Rum, between, river, alone

Days Between

Thinking about the conversation with k about the hot buttered rum string band got me going. There was a time in college when we would rehearse Shakespeare till the small hours of the morning. Outdoors, Delhi, November. Cold. That's when I got to know S. He wasn't a theater type, really. He wasn't even from our college, he was from across the road. But he'd hang out with us anyway, late at night.

It was he who introduced us to the internal heating device known as rum-and-honey. Take some rum, mix it with some honey. With your forefinger, in the proportions du jour. Preferably in a used Kwality ice cream cup (to cock a snook at nature, as it were). Then everyone gets to dip a finger in, and scoop. Suck in silence, then get thee on stage and deliver thy line, forsooth. We'll save the last go for you.

Funny, but times moved on. S committed suicide the next year. No one knows why. He jumped from somewhere. I wrote a poem for him soon after, at the incredibly banal event of a college festival. The title was Deja Vu, same as a trite Yngwie Malmsteen number that I'd been listening to at that time. The poem won first prize. We all moved on.

I no longer eat honey, and my rum consumption is off ever since I went off cola. But the mention of hot buttered rum, and this recent conversation about happiness, brought me back to S. Standing on the cusp of a new research project about people's lay beliefs about the transience of emotions, this makes me think. Enough research suggests that people adjust to ups and downs in their lives far quicker than they'd ever have believed. What is it about death, then. Many people have died in my life since S -- there was a time when I'd dread the ring of the phone at night (Buddy Guy -- Where is the next one coming from?). Death punches a hole out of you. A part of you stops in time, in a freeze frame, right there. Sometimes you feel as if it's all ended. There's no way forward. There's no way to forget that feeling.

But, strangely enough, a part of you does go on. Life - that word - goes on. A little less rich, sometimes a lot less rich. But go on it does. I think of it as if a person is a fuzzy dust ball hanging in space, with threads reaching out all around, connecting to other dust balls. And each death cuts a line, and a dust ball floats away. And as life goes on, some threads disappear, new ones appear, old friends sit on a park bench like bookends. Silently sharing the same fears. Which brings me back to my conversation with k, and the Black Muddy River she mentioned.

When the last rose of summer pricks my finger

And the hot sun chills me to the bone

When I can't hear the song for the singer

And I can't tell my pillow from a stone

I will walk alone by the black muddy river

And sing me a song of my own

I will walk alone by the black muddy river

And sing me a song of my own

When the last bolt of sunshine hits the mountain

And the stars start to splatter in the sky

When the moon splits the southwest horizon

With the scream of an eagle on the fly

I will walk alone by the black muddy river

And listen to the ripples as they moan

I will walk alone by the black muddy river

And sing me a song of my own

Black muddy river

Roll on forever

I don't care how deep or wide

If you got another side

Roll muddy river

Roll muddy river

Black muddy river roll

When it seems like the night will last forever

And there's nothing left to do but count the years

When the strings of my heart start to sever

And stones fall from my eyes instead of tears

I will walk alone by the black muddy river

And dream me a dream of my own

I will walk alone by the black muddy river

And sing me a song of my own

And sing me a song of my own

- Robert Hunter

And in case you were wondering, yes, this tune did come up on the iPod's random rotation, just before I started to type.