This essay captures many things: the texture of a young person’s day in a comically tedious job, the goofy charm of Antony Alda, the drift and convergence of lives over time, the heedlessness of youth, when you can’t believe that anything will end forever. I love the story of the Aldas waiting on “the Arn,” and the quote about sleep. I’d better stop now before I start to cry.
Rona, it's nearing 15 years since I originally wrote that remembrance, so it's that many more years into my past that my youthful friend has faded. Still, every time I reread the piece for an occasion like this, the feelings all come back to me. Tony comes back to me. His joie de vivre was a gift to all who knew him.
Even better on the second read with the Wikipedia link in the afterword. To lose life to death at such a young age is to define the uncertainty of existence.
Thank you for reading again, Mary. To speak of the Wikipedia link -- there's no way to know from the abundance of links there now are to information about Tony what an absolute dearth there was in 2010. As for death in youth, at the age of Housman's athlete, at 52, you put it just right. You know.
Jay, there's lots of great stuff here. I am continually amazed at the fascinating life you have led and all the people you have encountered. It's quite the ride, my friend.
This paragraph in particular spoke to me:
"For me, as L.P. Hartley wrote in The Go-Between, “the past is a foreign country.” There are homes of friends there, sunlight and music, but also old, forbidding houses at the ends of lonely streets, dark alleys where bad things happened, vacant lots where something was lost or taken from me. When something ended — and it ended, I came to believe, for a reason — I didn’t go back to it."
This has been the way I approached the past as well. It baffles my wife as she is so good at keeping connections with everyone we have ever encountered.
Thank you very kindly, Matthew. Truly. Whatever it was and appears as, I'm trying to make it amount to something.
That is a very interesting parallel in our lives, not the first. That's a gift of personality your wife and Julia have, one I greatly admire, though I had neither the life nor, probably, the personality, to nurture it myself. Julia has been greatly rewarded by it, as I'm sure so has your wife.
This essay captures many things: the texture of a young person’s day in a comically tedious job, the goofy charm of Antony Alda, the drift and convergence of lives over time, the heedlessness of youth, when you can’t believe that anything will end forever. I love the story of the Aldas waiting on “the Arn,” and the quote about sleep. I’d better stop now before I start to cry.
Rona, it's nearing 15 years since I originally wrote that remembrance, so it's that many more years into my past that my youthful friend has faded. Still, every time I reread the piece for an occasion like this, the feelings all come back to me. Tony comes back to me. His joie de vivre was a gift to all who knew him.
A golden friend you had.
Even better on the second read with the Wikipedia link in the afterword. To lose life to death at such a young age is to define the uncertainty of existence.
Thank you for reading again, Mary. To speak of the Wikipedia link -- there's no way to know from the abundance of links there now are to information about Tony what an absolute dearth there was in 2010. As for death in youth, at the age of Housman's athlete, at 52, you put it just right. You know.
Jay, there's lots of great stuff here. I am continually amazed at the fascinating life you have led and all the people you have encountered. It's quite the ride, my friend.
This paragraph in particular spoke to me:
"For me, as L.P. Hartley wrote in The Go-Between, “the past is a foreign country.” There are homes of friends there, sunlight and music, but also old, forbidding houses at the ends of lonely streets, dark alleys where bad things happened, vacant lots where something was lost or taken from me. When something ended — and it ended, I came to believe, for a reason — I didn’t go back to it."
This has been the way I approached the past as well. It baffles my wife as she is so good at keeping connections with everyone we have ever encountered.
Thank you very kindly, Matthew. Truly. Whatever it was and appears as, I'm trying to make it amount to something.
That is a very interesting parallel in our lives, not the first. That's a gift of personality your wife and Julia have, one I greatly admire, though I had neither the life nor, probably, the personality, to nurture it myself. Julia has been greatly rewarded by it, as I'm sure so has your wife.