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gary amdahl Saddling the Sorry Ass of Self (and Getting the Hell out of New Bedford, Then Wanting to Get Back Only to Find It’s Too Late) tuesday, january 17th addling the sorry donkey of self and getting the hell out of Sa- Slem. Back to New Bedford with you, you. What could I have been thinking, thinking is certainly the wrong word, acting on, reacting hys- terically to the crazy inflammatory goads of inferior people (yes yes yes I’m sorry I wrote that), hunches, secret beliefs in which I did not actually believe, not even in a dream, for a second — well, for starters, bub, you’re coupling depression that would have much stronger, better men weep- ing in hospitals, with what amounts to get-rich-quick schemes — you, who when it came, year after year, to placing the bet, have been steady as a surgeon — pick a different simile, Jack — careful as a riverboat pilot, you, who have had, until tonight, a life. Why have you done this thing? What will you do now? How shall you live? Oh dear, oh dear, what have I what, bet the ranch on the Mass– Dartmouth Melvilles . ? who just barely escaped being shut out by the Salem State Hawthornes . ? Bet everything . ? My life as a bright but mysterious figure in the cool, slick, sparsely populated family rinks of NCAA Division III hockey is OVER. I even placed a side bet with a well-known halfwit who wouldn’t stop talking about the over-under, and I said hey, how about this: if the Mel- villes do lose, it will be a shutout. You choose odds most favorable to your estimable self and let’s put a crazy amount of money on the line. Just for the fun of it. I do not think the guy is an inferior person. And if I was hysterical, it was a very subtle hysteria indeed. 1 THE MASSACHUSETTS REVIEW wednesday, january 18th well all right , what do you know, what can I say, nick of time, discovered a priceless Andrei Rector drawing in my closet, a portrait of Anton Chekhov which I just sold to an anonymous collector who works out of a pawnshop just down the street — I know, I know, Rector’s great- grandson is eating his paintbrushes in some Hollywood shithole — for quite a lot of money, enough to get me back on the road of high-stakes Division III hockey, anyway. So I’m getting the hell out of New Bedford for the umpteenth time, even though this is my home, I admit it, I feel somewhat comfortable here and know in my heart that the municipality is not at fault for my losses, heading for Providence where the visiting Western New England University Easterners are taking on the Wailing Johnsons of Johnson & Wales University. (You’d wail too if you took a puck to the prick.) And you all know, right, that I bet on these games just to pay the bills while I write my masterpiece about the ups and downs of a Div. III stringer for USCHO.com who stumbles into buggery on a scale that makes Penn State, etc., etc. If all goes well, I’ll follow the East- erners back to Springfield, and hopefully nip over to Great Barrington and the offices of Orion magazine to mess with Chip Blake’s mind: take on the lineaments and gestures of the hard-boiled reporter in the midst of dangerous half-truths, pay me first, THEN I’ll write ya a nice lit- tle stocking stuffer of a Hawthornian wonder-tale that not only relates people and nature, as per the magazine’s mission statement, it relates the people of 50,000 years ago to the era of the “smart, sexy, oh-so-indie” people of today. Oh I feel good again. Just to make my point clear to the Narrator of Chaos, the Lords of the Infinite Stories, and the Field of the One Story That Is All Stories and No Story, I will finish this hamburger and these french fries — or maybe not, just toss it, my heart is no longer in this food, it is in fact vile — cleanse my fingers with a moist towelette, and put on a piece for solo viol, by Captain Tobias Hume, called “Good Againe,” written circa the death of Shakey, #14 of “the first part of ayres,” preceded, wouldn’t you know, by #12, “Death,” and #13, “Life.” I don’t feel smart, I don’t feel sexy, and I have no idea what indie means in such a context, much less oh-so-indie. Fifty thousand years from now, when they discover our caves, will they muse on how smart and sexy and indie we were? I am lost in smartness and sexyness and indieness. I am lost not in time, neither in space, my lord am I abandoned rather in consciousness. Trees are conscious, rocks are conscious, dust and ash are 2 2 Gary Amdahl conscious and it never dies, and it is here that I am lost, my lord. And as I listen to this strange tenuous minor sorrow that is “Good Againe,” I have to wonder what Captain Hume meant, the order especially: as a soldier surely he was used to the serene aftermath of atrocity, the deliquescent beauty of corpses — and must have moved daily, psychologically and physiologically, from death to life, and once surrounded by life, was inclined to feel good againe . ? This ordering troubles me: it doesn’t seem right — and yet of course it is, everything dies, life goes on, and sooner or later, you are good againe. Life, perhaps, good againe . death. But when are we ever truly good againe? Only in retrospect, only in memory. When are we truly alive? In an illusory moment. Dead? Never. The dead only seem so in that illusion plaguing the living. thursday, january 19th not the way I wanted it to go: my heart was with the Western New England Easterners, but the Wailing Johnsons scored three goals in the last ten minutes . 6–4. Chastened by the disaster in Salem and happy to be alive, I wagered nothing whatsoever. Associates cocked eyebrows at me but that is a behavior I admit I have a passion for evoking. It is at least a hobby to which I am devoted. I was just happy. It was good againe to be in the RISC with 117 people, one or two of them friends, a handful of acquaintances or business associates — some of them friends, too, to be sure — but most of the small loud crowd, to me indifferent. I am going to make the funds from the sale of the Rector last through this season AND THE NEXT. Followed the team back to Springfield, and a little farther, to Westfield, where I stay in a little rooming house across the street from the cemetery. From here it’s a short pleasant walk to Amelia Park, where I hope the Owls will surprise Mass–Dartmouth, mainly because I’ve got the bitter taste of ruin in my mouth still, and can’t help but associate it, RECKLESSLY AND UNFAIRLY, with New Bedford. Because I am noting the recklessness and emotionally driven injustice well ahead of time, I have no fear of sudden gambling. I’ve got problems, but they’re not like that. I’ll just watch the game. Even though my appetite isn’t what it should be, given my return to high spirits, I’ll eat some nice hot food and I’ll stroll through the cemetery. 3 THE MASSACHUSETTS REVIEW friday, january 20th the owls played well last night, for sixty of us at the Amelia, but the Mass–Dart Melvilles came on steadily. My feelings about New Bedford, however, that isn’t such a bad place to live, all things considered — these feelings have slackened remarkably. I have to admit it — don’t I? It’s a ter- rible place to live. I hate living there. It’s just like the food I’ve been eating. I want to be anywhere but there, eating anything but it. My working un- derstanding remains: my losses were not the fault of the municipality. My losses were the fault of recklessness and hubris. But I can’t shake it. I don’t think I want to go back to New Bedford. Ever. The flip is disconcerting, of course, but so is the knot of anxiety I feel in the pit of my stomach at the thought of going back to that miserable apartment. But no! I catch myself firmly by the wrist: nothing wrong with the apartment! Occupant to blame! In any case, for the time being . that chapter is over. Heading north. One goes east to sit with a master, one goes south for retribution and redemption, one goes west to dwell in uncertainty . and one goes north to go home. I always feel like I’m going home when I drive north, whether it’s into the maw of a blizzard of sunlit white so bright it hurts my eyes, or deepening darkness, the headlights dimming, the snow piling up on the windshield as the wipers struggle and slow and stop. Today, home is Castleton, VT, where the Cads (one of the top teams perennially in Division III polls) are hopping over to Southern Maine to play the up- and-down Bounders. But not before I have lunch in Burlington with my old friends, Tom McMurdo and Heather Kennedy. They are Kentuckians, the son and daughter of the last two men to run bootleg whiskey around Berea (where there’s a campground I shudder, not altogether unpleas- antly, to remember).

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