When I woke up in Intensive Care at Hubble Straits I said to my mind, Are you there? YES, it replied. Since then we’ve been finding a lot to talk about. The other day I said to it, Sometimes I feel, I don’t know, sudden.
GO ON, it said.
What I mean to say is, sometimes I feel as if I’ve just jumped here out of nowhere.
SO DO I, it said. Somehow I wasn’t surprised.
I’ve taken a year’s leave from Deep Space Command and I’m learning how to read music. Soon I’ll be starting piano lessons and when I’m sufficiently advanced I’ll begin the organ. By the time I get to where I can play The Art of Fugue I’ll probably know what I want to do next — I can see my way much clearer now that the circles of emptiness are gone.
Sometimes in the small hours of the night while Caroline sleeps peacefully beside me I sit up in the dark, leaning forward and feeling the world and myself moving from the known to the unknown. I remember how it was when I was eight, how I was like Elijah waiting for the rain, waiting to be the full Elijah. Am I that now? Am I the whole Fremder Elijah Gorn? On the screen of my mind I see eyes of becoming, nodes of possibility expanding in concentric circles. Which brings me to another question: is this world (lacking as it does half a rat, one human head, one very large brain, a couple of spacecraft, and seven crew) the one I started out with?
Flick, flick — flick and fade, John,
on the planet where you are.
Acknowledgments
I am indebted to Dr Arthur Burgess who demonstrated the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction for me in his laboratory at Glasgow Caledonian University; to Richard T. Hoos, MD, of the Neurology Group, PC of Nashville, Tennessee, who promptly and generously answered my medical questions with late-night faxes; and to my son Ben, who read various drafts and gave useful comments.
R.H.
The author and publishers are grateful for permission to reproduce the following: ‘Songs and other Musical Pieces XXVIII’ (here) and ‘Have a Good Time’ (here) from
Collected Poems by W. H. Auden; starlet starlet on the screen, who will follow norma jean? (here) and mythical kings and iguanas (here) by Dory Previn © MCA Music Ltd; ‘The Worms at Heaven’s Gate’ (p. i) by Wallace Stevens; ‘Upon Nothing’ (here) by the Earl of Rochester and ’Tom O’ Bedlam’s Song’ (here) from The Atlantic Book of British Poetry, ed. Dame Edith Sitwell, Atlantic Little Brown 1958; I Thought about You (here) by Jimmy Van Heusen & Johnny Mercer; Just One of those Things (here) by Cole Porter; I Get Along without You Very Well (here) by Hoagy Carmichael; ‘Dover Beach’ (here) by Matthew Arnold; ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ (here) by Oscar Wilde; English Misericords (here) by Marshall Laird, published by John Murray (Publishers) Ltd; On the Good Ship Lollipop (here), words and music by Sydney Clare & Richard A. Whiting © 1934 and 1962 by Movietone Music Corporation, New York, NY. All rights reserved. Used by permission; ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ (here) from The Best of H. P. Lovecraft; Makin’ Whoopee (here), music by Walter Donaldson and words by Gus Kahn © 1928, reproduced by permission of EMI Music Publishing Ltd/Keith Prowse Music Pub. Co. Ltd, London WC2H oEA; ‘The First Duino Elegy’ (pp. 45, 66, 80) by Rainer Maria Rilke; Let’s Get Away from It All (here) by Matt Dennis and Thomas Adair © MCA Music Ltd; They Call It Stormy Monday (here) by T-Bone Walker; Where or When (here) by Lorenz Hart & Richard Rodgers; Bye Bye Blackbird (here), music by Ray Henderson and words by Mort Dixon © 1926, Remick Music Corp, USA. Reproduced by permission of Francis Day and Hunter Ltd, London WC2H oEA, and by kind permission of Redwood Music Ltd. UK administrator; Paint It Black (here) by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards © 1966 by Abkco Music Inc., New York, USA. Exclusive sub-publication rights for the World excluding USA and Canada controlled by Westminster Music Ltd, London SW10 OSZ. Used by permission. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. This copy authorized for sale outside the USA and Canada only; The Duchess of Malfi (here) by John Webster; You Go to My Head (here), music by J. Fred Coots and words by Haven Gillespie © 1938, Remick Music Corp, USA. Reproduced by permission of B. Feldman and Co. Ltd, London WC2H oEA; My One and Only Love (here), words and music by Robert Mellin & Guy Wood © 1952. Sherwin Music Inc./Warock Corp. USA. Reproduced by permission of EMI Music Publishing Ltd, London WC2H oEA; Cheek to Cheek (here) by Irving Berlin; ‘The Man who Jumped’ (pp. 85 — 6) from the Oxford Nursery Book, ed. Iona & Peter Opie; ‘East Coker’, The Four Quartets (here) by T. S. Eliot; Quark, Strangeness and Charm (pp. 91, 172) by Robert Calvert and Dave Brock © 1977 Rock Music Co. Ltd; It’s Only a Paper Moon (here) by Billy Rose, E. Y. Harburg and Harold Arlen; Psalm 137, The Holy Scriptures (pp. III), the Book of Isaiah (pp. 139, 154,177), First Kings (pp. 152, 169) and the Song of Songs (pp. 159-60, 169) used by permission of the Jewish Publication Society; Hamlet (here) by William Shakespeare; First Kings (here); The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (here), trans. Edward Fitzgerald; Eliyahu (here) by Mordechai Ben David; Book of Genesis (here); ‘The Anthropic Principle’, Scientific American (here); Leibniz — An Introduction (here) by C. D. Broad, Cambridge University Press, 1988; The Goodbye Look (here) by Donald Fagen; Linger Awhile (here) by Harry Owens & Vincent Rose; ‘You Are Old, Father William’, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (here) by Lewis Carroll; ‘Ozymandias’ (here) by Percy Bysshe Shelley; So Long, It’s Been Good to Know You (here) by Woody Guthrie © 1950 Folkways Music Publishers Inc., New York, USA. Assigned to Kensington Music Ltd, Suite 2.07, Plaza 535 Kings Road, London SW10 oSZ. International Copyright Secured. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Essex Music Group. Unauthorised copying is illegal; ‘Jim’ (here) by Hilaire Belloc, by permission of Peters, Fraser and Dunlop; God Bless the Child (here) by Billie Holiday & Arthur Herzog Jr. © 1941 by Edward B. Marks Music Company, lyric reproduction by kind permission of Carlin Music Corporation, UK administrator.