I Got Life

I was performing "Ain't Got No...I've Got Life" with an older, double-chinned Nina Simone in a basement-grey venue that was something like The Music Hall. Zach Ash was at center stage playing my Yamaha keyboard, and during the applause in between the first song and "Happy Birthday, Harvey" I noticed the levels on a soundboard, which were both very low and very high frequencies. Because of this and Nina's mid-song mood swings I said "It feels kind of bipolar up here." Zach gave me a worried look, and we started the next song.

If I had only seen this side of your face, and you were with a group of your friends...

I am in the supermarket. I don't really know what I'm doing here. I decide to check out the books, and soon I stand before the magazines, stuffing my own mouth full of toothpicks (the blood tastes like the cherry tooth-gelatin they had at the dentist's office when I was a kid). While my mouth gushes cherry, I focus on the magazines, which get only my brief attention; to my left, a lecture is going on in an infernal, terra-cotta amphitheater, in which my Spanish literature professor (a demon) discusses the ghost of José Arcadio Buendia. Like my maternal grandfather he haunts in a welcome way his family's gatherings.

I finally find what I'm looking for: Cormac McCarthy's The Road, perhaps my favorite book. Having accomplished a great deal, I walk to the pharmacy, which is also the bathrooms. As I am keeled over a tiny wastebasket full of paper cups, pulling the toothpicks out of my mouth, I realize that there are far more inserted than I remember inserting. And the cherry flavor is gone. Long gone. It is here that I realize why I am going to the pharmacy. I have diabetes. As it happens, the ominous "they" has found a link between bipolar disorder and diabetes. And I have both. I have been gone all weekend to Little Rock, remembered my bipolar drugs, forgotten my insulin syringes. I turn to my left and catch a glimpse of cousin Philip: "I hardly recognized you," I say.

"Yeah, that happens a lot," he says.

"I feel the same way," said cousin Thomas who has been standing nearby, listening in on our conversation. "I mean, we hardly see each other."

"I know," I say.

"If I had only seen this side of your face" - I take his head in my hand and cock it to demonstrate to Thomas - "and you were with a group of your friends..."

I look at them both for a moment:

"I don't think I'd recognize you at all."