Staring at a Bookshelf in Some Sadness

As I get older, I don't seem to have any problems thinking of things that make me sad. We will not even get into the physical decline, all right? Okay, just one little (?) thing: When I was a boy in Oklahoma I ran around all day--and I mean ran. The only time I slowed down was to eat a meal or go to bed--though I really slowed down when Mom told me it was time to clean my room.

And now? I cannot run at all. Yeah, I have protesting joints now, but the main reason is vertigo. I live now by a very simple formula: If you run, you will fall. And that pretty much keeps me from running!

Okay, I said I wasn't going to get into physical decline. It seems I lied.

And I will not get into the deaths of family and other loved ones, deaths that, of course, have accelerated as I've aged. One of my best friends from high school is gone, one ... NO! NO MORE OF THIS!

But what I was really thinking about was lunch and supper. Joyce and I usually eat in our family room--we sit on the couch and pull up the little coffee table that you see in the picture above. (I took the picture from my vantage point.) From where I sit I can easily see some of our bookshelves, and that, lately, has become the problem.

From my lunch-and-dinner seat I can read some of the books titles, some of the names of the authors; others I don't even need to read from a distance: I recognize the volume.

And so I see Jay Parini's biography of John Steinbeck (dead), his biography of William Faulkner (dead), books by and about John Cheever (dead), Robert Frost (dead), Norman Mailer (dead), Shakespeare (dead) ...

I bet you're getting the idea by now.

Sometimes, sitting on that couch, I look over at those shelves, see those books, think about all those now-silent voices, voices that still "live," in a way, in the pages of their wonderful books, but voices forever stilled, forever prevented from saying something new to me or anyone else ...

It's horrible. I've watched, one by one, the deaths of the writers I grew up reading and admiring. Even loving. Thomas Berger. Richard Wright. Saul Bellow. James Purdy. Iris Murdoch. Robert B. Parker. Ernest Hemingway. And on and on and on and on ... 

Maybe I need to eat somewhere else? Though maybe I could write a best-selling self-help book: The Crying  Man's Diet?