To Conquer my Enemy: A Lifelong War
I have but one enemy and he taunts me constantly. I try to ignore him, but one blustery day he works me into a rage harmonious with the anguished weather. I am suddenly caught up in a fiery accusation. “Why do you crawl when I want you to hurry, and fly when I want you to wait?,” I implore him venomously. He offers no answer. “Why do you catch me when I am ahead and leave me behind in your dust? Never once have you allowed me to win anything.” He doesn’t flinch. “I never finish all the things I want to do with you around,” I persist. I might as well be yelling at a rock. But I can’t give in now, all the frustration, the panic, the dread he has ever invoked in me is overflowing from my hurting soul. I pivot awkwardly, alert for his sly movements; he exists for the pleasure of sneaking up on me. A tremendous gust of biting wind strikes me. “You did that, didn’t you? You wear down everything dearest to me. No wonder you have no friends, you’ve broken all their hearts . . . Why, you are nothing but a murderer; I never knew my own grandfather because of you.” He blinks and, astonishingly, stops his tedious drone. He can’t be dead, I reason, he never dies. Nonetheless, I rejoice in my newfound freedom. I have eradicated the plague of humanity. This villain is the defeater of the world’s greatest people. Ovid’s “devourer of everything,” Milton’s “subtle thief of youth,” Ben Jonson’s “old bald cheater,” Emerson’s “surest poison;” he is all this and more to the great ones. But it is I, meager person that I am, who has conquered him. I feel no grief. Henry Berlioz even says that, “ he is a great teacher, but unfortunately [he] kills all [his] pupils.” He deserves a taste of his own medicine. Besides, even if the phone lines weren’t down, and I could call a doctor, Piozzi has already affirmed that physicians have “no power over him.” I fall into a restless sleep that agitated night. In my mind, Henry Thoreau’s words terrorize me: “You can’t kill [him] without injuring eternity.” And the morning finally arrives. An icy flood of emotion envelops me, is it relief . . . or dismay? Never has such a cold shower awakened me. The shrill,
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