Comments on: Watching The Wheels Go Round – Hanging out with Lennon, Emerson, and Ezekiel http://tomarie.tzo.com/wp/2009/05/07/watching-the-wheels-go-round-hanging-out-with-lennon-emerson-and-ezekiel/ Sir, the worst way of being intimate, is by scribbling. --Dr. Johnson Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:22:17 -0400 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc hourly 1 By: Stephen Lewis http://tomarie.tzo.com/wp/2009/05/07/watching-the-wheels-go-round-hanging-out-with-lennon-emerson-and-ezekiel/comment-page-1/#comment-1258 Stephen Lewis Fri, 08 May 2009 20:12:28 +0000 http://tomarie.tzo.com/wp/?p=646#comment-1258 Only minutes before I clicked on the link leading from facebook to this post, I had just finished listening to a New Yorker podcast of Roger Angell reading a John Updike short story, "Playing With Dynamite," a tale of the distances one takes and the memories that fill to one as old age erases the boundaries of self. A week after I received the call mentioned in your post, I called the home number of the friend who had tracked me down. His wife, who I also had not seen since 1968, answered, "Why Steve Lewis, I'll be, its been more than 40 years, hold on, I'll give you Fred." The same succinctness characterizes the passing of time, a hiatus bridged by a word of hello. Tonight, before going to bed in this shabby borrowed apartment on a peacful dead-end Istanbul street with a view across the Bosporus from Europe to Asia, I will take my second dose of a medicine that my father took for the last 15 years of his life. The tablets have not changed in shape, color, or feel in 35 years. The medicine is strong, and, as I break each tablet into quarters, just as I did for my father long ago, I suddenly feel exactly as I did in my twenties, even as I begin the countdown of decline. Thanks for the post, Tom. PS Not only do we both need vacations; we should take vacations, and enjoy them! Only minutes before I clicked on the link leading from facebook to this post, I had just finished listening to a New Yorker podcast of Roger Angell reading a John Updike short story, “Playing With Dynamite,” a tale of the distances one takes and the memories that fill to one as old age erases the boundaries of self.

A week after I received the call mentioned in your post, I called the home number of the friend who had tracked me down. His wife, who I also had not seen since 1968, answered, “Why Steve Lewis, I’ll be, its been more than 40 years, hold on, I’ll give you Fred.” The same succinctness characterizes the passing of time, a hiatus bridged by a word of hello.

Tonight, before going to bed in this shabby borrowed apartment on a peacful dead-end Istanbul street with a view across the Bosporus from Europe to Asia, I will take my second dose of a medicine that my father took for the last 15 years of his life. The tablets have not changed in shape, color, or feel in 35 years. The medicine is strong, and, as I break each tablet into quarters, just as I did for my father long ago, I suddenly feel exactly as I did in my twenties, even as I begin the countdown of decline.

Thanks for the post, Tom.

PS Not only do we both need vacations; we should take vacations, and enjoy them!

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