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I. At a podium at Park Street Church on December 12,
2009 at approximately 5:45 pm Lewis greets an anonymous audience
("Hello Lewis") and begins to tell the story of his second to last
drink (sublingual alcohol swabs). In an hour he describes as not
honest he proceeds to detail his inability to knot a tie on the
occasion of his latest award for medical excellence. When finished,
the room applauds -- even the sick who go unattended.
II.As this happens, on an outbound train from
Government Center to Riverside, a white teenage girl on her way home
after an afternoon of window shopping, hanging out with friends, and
ironic indifference feels a hand run up her leg, only to then stop
just short of her fantasy. In a moment she acknowledges as not
innocent she then presses into that passenger's hand, a black teenage
girl with baby in an Even-Flo. At Kenmore, they exchange numbers.
III.And all the while, on the ice rink at Frog Pond in
Boston Common, a middle-aged English professor skates alone
counter-clockwise among the crowd of children and parents, friends and
lovers with the music band playing "O Tannenbaum" in a lacy curtain of
snow. And in one of those accidents that would strike anyone as
entirely not fair this single man catches an edge, falls back, and
cracks his head open. Later, a Zamboni will pass over the ice as if
to try to erase what happened, and how we all are.
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