What road am I on?

 

December 22, 1998

 

It is unlikely that I shall sit here like this, parked before Hank Stern's grave, stalling until the rush hour traffic makes my trip to Hoboken bearable.

A year ago, I had such hope when we came to this part of the world again. I should have taken Thomas Wolf's words to heart and not tried again to go home. After Hank's death, after Sue Merchant's vanishing, after Michael Alexander's flight west, after my uncle Rich’s dying, I should have known Haledon would harbor no hope for me, just an old grave yard of memories I cannot accurately recalled, dug up, dusted off, but never relived.

We turned in the keys to the apartment there a few moments ago, severing the most critical part of our connection. One more day's trip to Paterson to complete Sharon's working requirement, and then most of it all is over.

Despite the purchase of the house I do not feel the same enthusiasm I did when we moved to Haledon, as if we had begun something new. This all feels like a retreat, a ducking for cover into something familiar and safe, where we can stall for time while contemplating what our next move will be. I feel dried up when it comes to journalism, as if it has resulted in a dead end, and this, our working our way turn by turn back along the route by which we came, to search out the turn we should have taken in the first place.

I suppose I should be publishing novels, and making my living as a artist, the way I always wanted to do.

I am better prepared for that role now than ever before in my life, having used journalism to achieve a better grade of writing. But as before, I find myself bored with the delayed reaction publishing always brings (if indeed, I can worm my way through the industry to get any ink). I have become addicted to the instant gratification of writing a weekly newspaper and a monthly on-line magazine.

I fear to let go, to have nothing with which to replace it, and thus to move back into that obscurity out of which journalism has brought me.

In a way, I fear stepping back because I have seen what happened to Hank when he stood back from his chosen career, finding himself strung out in free singing gigs with a Dixieland bandÛ½rather than the rock career he envisioned.

Or am I already playing my own version of the Dixieland?