JOHN UPDIKE, 76

...and just like that, the greatest living literary critic my generation had known is living no more.

TRIFECTA

1. In an instant I was awake. The moments of my sleep and wakefulness proceed with the same fidelity as an accessory to his principal. My consciousness and sub, in certain areas, are peas of the same pod. Friday night I dreamt I was with my brother in a mall, and out of the blue a man and woman forced him to join them in posing foolish and making faces before the mall's security camera. I reacted by taking my own slr and zoomed in to the face of the man. The dude saw me and apparently didn't like being papped, so he walked towards me while drawing something from his waist which I figured to be a gun. Before the plot - if not the blood - could thicken, I programmed myself to figure out, pffft, it's only a dream! This, my friend, was what I was saying at the outset. In reality as in subconscious, from the harshness of the streets to the comforts of my bed, my rule of thumb is to shy away from squabbles and arguments where I could not become a better person. I simply step out. I go away. I wake up.

2. I looked at the clock and it was 3:00am, Saturday, or four hours away from the 7:00am alarm set the night before. But I felt so stoned to get up, even to head to the bathroom while my internal sewer mimicked Engelbert Humperdinck, Please release me let me go. My blood was circulating like crazy and I felt completely wired so I tried to reach for something within my arm's length to knock me back to sleep: a mallet, a bottle of nyquil, probably a picture of an ex, anything awful. What I grabbed was a collection of short stories edited by Joyce Carol Oates called The ECCO Anthology of Contemporary American Short Fiction (Harper Perennial, 2008) which I bought 4 days ago but have not started reading yet. eUREKA! with a small e, I knew then that given my current zone I should be able to finish one story and the goddess of sleep could lull me back to lalaland in no time at all.

The story I randomly picked to read is entitled Poor Devil by Charles Baxter, a tale of a couple facing the ugly ramifications of divorce and this situation is so casually played up in an awkward moment when they clean up the ex-conjugal house for the benefit of its future occupants. In a fit of irony they talk about themselves while drinking beer and the tales they tell are to be heard by the other person for the first time, the tale-telling almost sounding competitive, provocative even, like a teaser that says There Is Something You Don't Know About Me. The tension heightens during this conversation from time to time not only by the newness of the tales, but by remarks being said in between, like when the woman tells the man the mere sight of him makes her sad, or when he makes fun of her constant use of "archaic" words. From this conversation we can gather clearly all incriminating evidence that led to the divorce: the couple had lost their fondness for each other. And to further juxtapose this misery and thus complete the story, the divorced couple go to a nearby park where they see a mother and her little child holding hands like a private languange and the woman notes the sense of calmness between them.

3. Before noon of this gorgeous Saturday morning I was already driving around Coral Gables, and no other time in my memory that it befitted its monicker as the city beautiful. I headed to Miracle Mile's Actor Playhouse to secure tickets for the March staging of Les Miserables. There was the Beaux Arts Festival at University of Miami campus which I noted down to visit in the afternoon. The trees patrolling the streets along Coral Way, the majesty of Biltmore Hotel, the early brunchers sipping coffee at street cafes add a little zest to what the counselor might otherwise say, Please, heighten your sensitivity to beauty. Then I looked to the woman on my right, on the passenger seat, with her chin resting on the thumb of her upturned right arm and the forefinger constantly tapping on her nose like an art historian analyzing a painting. I noticed she was looking up with keen interest at the mango trees lined up along the road, the trees showing a canopy of flowers that signal a good mango harvest in the spring. She likes mangoes so much they, collectively, could be her 7th child, and noticing that I was sharing the beauty of this projected bounty, she gave me the thumb's up sign. I put my thumb up, too, and screamed yesssss! yesss! yessss!, none of which she heard, of course, and then I held her hand with a strength she struggled to reciprocate with crooked fingers. And then I headed back to drive her home, and in silence, while holding hands, I knew we were both hoping for the fast coming of spring.

HOLIDAY OF GOOD CHEER

It was 7am of Christmas Day and I was driving home, all roads empty and all skies gray. The car stereo was playing my favorite Christmas song, What Child is This, sung by Third Day, but my mind was drawn more to the city that was damp and quiet and absolutely deserted. I wanted to scream, Hello!, Hello!, Is this a joke!, Uncle Frank!, Is this a joke! - like the little Kevin who woke up one morning finding himself home alone and of no family, but of course I can't be a big Little Kevin; I had never dreamed of my family to vanish even by way of a joke... and I will not want the scenario of a post-apocalyptic Miami either; the place was just a little too methodical to be apt for doomsday.

I was driving from the hospital. I had to go home and be relieved of my chore by a sister because of the 9am Mass that holy day that I needed to usher. The entire year I looked forward to shaking Miamian hands again on Christmas Day, having spent it the last four years outside the city. Nothing beats the experience of saying Merry Christmas to parishioners while standing by the door of a welcoming Church - every warm handshake seemed to entrap and discharge a sin off my soul, and every contact, I was to learn later, was like holy shock that jolted me off from a slumbering moment of denigration.

At Church, while doing the usual functions, I was thinking how the previous night, Christams eve, was unusual. It was spent in a hospital and holding the fort, and watching each drop of dextrose unto the tube that will later settle in the patient's vein had its own sense of calming quality, like watching an hourglass in a sacred moment of consecrating time.

Three days before Christmas, it was a Monday, I was talking to my mother on the phone. Before I hung up, I heard her scream, Virgen de la Soledad!, which was then followed by a commotion. I had to hurry and find out what happened, and the 3 minute drive from my place to hers felt like all of 3 hours. When I got to my sister's house where Mom lives, she was lying on the kitchen floor, a bump the size of half a baseball on her head, a bruise the size of my hand on her shoulder, and her right ear was bleeding; the fell caused such an impact that her hearing aid shattered inside her ear into a hundred tiny pieces.

New Year's eve we were back at my sister's house, and as we clanged each other's champagne glasses we found no other word coming a close second to our moment of cheer, To Moms!, and each sip of the bubbly was as momentous as each New Year's eve spent with the family. There was a pad and a pen close to Moms as she was sitting at one end of the tabble. The sheet contained scribbles, Happy New year...I love You... Did you need anything else?... and other worthy scribbles which somehow represented some significant communication.

She was smiling her gorgeous smile, belying a world of body aches and pains that would have equalled the fate of a tortured human condition, and she took everything in good stride. This, she must have thought, is the smile of somebody who will no longer suffer the noise of the world.

FIRST READ FOR 2009

The Chilean Roberto Bolano rocks, wherever he is now. His Savage Detectives is the best book I read in 2008, and is one of the 10 greatest books of fiction in my long reading life.

Thank you, You, for this literate pair of eyes...