theorionhunter’s Reviews > Blues for Mister Charlie > Status Update

I just wanted to be told that I hadn’t lost my mind. I’ve lost so much. I think there’s something wrong in being—what I’ve become—something really wrong. I mean, I think there’s something wrong with allowing oneself to become so lonely. I think that I was proud that I could bear it. Each day became a kind of test—to see if I could bear it.

He wasn’t at all line I thought he was. He fell on—fell on me—like life and death. My God. His chest, his belly, the rising and the falling, the moans. How he clung, how he struggled—life and death! Life and death! Why did it all seem to me like tears?

He lay beside me on that bed like a rock. As heavy as a rock—like he’d fallen—fallen from a high place—fallen so far and landed so heavy, he seemed almost to be sinking out of sight—with one knee pointing to heaven. My God.

I used to watch you roaring through this town like a St. George thirsty for dragons. And I wanted to let you know you haven’t got to do all that; dragons aren’t hard to find, they’re everywhere. And nobody wants you to be St. George. We just want you to be Parnell. But, of course, that’s much harder.

I will not let you go until you give me a sign! A sign that in the terrible Sahara of our time a fountain may spring, the fountain of true morality, and bring us closer, oh, my Lord, to that peace on earth desired by so few throughout so many ages. Let not our suffering endure forever. Teach us to trust the great gift of life and learn to love one another and dare to walk the earth like men.

But it is not the past which makes our hearts so heavy. It is the present. Lord, where is our hope? Who, or what, shall touch the hearts of this headlong and unthinking people and turn them back from destruction?

Everyone under the sound of my voice, and many more souls than that, feel as I feel, and tremble as I tremble, and bleed as I bleed.

He took all my attention—the deepest attention, maybe, that one person can give another. He needed me and he made a difference for me in this terrible world—do you see what I mean? And—it’s funny—when I was with him, I didn’t think of the future, I didn’t dare.