I’m Flying to See My Friend
by Robert M. Katzman © April 25, 2023
(Dedicated to and inspired by Raphael Pollock, a friend since 1964)
Up at 3 am
I am older now
More careful now
Packing began a week ago
Notes to remind me:
Computer/Phone/Hearing Aid
Money/Driver’s License/Boarding Pass
My good wife wakes up with me
Makes me hot coffee
Mother Hen’s me studiously
Insuring I leave nothing behind
She drives me through the rain
We both search for the airport’s lights
My one-time high school classmate
Endured a heart attack
I bring him the only medicine I have
I’m flying to see my friend
*
I’ve flown across the Oceans
Seen a dozen countries
Giant book-fairs in Germany
When I once had a bookstore
I had more energy
I felt more excitement
Airports seemed like Carnivals
Now they are too big for me
Massive Purgatories of Transport
Horrible food costs a fortune
Everyone moves so fast
Everyone dresses so badly
I’m flying to see my friend
*
I bring some old paperbacks
Hardcovers are too heavy
Noir 1940’s crime by Raymond Chandler
Stories about wise-cracking failures
With snub-nosed 38’s in shoulder holsters
1870’s Westerns by Larry McMurtry
Stories about calm steely men
Who didn’t speak at all
Whose Colts spit fire and compelled respect
In my imagination I am both of them
Secretly a very dangerous man
Who needs no weapons at all
*
I have all my many medicines
I wear a thin plastic belt
Replacing – for the moment
My worn leather belt with its metal parts
It sails me through security
But really, no one cares
No one scrutinizes an old man
I mean, how fast could I run?
I’m flying to see my friend
*
Squashed into my aisle seat
More room for my bum hip
An angry gash of a scar
Botched surgery fifty years ago
Not that I remember it
Flight attendants seem like teeny boppers
They serve me tepid coffee — I spill it
I try to read my hero’s stories
But the attendant’s loud
Robotic safety instruction
Drag on for an hour
The plane wiggles too much
Didn’t used to vibrate so much
I, of course, am exactly the same
I’m flying to see my friend
*
The Plane takes off
The Plane lands
I asked God to do this for me
So far, he has always listened
Seeking my ancient luggage
A lumpy zippered buckled blip
In the moving sea of steel and leather
Desperately seeking an exit:
One sign among so many
Damn signs are in Babylonian!
Damn letters are so small!
Why must it be so hard for me?
My mission is so pure:
I’m flying to see my friend
*
My friend meets me at the exit
I tell him: He looks wonderful
He tells me how good I look
We are experienced old liars
We know just what to say
We go to very good restaurants
Though we two can no longer
Eat the best spicy foods
Our world has become so toxic
I’m flying to see my friend
*
We tell each other our familiar stories
Memories of once hot now old girlfriends
We trade stories of passion and lust
My Father born in 1912 once told me
When I was a receptive child:
“You can never make any “new” old friends”
Now, so many of them are disappearing
Like pictures dropping out of a yearbook
Growing piles stacked on the floor
Faces discarded by time
Kings, Queens all ending up as Jokers
*
My friend is a skilled surgeon
Rising so high in his field
He was Chief Physician to Odin
My life, however
Navigated shadowy nooks and corners
Transacting using real money and coins
But also knowing intimate details
Of those White men’s lives
On all of the worn and wrinkled
Pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters and dollars
I feel my beloved friend sees me
As Primitive Man with real possibilities
Between us, alone
Our language is studded with laughter
*
One night
Our day’s minutes nearly exhausted
Most lights extinguished
Seated on opposite sides
Of a scarred wooden table
Long enough to serve Vikings
A bottle of Jack Daniels between us
Glinting golden in two crystal glasses
Real conversation consumes the hours
*
Pain, mistakes, loss, regrets
Lurking in the shadow’s silence
Intertwining/flowing
Black blood between us
We speak like men receding in Time
No chance to do it over
Do it better
Next time
The brutal honesty
Gradually tightening
Unbreakable bonds
Which bind us
*
We discuss our blessedly
Not being in Viet Nam
He deep in medical school
I had (not so blessedly) cancer
We discuss Taiwan, Ukraine
We touch on meaning
Inevitably, we discuss Judaism
He is objectively Jewish
I am incessantly Jewish
We consider:
Is it a fantasy?
Is it reality?
He sees life as terminal/abrupt
I see life as a brief intermediate stage
To……………………?
*
He thinks I’m floating mentally on a
Spiritual Roller Coaster in Jerusalem
I worry he has seen far too much of
Arteries, tumors and vacant eyes
I worry he is educated
Beyond imagination’s grasp
I see/feel what isn’t there
He feels, however, we two would have
Both fought together
To the death in
The Warsaw Ghetto
His intensity is transmittable
*
I conclude, quietly, that he is more
Intrinsically fundamentally Jewish
Then he can logically comprehend
We are on non-intersectable
Planes of Perception
of the
Idea of the existence of God
Weary, we ancient conflicting
Masses of antagonized molecules
Stop
Drink coffee
Suppress the Cosmic
Return to discussing women
Yes!
Here, we old men are
Exactly on the same page
*
He is so frail
This fine man I know forever
We sit quietly together
Sheltered for passing seconds
By Fate’s gentle embrace
We have bravely laid bare
Our unvarnished souls
Momentarily inter-changeable
Now, we just sit
Remembering a river
Of endless
Once-Upon-a-Times
*
Frigid Reality
A heartless, relentless, indifferent
Stone-faced Being
Has silently entered the room
My dear friend and I
We may never meet again
We are connected by this truth
Even Time pauses for Love
For now, there is no other place
I want to be
I have flown to see my friend
*
(Essentially a true story, comments welcome)
Inevitable Postscript, added:
May 31, 2023
(36 days later)
I saw my friend in Ohio from April 25 to April 29, 2023. I flew home that day, and three days later my wife Nancy and I — both art lovers — left for Albuquerque, New Mexico on May 2 to celebrate our first year of marriage, at 71 and 73. But on My 11th, with Nancy driving between our 2nd city, Santa Fe, and our 3rd Taos, 70 miles gradually upward among the mountains, my vision stopped working properly and I had trouble talking. Then I couldn’t stay awake. We stopped at the first hospital we could find on the southern outskirts of Taos and I was able to walk into the small hospital where I was whisked with amazing speed into their little ER as they told me was normal procedure for a possible stroke victim.
Every test possible was done on my head, heart and blood and the very kind doctor told me I was “very, very, very lucky ” and had just missed having a stroke or else had altitude sickness. I walked out again four hours later and we continued our time in New Mexico, flying home 5 days later on May 16th. Once back in Wisconsin, a range of tests by my own dozen doctors (no kidding) showed no damage or any evidence of a stroke.
I think of how irony enters a life. When young I once read it is very difficult for a writer to “create” irony in a story, let alone real life.
In the final stanza of my long poem about going to see my friend, the two lines:
“My dear friend and I
We may never meet again”
was intended to suggest that his heart attack at our age could sooner or later kill him.
I did not imagine that 16 days after I typed those ten words that I would (possibly) be the first to die. With my rugged working-class physical life of carpentry and self-employment over 60 years, I mostly felt invulnerable, despite 42 surgeries. Logic has no place in my calculations. I will consider myself now living on “extra time” and treasure each day, each friend and each person I love a bit more than before my Taos mountain experience, if that is even possible.
And that kind Taos doctor:I will remember his “very, very, very lucky” phrase for the rest of my life, as well.
Robert M. Katzman