September Song Thursday, August 28, 2003

The "Sword of Honour" trilogy is named for a weapon belonging to a British knight entombed in Italy on his way to the Crusades; he died in some back-water duel (if I remember correctly) and never made it to the big fight. The trilogy's hero, Guy Crouchback, visits the tomb before setting out to enlist in World War II--he runs his fingers along the sword and asks for its blessing.

But, like the knight, Guy never quite makes it to glory. He gets bumped from the army several times, hangs around training, and goes on several forays that end in ignominy. He wants to do Great Things, but seems doomed to end up like his patron knight: dying before reaching glory.

I mention all this because of something that happened around 1996, about 6:30 in the morning, at my desk. Back then I was carrying not just a spare tire but a full set of steel-belted radials; and I kept them pumped as full as possible. On that otherwise undistinguished morning, I started having severe chest pains. I tried walking them off; I tried squeezing the flesh above my ribs; I tried concentrating on the story I was editing. Then it came to me, not in a flash but in a laugh. If you don't get to a hospital right now, they're going to find you curled on the floor staring up at a twenty-five-inch story about Coca-Cola earnings. Not even Guy Crouchback would go out that badly.

No heart attack, not just yet; just the garlicky whisper of acid reflux. The threat of it was enough to get me on the straight and narrow, foodwise. But the larger life question remained. At any given moment, if I dropped dead, could I honestly say: I was doing something good; I was doing something important. Or even just: I was doing what I wanted to do.

When I'm sitting in front of a computer, as I will be doing for nearly eleven hours at the office tomorrow, the answer is usually no.

Maybe it's time to stop waiting for signposts?

@ 12:18:00 AM,

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