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Just got back from the hospital. Surgery appears to be a success. I'm pretty out of it right now and will keep this short.

I'll check in later...

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So I did indeed go to the Dr. last Monday the 30th and was given the news:

Bone not healing, we have to go in and "fix" it.

It's funny the role the mind plays in "coping". I was totally focused on the bones coming together, healing, and moving on. I was told I'd be out of comission for 6 weeks or so in the first week of January. At the 4 week point, looking at the x-rays, no apparent healing was taking place, so the decision was made.

I'm going in tomorrow at 8:15am and will be back home later in the day. Then the recuperating begins all over again, this time in earnest. She is going to meet up the bones of the left clavicle, put a plate on top and screw it into place. What this all means for my playing, only time will tell. Sometimes we squint and try to see past the curtain of the future - but it will not lift. Not out of it's own time anyway. Nope, you gotta live through it.

To tell you the truth, it took me about three weeks after the accident to shake the feeling of being on borrowed time.

I remember clearly the night I got out of the first real doctor's visit back in NY - Monday the 9th of Jan. The accident was Wed the 4th. We spent 4 or 5 hours in the ER that night, dazed but still here. Flew back to JFK on Thurs the 5th. Friday the 6th I saw my first Dr who referred me to my current one which was the aformentioned Monday.

Her office is at 60th and Madison, right across 60th from Barney's Dept store. I came out onto the street that night and just took a big breath, stopped, looked around, watched all the people cruising along in such a hurry. There was a guy, perfectly framed by the sizable plate glass window, on the third floor of Barney's trying on a suit jacket. Somehow, in some way, this perfectly monotonous moment was being recorded by me as something more.

Here, in this crazy, hyperactive city, was a moment of stillness, under glass. And I was trying to think of what was going through the guy's head. The usual stuff, surely: "does this jacket fit me, is it what I want/need, is it the right cut, what am I going to have for dinner?", etc.

But what was so ordinary and routine up there, to me down here was miraculous and meaningful for no other reason than that I was getting to witness it. Still here.

I walked, hunched over, down 60th St towards 5th Ave and the SE corner of Central Park. I noted the huge, amazing windows of the Metropolitan Club above to my right and remembered playing a gig there years ago. I walked across 5th to the imposing gold figure on the horse, determined to find out who it was - it seemed like it was something I "should have" known by now. Damned if it wasn't William Tecumseh Sherman. I wondered, idly, if the choice of putting him at the southeastern corner of the park was symbolic in any way, conjuring up the (in)famous "march to sea" from Atlanta to Savannah, in a southeasterly direction. I also see that he was born on Feb 8, 1820 - the day, 186 years removed, of my surgery.

I looked down 5th and across Central Park South to what used to be the famous Plaza Hotel - the same one where, in 1958, Miles Davis recorded the great Jazz At the Plaza, with one of his best bands. I did a couple of gigs there too - one a memorable New Year's Eve. Walking my bass back across CPS to the Columbus Circle subway stop that night, I saw Ethan Hawke with a small group of people walking the opposite direction. One of those quick, interesting, and ultimately meaningless NY moments. But the famous Plaza Hotel's days were numbered. They are now turning it into condos.

All this stuff - this life, these memories. They are somehow more precious on the other side of this thing.