May 17, 2010

Drove to Johnson City, a route affording goodly grandeur to the left and right, just now colored with that incomparable green of Mountain spring. Went to see J. He looks great. He looks healthy and, aside from wanting to cover himself up in tattoos, well. The tattoo engulfing his right arms (a sleeve, I think they call it) was fresh, indeed unfinished, and when I embraced him I must have caused searing pain. The haunted look is gone. He’s fit and bright-eyed as a forest creature. His son was born in April. He has found a new woman, Jessica, or rather she found him. When he was gone for a moment, she confided the stratagems she used to reel him in. It is well on every side. He is taken care of. I left a little sad, though, just a shade of a shade of embarrassed melancholy, because if things were not going so well, he would have needed me more. Freudenschade? Johnson City is prettier, smaller, emptier than I remember it.