Wittily in high school he formed CREEP to twice anoint me as class president. Our Committee to Re-Elect the President was the same moniker as the Watergate disgraced Nixon reelection effort. I am grateful my friend was not a Republican as I. I knew my city, Indiana, our nation, as well as the world only from family and my suburban schooling, all ingrained from reading my local conservative newspaper. His understanding was broadened by the rugged hallways of urban public schools he attended before we collided in private school. I am grateful for the particulars resulting from those encounters.
Some decades back I exited downtown Indianapolis after throwing myself headfirst in to rebuilding its decayed urban fabric. I vowed never to return. A year ago I moved back. I like it. The city canvass completed off my watch.
Away, I matured into a well-rounded human, experiencing the Indiana prairie where the neighborhood smart phone app daily reports fox and coyote. Turkey vultures spiral for field mice. The field in back of my farmhouse rotates corn and soybean. I mowed acreage, and painted and replaced what constantly wore out on my ancient abode. Each season was new and robust.
Now downtown, the neighborhood app continuously reports gunfire. Ambulances, police, and fire trucks rumble by at all hours of the day and night. But I am cocooned twenty floors up, behind glass, concrete, and brick unbothered and happy. An entirely new crop of folk live downtown but I also constantly see hearty friends who stayed the downtown course.
My friend, on the other hand, lived his adult life pocketed near our hard streets also quite happily. One decade, he and I played tennis nearly every Sunday - mostly on the courts of our prep school. Neutral ground. The few times we played near my farmhouse he was sure to comment on Stepford wives playing adjacent or ‘spot’ fascist insignia. We played rain or shine, in the cold, and in the heat, usually three sets. We felt alive. Après tennis we would coffee at Petite Chou, the ‘adult student union’ at 49th and Illinois to swap lies. Like me, he constantly rode his bike. Me in the gentile suburbs. He through urban life. He rode the Hilly Hundred in south central Indiana many, many times. Me once.
Some decades back we had lunch at the City Market after not seeing each other for a while. He listened as I wailed about divorce. Toward the end I asked how he was. If you read his obituary you will learn, as I did that day, of his Guillaine-Barré syndrome an immune disorder that rapidly deteriorates nerve coatings. To sustain him while he recovered they induced a long coma leaving his wife to care for his four very young children. He then had several months of physical rehab as his muscles had atrophied. A lesson I learned was always to focus on others. I knew I would get through what life placed in my way and bitterness only made recovery harder. Whenever asked, I would always rise to his challenge.
DOS is an early developed robust and reliable computer disk operating system. For almost his working career my friend sold systems based on DOS. He was lucky DOS had staying power. It kept him employed. My friend is like DOS. Early on he had a coherent long lasting view of what is important in this world. I depended on him for decades.
More recently we fell out of touch. Nonetheless, I ‘liked’ his many postings of images of his children when they were young. Which is why I was unprepared to learn he died after a yearlong battle with cancer. I forgot life has limits.
Last night I made two deep dish pizzas and delivered them this morning to his wife still at their pocketed enclave. Then I headed for the airport and not the calling. Within our limited moments, I have a lot I want to see and witness. This earth-bound existence.
Dust to dust. In the quantum world there is strong probability that specific atomic particles are where the observer sees them. But they may also be on the rings of Saturn, or on a train to Denali National Park. So, sub-atomically, the atomic ashes that are now my friend may be part of the highest peak in North America. And so I travel to that majestic place. Selfishly. In the quantum world observation affects particles. It changes them. So, by observing, the observer never sees what is there. I am not observing the Indianapolis calling of my friend. Perhaps I may on my journey.
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