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The 'Old Man' Who Could See Lonliness doesn't last forever. By Greg Blake MillerPublished: May, 2003

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I do not do crossword puzzles. I never learned to play chess. I once lived at a golf club without picking up a golf club. I love to play sports but my back hurts. I love to hike but the mountain's far away. I love the ocean but it's cold. I love the beach but it's hard to brush wet sand from bare feet. I like to be alone but I'm lonely. I consider friends a treasure and try at all costs to avoid them. I like books but can't bring myself to start one. I love sitting down with the paper but I can't stand having newsprint around the house. I like talking on the phone but I don't like it when people call. I love learning but I did not love my student years. I love history but I cannot watch "The History Channel." I would like my town to have more museums but I do not go to museums. I love The New Yorker but I have no plans to go to New York. If I could persuade myself to become physically fit, I would be an advocate of physical fitness. If I could relax, I would speak out for relaxation. If I were tan, surely I would have something nice to say about sitting in the sun. I live in the suburbs and dream of the city. I lived in the city and dreamed of the country. I have thought of moving somewhere where I can dream of the suburbs. I love music but I listen to sports talk. I listen to sports talk because I miss talking sports with my friends. I miss talking sports with my friends because they call me and I do not call them back. I once spent my nights studying thick books until they studied me back. They read my face and my palms and my mind and told me I should get up and go for a walk, and so I did. I once spent my nights walking from my basement apartment to a big city street at 1, 2, 3 in the morning. I once spent my nights looking in the windows of old bars at old men who could not sleep, and I could almost identify with them, but not quite, because they had gone into a place, and I could only walk past and look in the window. I once spent my nights that way. Times like those pass, and we miss them. Emptiness, once felt, nestles in us, inactive, latent, waiting for its moment to come out in masquerade-ball finery, all got-up as some romantic ideal of freedom, ready to convince us that what we really need to do is walk down streets at wee hours and look through plate glass windows at sad jazz bands and weary-eyed old salesmen. Emptiness is picturesque, because in our emptiest moments all that is left to us is to watch. Even when emptiness is hiding, even when life seems to have filled up with handshakes and paychecks and soft arms that embrace you and little hands that reach up to you and lives that depend on you, even when the emptiness is hiding, it whispers, it tells you not to play the game, to answer the call, to take the swim, not to get the feet wet, lest the feet become cold. It whispers. If you fill your life with everything, how will you ever again feel the undiluted, unsubstantiated hope of Nothing, the empty cup that is full of possibility? Fortunately, basic grammar brings us back to our senses. When you start capitalizing a word like Nothing, you can be fairly certain your metaphysic is just panic in disguise. (I read something like that in a magazine I like.) Back in the basement, you did not want to be alone. Now you are not alone. You do not want to be alone again. Your wife is happy in your home, your town, your life. Your son walked, and then he talked, and now he walks to you and talks and you understand that he is telling you what he wants. And what he wants is a life full of everything. And he'd like you to fill it up with him. And he is 2 1/2 now. Soon it won't matter if your back hurts or if the summit is high or the water is cold. You will play and you will climb, and you will dive right in. You're walking down streets again, but you're passing through the doorways now, and a little boy is beside you, and when you get to the other side you realize you're not an old man after all. Greg Blake Miller of Las Vegas has completed his first novel. He is a regular contributor to this column.

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