen, could be in a connected generation… Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Aristotle tutored Alexander the Great (probably not so great to the entire villages he slaughtered). But still great in other ways–certainly as a military commander and city architect.
“The bird that flies in front of you is not for no reason.” There are reasons.
CJA from the Seyfert’s Potato Chip Factory
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CJA
THANKS for these wonderfully great comments! Reading your brilliant breakdown of my story-essay and all your awesome readerly-feedback on it is more fun than reading a Denis Johnson story! And writing this story-essay/column was also a lot of fun, and a bit cathartic as well.
But there were big problems in the writing of this. I spent four days writing this. The complete draft was pumped out from 4 to 5 a.m. on a Wednesday morning. Then I spent a lot of Thursday, Friday, and a couple of hours on Saturday revising.
The biggest problem in writing this essay was the PROBLEM OF WHAT TO LEAVE OUT. So many actual details of the stroke story had to be LEFT OUT in order to make it read in a clean way that it became a real problem for almost two whole days (that felt like two months). The knife incident as well – a million things had to be LEFT OUT there as well, and finding that balance of putting in enough details to make it (hopefully) convincing for the Reader, and LEAVING OUT enough things so that it didn’t get bogged down, felt like walking on a high wire without a safety net, kind of like some sort of mad trapeze artist who had forgotten what he was doing.
By the way – William Saroyan – THE DARING YOUNG MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE – a very very very great autobiographical short story collection to check out some time if you don’t know Saroyan. Saroyan = a great and fascinating writer at every level – you’ll love him. The young man on the flying trapeze is Saroyan’s metaphor for the starving writer. Saroyan was always a “starving writer,” even after he got famous and made a bunch of money in Hollywood: because he would then go out and drink and gamble the money away. And always laughing it off again, too, saying he didn’t care! And I don’t think he did care (probably his ex-wife did care).
I know that you, as a short story writer of such amazing skills, will understand this problem of wrestling with the problem of what to leave out.
Yes, ex-alcoholics always have lots of tales that are so wild many folks who were not alcoholics will not or cannot understand, or even believe, them. The true madness of that life, and all the wild and crazy behavior that goes with it, is something that must be dealt with by the ex-drinker once bottom is hit and the bottle is working no more. At that point, there’s only one thing to do – quit or die, spiritually, and then literally.
But one also learns an awful lot when one descends to that level. The lesson of “how to survive” itself is probably the first one. Starting there, this makes you stronger and better at everything else. Going through Hell, of whatever kind, whether it be alcoholism or not, can be so valuable, IF you are willing to learn the lessons!
Thanks so much!
Dale
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Dale – Editor and wife (same person) went to a “No Kings” protest. I merely respond to Cult47 of the TACO man on Twitter. Seen on a cruise shirt and wise words “Any hour above the ground at my age is happy hour”. As someone who is growing tentacles (an octogenarian) I resemble those sentiments.
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Hi Doug!
Glad to hear the Editor got out there!
Here in Chicago the protests were filled with folks of lots of different ages, from youthful ones to many of more advanced ages and everyone in the middle!
The skin tone/s of the attendees was also widely varied. The majority were palefaces, and there were also lots of black, brown, red, yellow peoples as well; whatever color you can think of.
THAT is what America is SUPPOSED to be, everyone from everywhere coming together to make one great whole for a Good Cause!
I saw a sign proudly held aloft by a small, elderly and lone white woman that said: “We the People Are Sick of This Sh-t.” Except she spelled the last word out in full.
THANKS for commenting!
Dale
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Dale – Have not gotten to Chicago for a long time, but I watch Svengoolie from Berwyn, and my late sister and her widower lived / in Oak Park.
Mr. Mirth
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Mr. Mirth
Greetings from both Berwyn and Oak Park, I am in both of them most days of the week, as I have my apartment in Berwyn, and my kids live in Oak Park with their mother (my ex-), except when they’re staying with me in Berwyn, and I visit my kids, or they visit me, on a near-daily basis (in general, and with exceptions).
I’ll tell both Berwyn and Oak Park that you said hi!! It’s wild and cool that you have connections with both of them. Tell The Editor I said hi, as well!!
Thanks!
The Drifter
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Such quiet power to this. Healthily unsettling, beautifully written. It’s less a good read than a NECESSARY read (& I’m only one read in!). It would be trite to call it ‘life-affirming’ – but there’ll be readers whose lives will be affirmed after reading it. Can think of no better way to end this Bloomsday.
Geraint
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Dear Geraint
Hi! I sent you another message that hasn’t gone through yet for some reason.
While I wait to see if that one goes through, I want to remind you about what I said on Literally: Leila has opened her site for Guest Writers in The Springs. I had one week of poems with prose and images, Doug Hawley is later this month, etc. I think 5 of your wildly cool Beckett-like brevity-filled, and poetic fictions, would make a great addition to the site. Or 5 brief, pungent essays on writers or any topic your brilliant literary mind would choose. Will send 2 other messages to make sure you get this, one here and one on Literally.
Dale
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Geraint
I sent you two here in the Springs and one soon on Literally. I think one of them might have gotten lost in the ether.
Dale
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Thank you Dale.
Along with so much else, your essay included the most vivid description of a stroke that I’ve ever read. (Any tendency to self-pity in the reader is soon brought up short.) In fact the whole essay somehow crystallised what it is about your writing that makes it so thoroughly engrossing, how it is that every line is INHABITED, every syllable weighted – & not a heavy-footed sentence to be had. The reader is immediately in good company, the kind that makes the everyday just that bit more extraordinary. (Tonic reading for depressives too.) I was also reminded in part of Thomas Merton’s finally “waking from a dream of separateness” – circa mid-60s – & of the kind of energy he put in to being alive once he’d gained a little ‘freedom’ from the monastery. Appreciate too your letting me know about a possible guest- contributor slot on this site. (Leila is another one with the visionary touch.) It also occurred to me that poet John Burnside’s reflections on his near-death experience might grab your interest – if you don’t know them already, that is. Things being what they are, my comments for the time being will be – at best – sporadic.
Geraint
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