Only The Lonely

For David Foster Wallace (1962-2008)  who schooled us all.

I was staying in Claremont, California,  less than a mile from where he taught at my old alma mater, Pomona College, considered one of the best small liberal arts colleges in the United States. I´d met him in the spring, and was going to see him again to find out if he was interested in the proposal my friend MarkKlopp  had written him about an article on Death By Chocolate, Pomona´s annual chocolatier bash, for Mark´s website THE C SPOT. But at the last minute I decided not to visit him the day before I left on Thursday to fly back to Spain, after seven frustrating weeks of unsuccessful job search as a credentialed public school teacher. The next morning, I was flying above the Atlantic, and David Wallace had hung himself to death in his home. He was 46, and considered one of America´s  best new literary writers, with huge sweeping postmodern novels such as THE BROOM OF THE SYSTEM and THE INFINITE JEST TO HIS CREDIT, as well as a much lauded book of cultural essays, CONSIDER THE LOBSTER.  I barely knew David, but I felt grief nevertheless, for I had enjoyed his books greatly and his sudden leavetaking coincided with my own depression in having to return to Europe empty handed.


Tile, water's promise, bulb light on plastic curtains
then the antiquated nozzle releases its uneven spray
and I step into water, never the same twice,
to slow my California rental plates behind closed lids,
guiding the sedan toward the Pomona College gates,
stopping just before their gravestone colored walls
inscribed with a warning to conjure the ideal learner.
Let only the eager, thoughtful and reverent enter here.
Almost thirty years ago, on graduation day,
I marched in my class through their eternalised pillars,
where we shouted in unison the other sides' curse,
complying with our consecrated alumni custom:
They only are loyal to this college who, departing,
bear their riches in trust for mankind.
I shampoo my hair listlessly in mindless reverie
and drive down last week's Claremont streets
drifting again into summertime's finale
when I spy students peeling off of lush campus lawns
into the town's bright humming cool backdrop
of hyper quaint village shops on Yale Avenue
and hear dogs bark near freshly swept streetcorners
where their owners chat of the election
and the slow rising of the moon as it harvests
all the lost fallen souls orthogonally.
My fingers clutch at my wet scalp,
tease wordless sparks inside skull's limits.
I see myself driving by the building where he taught
and halfheartedly considering a snap visit to see him
and check up if he'd read the pitch for a chocolate web piece
I'd placed in his mailbox last spring to help an old college bud.
Instead I left the followup errand unfulfilled,
doomed on my not-done good deed pile,
and glided past Pearsons Hall toward the freeway
to cruise over a mortuary-topped hill with a clear vista
of downtown skyscrapers, and finally drop off
the rental car, end the failed hunt for work, waft
back through time's zones to Spain's bardo haunts
to finish off THE YEAR OF THE ABSOLUTE NADA.
Toweling off, I'm already on an oil slickened onramp
my eyes scraped open in cotton scramble
flushed suddenly in swirl of imploding sun--
a writer's incandescent mentalics
bursting free from us in finite figments
heading into heavy matter
blazing ten lanes into blackness.
I keep at it until I'm thoroughly dry
and shaking now,
alone in my Andalusian bath,
aglow in my vivid nakedness.

JFW Granada, Spain, September 21, 2008