Arthur let out a low grown. He was horrified to discover that the kick through hyperspace hadn't killed him. He was now six light-years from the place that the Earth would have been if it still existed.
The Earth.
Visions of it swam sickeningly through his nauseated mind. There was no way his imagination could feel the impact of the whole Earth having gone, it was too big. He prodded his feelings by thinking that his parents and his sister had gone. No reaction. He thought of all the people he had been close to. No reaction. Then he thought of a complete stranger he had been standing behind in the queue at the supermarket two days before and felt a sudden stab--the supermarket was gone, everyone in it was gone. Nelson's Column was gone! Nelson's Column had gone and there would be no outcry, because there was no one left to make an outcry. From now on Nelson's Column only existed in his mind--his mind, stuck here in this dank smelly steel-lined spaceship. A wave of claustrophobia closed in on him.
England no longer existed. He'd got that--somehow he'd got that. He tried again. America, he thought, has gone. He couldn't grasp it. He decided to start smaller again. New York has gone. No reaction. He'd never seriously believed it existed anyway. The dollar, he thought, has sunk for ever. Slight tremor there. Every Bogart movie has been wiped, he said to himself, and that gave him a nasty knock. McDonald's, he thought, There is no longer any such thing as a McDonald's hamburger.
He passed out. When he came round a second later he found he was sobbing for his mother.
Arthur is dealing with profound loss, on a scale none of us has ever experienced. Not only has he lost his entire family, but he has lost everything he has every known. Books. Hamburger's. Nelson's Column. (I had to look this one up--it's a monument to Admiral Horatio Nelson in Trafalgar Square in central London.) Literally, he is profoundly orphaned.
Had I encountered this passage last week, it would have completely set me up for a lengthy meditation on grief and loss. I mean, Arthur is mourning his mother in the last sentence. I have been in this space of loss for a couple of weeks now. My whole world has shifted. I'm about to embark on some new kind of career, whatever that will be. I'm on a steel-lined spaceship, unsure of my destination.
But I'm not going to write about loss. For the past two days, I have been working on a writing project for my wife's church. In the past, I have organized groups of church members to write devotionals--Advent/Christmas and Lenten/Easter. Several years ago, I stepped down as worship leader. I was burned out and feeling slightly unappreciated. (I know, I know. Doing God's work isn't about gaining recognition. It's a long story, and I don't have the energy tonight to delve into that mess.) Consequently, I stopped organizing these devotionals.
Well, this year, I was asked to put together a Lenten devotional, and I (stupidly) accepted. For the last month-and-a-half, I've been begging, bribing, and badgering people into writing devotions for me. If you are counting, I had 47 days to fill. Well, on Sunday, I knew I had six days that hadn't been claimed, so, on Sunday night, I wrote six devotions. Yesterday, when I called the church secretary who assembles the devotionals for me, I found out that six people hadn't turned in their promised devotions. So, last night, I wrote six more devotions.
That is why I haven't posted to this blog for the last two days--writer's burn-out. I am happy to report, when I called the church secretary this morning, she was busy running off copies of the devotional for the Ash Wednesday service tomorrow evening. It's done. In the can. Hot off the presses. Insert whatever metaphor you want here. Not surprisingly, I also am done. Exhausted. Used up. Dried up.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not mad at the people who didn't submit their promised devotions. Life happens. I get that. Deadlines come, and deadlines go. As Douglas Adams, the author of Hitchhiker's, once said, "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." I learned, over the years of organizing these things, that people promise to write for me with the best of intentions. Then, as Ash Wednesday or the First Sunday in Advent approaches, those people find many other more important important things that need to be done. Cleaning out the basement. Vacuuming the carpet. Painting the house. Cutting toenails.
Leaving me with the task of writing a dozen devotions in the space of 48 hours. That is why I have been absent from blogging. I was devotionaling instead. My writing life has pretty much consumed me.
Now, as I come out of this hyperspace of writing, I am struggling for inspiration. Yesterday, I made another attempt at revising a poem that's been giving me problems, as well. I think it was my 14th or 15th draft, and, after eight or so hours of working on it, I can say with all certainty that it still pretty much sucks.
That sums up my state of mind at this very moment.
Sometimes, Saint Marty thinks he should have been a plumber.
