Rear View

I took this photo earlier today, sitting at a red light in the exit lane of a major American freeway. I was driving back from an appointment to have the stitches removed from my minor skin surgery two weeks ago. I hadn't spoken to a single soul for hours, actually, sunk into self-absorption, the curse -- and blessing -- of the writer. I was listening to Graham Green's novel The End of the Affair, one of my favorite books about love and obsession, its gloom and heaviness and pitched ambivalence a perfect parallel to the sky above. Sometimes it's best to sink into gloom, I thought, just as the man rolled by me in his wheelchair. He held out his hat, his feet shuffled forward, down the line, in my rear view.