QUITTING TIME?

I have been thinking about quitting.

I've quit many things in my life: jobs, towns, people, friends, marriages, chewing tobacco (twice), pipe smoking, North Carolina, going home for Christmas, Sunday dinners with my grandparents, the grating buzz and gossip of extended family. There were others too. Some were painful, some were exhilarating, some were necessary, some were for the right reasons, some not, some carefully considered, others impulsive, some were more destructive than others, some surprised people, some hurt people, some brought tears, others relief, some were good things, some not so good, some terrible, some untroublingly dead, others unkillable, some for unforgettable reasons, others for unrememberable reasons, some nothing but whimsy without any reason at all. I have tried to quit trying but that never lasts. It would be like quitting quitting.

The most puzzling thing I ever quit was playing the guitar I loved to play.

Gibson LGO

I bought my first guitar when I was in high school in 1963. It was a little mahogany Gibson LGO I played until it literally fell to pieces many years later. I carried the unplayable pieces around for years after that, eventually ending up with nothing but the tuners until I threw them out too. I have owned and played some sort of guitar since 1963. Some cheap, some not. I finally ended up with the guitar of my dreams - a Martin D-28 - in the 1980s. I played it nearly every day right up until the day we left New Mexico in June 2003 to move to Texas. We arrived in Austin two days later and I have never played it since.

I've tried to figure out why. No luck. I even tried figuring it out in therapy. Still no luck. I suspect it is related to the fact that when I returned to New Mexico in 1993 I felt at home (New Mexico always has felt that way) and having quit more than one "home" (usually for better, sometimes for worse), I never intended to do it again. But my wife had the chance to go to school in Texas and I thought it was a chance she deserved. I was not happy to leave New Mexico, but I said yes for what I still think were the best of reasons. She deserved it. It seemed like a simple enough choice. I don't regret it.

But somehow I violated something so deeply embedded in my subconscious that I cannot dig it out, hold it up to the light and examine it, something hidden in a dark so dark there can never be enough light to see it. Perhaps I gave up my guitar to punish myself. Perhaps it was an expression of a profound sense of loss I could not express any other way. All I know is that quitting was a decision I did not consciously make and seem unlikely ever to understand.

Neil Young playing Hank Williams' D-28.

The guitar rests unstrung in its case in my office. I clean it from time to time, take pleasure in the marks left on the fretboard by my fingers when I used to play, hold it the way I used to hold it, remember playing, even hear it in my mind, but I am not tempted to play again. Still I keep it and have no plans to sell it or give it away. Do I keep it as a reminder that some things are beyond understanding? Or because there is a chance (or is it a hope?) that some day I will restring it, tune it, strum it, pick it, refriend it, let it talk to me in an old familiar language I can comprehend, and finally understand what happened? If so it will be the only friend I ever quit and gave a second chance.

Lately I have been thinking about quitting something else important: my writing. For a man who has shaped his identity and made his way with words - if not always his living - in one way or another for his entire adult life, it is a big decision.

I do not want it to follow my guitar playing into the silent dark. Right now that is all I know.

Word Machine