John Perry Barlow, a friend of missing monologist Spalding Gray, writes:
I try to imagine him actually attempting a swim to Cambodia. I see him swan-diving from the rail of the Staten Island Ferry late Saturday night when he disappeared, rounding Sandy Hook by dawn, and turning south for Cape Horn. He'd be well past the mouth of the Delaware by now, strong swimmer that he is. What a great monologue this is going to make. Or not. Spalding inhabits a magical reality where such feats might actually be possible, but there is something about the current state of New York Harbor that seems adamantly unfit for human survival. In my less magical reality, it's easier to see him beneath all that black water.
Still, it seems premature to write one of those eulogies that I all too often compose for my closest friends. Part of me thinks I should be out there looking for him rather than writing this. Perhaps, I think, he just went out on one of his famous walks, walks that I shared for many droll miles. Perhaps he was hit by a cab and is lying comatose and unidentified in one of this perilous island's anonymous hospitals. He left his wallet and ID at his loft and would thus have been taken for another homeless drifter, as he frequently was. He could be holed up somewhere, waiting for his mood to pass. But he hates (or hated) to be alone. Neither seems likely, but where there's no proof, there remains hope, however unrealistic. What is grief without finality? A terrible confusion and an opportunity to celebrate what one might still have.
