From the Archives. (September 2006) Back in my architectural design days, I designed a building, then built a miniature version of it out of matchsticks just to see if I could.
I’ve been thinking about all those matchsticks after reading the UN report that a whopping 5,106 people in Baghdad died violent deaths in this past June and July alone.
So here’s what I want to do. I want to place Dick Cheney and George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld in a dark room with a camera on them and a sepia-toned shots of children’s faces playing behind them, and have them light and then extinguish, one at a time, 5,106 wooden matchsticks and toss them into a pile (or maybe a pit would be more appropriate).
Then I would like to show this footage to every American and ask him or her to think about what they did in June and July of this year as 5,106 people were exterminated.
Our president apparently believes that calling torture an “alternative set of interrogation procedures” will fool the people and, sadly, it just might since because, let’s face it, we’re awfully busy holding on to our jobs these days ... and those Republinazis who protested when Clinton said he didn’t inhale don’t seem to be standing up now to object to this ridiculous terminology.
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Friday, November 2, 2007
157. IDLE AND BLESSED, OR, JUST ANOTHER SPECK IN THE STEW
From the Archives
(September 2005) First day of autumn, my favorite time of the year. Our days are getting shorter. The air is getting crisper. And our grandmother trees are transitioning from busy food-making preparations into their long party season of stored sugar highs. The state fair. Apples. Rakes and leaves. And finally we leave the steamy 100° days behind. Full speed ahead to the chlorophyll—seep into those branches and turn our leaves to gold!
I like to think of those sugar-loaded winter trees as statelier versions of that annoying little addicted sister in John Waters’ film Pecker, petulantly shouting “Me want SUGAR now!!”
But we were talking about autumn, weren’t we? The mountains’ fine crispness and leaves.
Mary Oliver says she doesn’t know exactly what prayer is, but she does
(September 2005) First day of autumn, my favorite time of the year. Our days are getting shorter. The air is getting crisper. And our grandmother trees are transitioning from busy food-making preparations into their long party season of stored sugar highs. The state fair. Apples. Rakes and leaves. And finally we leave the steamy 100° days behind. Full speed ahead to the chlorophyll—seep into those branches and turn our leaves to gold!
I like to think of those sugar-loaded winter trees as statelier versions of that annoying little addicted sister in John Waters’ film Pecker, petulantly shouting “Me want SUGAR now!!”
But we were talking about autumn, weren’t we? The mountains’ fine crispness and leaves.
Mary Oliver says she doesn’t know exactly what prayer is, but she does
know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
What do I plan to do? I plan to be outdoors—making art, making music, making love.
A pal and I have been talking about death a lot since the hurricane hit. She’s terrified of dying and says her fear interferes with her ability to enjoy life in the present tense. “Just knowing I’m going to die ruins it for me,” she says.
I’m not particularly afraid of dying, but really don’t want to die in pain.
Still, I rage against the dying of my light as much as anyone else, mourn and miss loved ones who have been dead for years, and go to the gym on a regular basis in an effort to stave off the inevitable.
And, unlike my friend, I don’t believe that there’s some benevolent being with his eye on this particular sparrow, that one day he will come scoop me up in his kind godly hand and set me down on some proverbial street of gold.
I don’t believe (or disbelieve) in previous lives either, have never once though that I might really be Cleopatra or Edna St. Vincent Millay or Sylvia Beach reincarnated.
I am, on the other hand, very fond of the notion that, since I am composed of matter and antimatter (which doesn’t disappear), then I might simply change form and continue to exist, with possible awareness.
If this is the case, then I would like to settle into the form of a Pacific NW river rock that can smell the air. I recognize that it’s just as likely that I could wind up a speck of dirt stuck under some stinkin’ cow turd in rural Texas though.
Frankly, I know that I probably won’t settle into any particular shape at all, but will instead mix with all the other dispersed beings in the universe to form some giant universal stew that, with luck, is cognizant of our universality.
And that notion doesn’t bother me much at all.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
127. LIVE AS IF YOUR HAIR IS ON FIRE
From the Archives
(July 2005) Just went out in 99° weather to get my yard mowed so I can leave at 4 AM to attend my uncle’s funeral. He was only 52 and in great physical condition (we thought) before he dropped dead of a brain aneurism.
Sobering.
The service is at my grandparents’ rabidly primitive Baptist church in a tiny southern farming community and I am uncomfortable going there because the place is so blatantly homophobic. They’re southern first, though, so I know they’ll be distant but civil to me (unless I’m alone on some dark road when the judgmental rough boys come out to punish difference).
Have been pondering the picaresque poet and co-blogger Demiurgicgpoet's experience showing up queer at her southern family's church for a funeral and boy is her story familiar. It’s so odd to be around people who insist that you are condemned because you actually choose to—to paraphrase Mary Oliver—let the soft animal of your warm body love whom it loves.
But what else can you do and still remain true to your self?
The Baptist compulsion to silence differing worldviews, to cast people with ideologies that disagree with theirs as evil is familiar to me. And Baptist women just confound me. (Well, as do Muslim women. Or Catholic women, for that matter. Or any women who embrace a tradition that places them in a subordinate position and choose to participate in retrograde religious traditions that insist that they “submit graciously” to men.)
These traditions confine women to marginal positions, then the men in their lives point to this marginalization as evidence of the women’s presumed inferiority.
This is the legacy I inherited and I still ponder what it is that keeps women who have other options in such a confining space.
I’ve never been able to explain the whole Southern notion of family honor to nonSoutherners either, but reading about Arab culture is familiar too.
Honor, in this culture, "requires that women give up their individuality in order to maintain the reputation and prospects of the men in their lives. This turns women into communal property, so that their lives don’t actually belong to them but to their families, their tribes, and sometimes even their nations." (That’s by gorgeous best-selling dyke author Irshad Manji, from The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith.)
I learned early on that I’d have to either put myself out of my misery or find the wherewithall to break the damn silence and talk about how oppressive it is to grow up rabidly Baptist (or rabidly anything that minimizes our whole beautiful selves)—and this probably explains why I tend to create fictional characters who yearn to escape their oppression.
So yeah, I know what it will be like to return to Baptist Town USA as a queer who publicly rejected the Baptist sledgehammer that so many of the people who will be at the funeral used to try to pound me into a particular shape ...
... and don’t even get me started on this Supreme Court nominee who has a record of seeking to weaken the separation between church and state. This guy can tip the scales, people, and that scares the living crap out of me and makes me want to mail copies of The Handmaid’s Tale to every thinking citizen of this country.
•
No big surprise, but I have been thinking about death and relationships today.
Buddhist philosophy recognizes samsara, or the endless cycle of suffering. All gain ends in loss according to this principle, yet we continue to compete and fabricate a chain of desire that keeps us in samsara. That which we gather, we will lose. Our pleasure will eventually lead to pain. Or “Gain and loss are meaningless preoccupations that we use to foster the illusion of a permanent self.”
Sigh.
Buddhists advise that, after becoming familiar with the truth of our impermanence, we should practice sitting and living as if our hair were on fire.
LISTENING TO: ani defranco croon fuck you and your untouchable face. Fuck you for existing in the first place. (yeah)
READING: J-14 Style Summer Special. This is a sad, sad magazine aimed at fourteen-year-old suburban girls and one day soon I will quote from select articles.
(July 2005) Just went out in 99° weather to get my yard mowed so I can leave at 4 AM to attend my uncle’s funeral. He was only 52 and in great physical condition (we thought) before he dropped dead of a brain aneurism.
Sobering.
The service is at my grandparents’ rabidly primitive Baptist church in a tiny southern farming community and I am uncomfortable going there because the place is so blatantly homophobic. They’re southern first, though, so I know they’ll be distant but civil to me (unless I’m alone on some dark road when the judgmental rough boys come out to punish difference).
Have been pondering the picaresque poet and co-blogger Demiurgicgpoet's experience showing up queer at her southern family's church for a funeral and boy is her story familiar. It’s so odd to be around people who insist that you are condemned because you actually choose to—to paraphrase Mary Oliver—let the soft animal of your warm body love whom it loves.
But what else can you do and still remain true to your self?
The Baptist compulsion to silence differing worldviews, to cast people with ideologies that disagree with theirs as evil is familiar to me. And Baptist women just confound me. (Well, as do Muslim women. Or Catholic women, for that matter. Or any women who embrace a tradition that places them in a subordinate position and choose to participate in retrograde religious traditions that insist that they “submit graciously” to men.)
These traditions confine women to marginal positions, then the men in their lives point to this marginalization as evidence of the women’s presumed inferiority.
This is the legacy I inherited and I still ponder what it is that keeps women who have other options in such a confining space.
I’ve never been able to explain the whole Southern notion of family honor to nonSoutherners either, but reading about Arab culture is familiar too.
Honor, in this culture, "requires that women give up their individuality in order to maintain the reputation and prospects of the men in their lives. This turns women into communal property, so that their lives don’t actually belong to them but to their families, their tribes, and sometimes even their nations." (That’s by gorgeous best-selling dyke author Irshad Manji, from The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith.)
I learned early on that I’d have to either put myself out of my misery or find the wherewithall to break the damn silence and talk about how oppressive it is to grow up rabidly Baptist (or rabidly anything that minimizes our whole beautiful selves)—and this probably explains why I tend to create fictional characters who yearn to escape their oppression.
So yeah, I know what it will be like to return to Baptist Town USA as a queer who publicly rejected the Baptist sledgehammer that so many of the people who will be at the funeral used to try to pound me into a particular shape ...
... and don’t even get me started on this Supreme Court nominee who has a record of seeking to weaken the separation between church and state. This guy can tip the scales, people, and that scares the living crap out of me and makes me want to mail copies of The Handmaid’s Tale to every thinking citizen of this country.
•
No big surprise, but I have been thinking about death and relationships today.
Buddhist philosophy recognizes samsara, or the endless cycle of suffering. All gain ends in loss according to this principle, yet we continue to compete and fabricate a chain of desire that keeps us in samsara. That which we gather, we will lose. Our pleasure will eventually lead to pain. Or “Gain and loss are meaningless preoccupations that we use to foster the illusion of a permanent self.”
Sigh.
Buddhists advise that, after becoming familiar with the truth of our impermanence, we should practice sitting and living as if our hair were on fire.
LISTENING TO: ani defranco croon fuck you and your untouchable face. Fuck you for existing in the first place. (yeah)
READING: J-14 Style Summer Special. This is a sad, sad magazine aimed at fourteen-year-old suburban girls and one day soon I will quote from select articles.
124. DILUTING ONE’S AMBITION, OR, LEARNING TO YIELD
From the Archives
(July 2005) From Rob Breszny’s Free Will Astrology:
(July 2005) From Rob Breszny’s Free Will Astrology:
HELP WANTED. Practical dreamers with high emotional intelligence needed to become experts in the following subjects: the art of possessing abundant resources without feeling greed or a sense of superiority; the science of cultivating luxurious comfort in a way that does not lead to spiritual sloth; and a knack for enjoying peace and serenity without diluting one's ambition.
Rob has described the exact space I struggle to create for myself—somewhere with time and emotional space to write and make art that still allows luxurious hours with my family and time for attentive dedication to my students and their work.
He is so freaking cool, tells this great story about being on the highway beside a woman who was so busy talking on her cell phone that she cut him off in traffic. He slammed on his brakes to keep from rear-ending her and then she changed lanes again. His immediate response was to yell, especially after she slowed down to pull up alongside his window, glare at him, and shoot a bird.
Then he looked down at this cool origami star that a friend had made for him and was suddenly filled with love instead of rage. He decided that this driver really needed this gift more than he did, so he threw the star into her car.
It landed on the seat beside her and she picked it up and looked at it with a flabbergasted look on her face. Then she got into the far right lane and slowed down.
I love this story, especially because I am Road Rage Mama of the Free World when I forget to pay attention. I don’t like this attitude that assumes that everyone else on the road should be moving at whatever speed I deem most convenient for me, but sometimes get so wrapped up in trying to get from Point A to Point B on time that I forget that we’re all just fragile busy people, trying to live our lives as best as we can.
(but must we do it in the left lane?)
I drove to my parents' house in a daze after my grandmother died, still feeling her frail hand in mine as she drew her last breaths. Then my mom sent me to the all-night store for coffee and coffeecake (since people would be coming by in the morning to offer their condolences).
The store is beside the hospital and, as I drove by in the wee hours of the morning, a hearse pulled out carrying what had to be the body of my beloved grandmother.
(Yes, my parent’s town is that small.)
I loved her without reservation and can say that she was the brightest light in my otherwise difficult childhood. And, yes, I do know she was fortunate to live 86 years in relatively good health. And most of the time I understand how thankful I should be, but I just lost it when I saw that hearse and, without thinking, stopped my car right in the middle of the highway and began sobbing.
These days, when I get irritated at drivers, I try to remind myself that I work near a hospital and that the chances are good that some of the drivers who are sharing the road with me are there because someone they love is ill or dying.
And I try to, well, yield
(which sometimes works).
123. LOVE THY SIBLINGS
From the Archives
( July 2005) My newspaper pal in Raleigh NC sent this “Love Thy Sibling” obituary:
( July 2005) My newspaper pal in Raleigh NC sent this “Love Thy Sibling” obituary:
DOROTHY GIBSON CULLY
Raleigh—On June 3, 2005, at 10:45 PM in Memphis, Tennessee, Dorothy Gibson Cully, 86, died peacefully, while in the loving care of her two favorite children, Barbara and David. All of her breath leaked out.
The mother of four children, grandmother to 11, great-grandmother to nine, devoted wife for 56 years to the late Ralph Chester Cully and a true friend to many, Dot had been active as a volunteer in the Catholic Church and other community charities for much of the past 25 years.
She was born the second child of six in 1919 as Frances Dorothy Gibson, daughter to Kathleen Heard Gibson and Calvin Hooper Gibson, an inventor best known as the first person since the Middle Ages to calculate the arcane lead-to-gold formula. Unable to actually prove this complex theory scientifically, and frustrated by the cruel conspiracy of the so-called “scientific community” working against his efforts, he ultimately stuck his head in a heated gas oven with a golden delicious apple propped in his mouth. Miraculously, the apple was saved for the evening dessert. Calvin was not.
Native Marylanders and longtime Baltimore, Kent Island and Ocean City residents, Ralph and Dot later resided in Lakeland, Florida, and Virginia Beach, Virginia. Several years after Ralph’s death, Dot moved to Raleigh in 2001, where she lived with her son, David.
At the time of her death, Dot was visiting her daughter, Carol, in Memphis. Carol and her husband, Ron, away from home attending a “very important conference” at a posh Florida resort, rushed home 10 days later after learning of her death. Dot’s other children, dutifully at their mother’s side helping with the normal last-minute arrangements—hospice notification, funeral parlor notice, revising the last will, etc.—happily picked up the considerable slack of the absent former heiress.
Dot is warmly remembered as a generous, spiritually strong, resourceful, tolerant and smart woman, who was always ready to offer help and never judged others or their shortcomings. Dot always found time to knit sweaters, sew quilts and send written notes to the family children, all while working a full time job, volunteering as Girl Scout leader and donating considerable time to local charities and the neighborhood Catholic Church.
Dot graduated from Eastern High School at 15, worked in Baltimore full time from 1934 to 1979, beginning as a factory worker at Cross & Blackwell and retiring after 30 years as property manager and controller for a Baltimore conglomerate, Housing Engineering Company, all while raising four children, two of whom are fairly normal.
An Irishwoman proud of and curious about her heritage, she was a voracious reader of historical novels, particularly those about the glories and trials of Ireland. Dot also loved to travel, her favorite destination being Eire’s auld sod, where she dreamed of the magic, mystery and legend of the Emerald Isle.
Dot Cully is survived by her sisters, Ginny Torrico in Virginia, Marlan Lee in Florida and Eileen Adams in Baltimore; her brother, Russell Gibson of Fallston, Maryland; her children, Barbara Frost of Ocean City, Maryland, Carol Meroney of Memphis, Tennesssee, David Cully of Raleigh, North Carolina and Stephen Cully of Baltimore, Maryland.
Contributions to the Wake County (NC) Hospice Services are welcome.
Opinions about the details of this obit are not, since Mom would have liked it this way.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
118. FATHER’S DAY. NO FATHER
From the Archives
(June 2005) Father’s Day is so strange now that my father is dead. I try to think about him, his role in my life and what I’m grateful (and not so grateful) for, but it mostly just feels like a big hole that he used to fill with his goodness and his badness and his deep connection with me, for better or for worse.
Since last Sunday was Father's Day and this past Sunday was his birthday, he's been on my mind a lot. So here’s a poem for my father:
(June 2005) Father’s Day is so strange now that my father is dead. I try to think about him, his role in my life and what I’m grateful (and not so grateful) for, but it mostly just feels like a big hole that he used to fill with his goodness and his badness and his deep connection with me, for better or for worse.
Since last Sunday was Father's Day and this past Sunday was his birthday, he's been on my mind a lot. So here’s a poem for my father:
FOR MY FATHER
by Elise Partridge
Remember after work you grabbed our skateboard,
crouched like a surfer, wingtips over the edge;
wheels clacketing down the pocked macadam,
you veered almost straight into the neighbor's hedge?
We ran after you laughing, shouting, Wait!
Or that August night you swept us to the fair?
The tallest person boarding the ferris wheel,
you rocked our car right when we hit the apex
above the winking midway, to make us squeal.
Next we raced you to the games, shouting, Wait!
At your funeral, relatives and neighbors,
shaking our hands, said, "So young to have died!"
But we've dreamt you're just skating streets away,
striding the fairgrounds toward a wilder ride.
And we're still straggling behind, shouting, Wait—!
112. IT’S GETTING HOT IN HERE...
From the Archives
(June 2005) A woman in my writing group who was very kind to her aunt (who turned out to be a homophobe and wrote her out of her will in a nasty way that hurt her deeply) has been decorating the old woman’s grave. The latest photo she showed us includes two plastic hands sticking up out of the grave and a witch’s hat with a sign that says “Help! It’s hot down here.”
Wow. Remind me not to piss her off.
(June 2005) A woman in my writing group who was very kind to her aunt (who turned out to be a homophobe and wrote her out of her will in a nasty way that hurt her deeply) has been decorating the old woman’s grave. The latest photo she showed us includes two plastic hands sticking up out of the grave and a witch’s hat with a sign that says “Help! It’s hot down here.”
Wow. Remind me not to piss her off.
110. DEATH BE NOT...
From the Archives
(June 2005) Just got the sad news that my friend Ed is dying. He and I created many a theater set together while trying to convince the wardrobe folks to let us try on outrageous outfits.
We have an annual ritual that involves lots of beer and tubing behind his boat.
We’ve done this for years, bur our first outing was definitely the best because our pal Roger turned out to be as fearless as I am.
He and I played bumper-tubes first. Then Ed got us going really fast, so we began making wider and faster sweeps across the wakes until we actually managed to get ourselves airborne. It took us a few tries and some nasty wipeouts, but we eventually managed to slap our hands together in the air and then land back on the water upright (no small feat, let me assure you).
Ed says he likes to watch me tube because a big smile is plastered across my face the entire time.
I walk around bruised and sore for weeks, but oh are our adventures fun!
Ugh. Poor Ed. He survived pancreatic cancer—one of the most painful kinds—already and then a recurrence in his lungs last year, but now his doctor says there’s nothing more they can do for him, so he was basically sent home to die.
Ugh. Poor, poor Ed. And poor us for losing someone so wonderful.
(June 2005) Just got the sad news that my friend Ed is dying. He and I created many a theater set together while trying to convince the wardrobe folks to let us try on outrageous outfits.
We have an annual ritual that involves lots of beer and tubing behind his boat.
We’ve done this for years, bur our first outing was definitely the best because our pal Roger turned out to be as fearless as I am.
He and I played bumper-tubes first. Then Ed got us going really fast, so we began making wider and faster sweeps across the wakes until we actually managed to get ourselves airborne. It took us a few tries and some nasty wipeouts, but we eventually managed to slap our hands together in the air and then land back on the water upright (no small feat, let me assure you).
Ed says he likes to watch me tube because a big smile is plastered across my face the entire time.
I walk around bruised and sore for weeks, but oh are our adventures fun!
Ugh. Poor Ed. He survived pancreatic cancer—one of the most painful kinds—already and then a recurrence in his lungs last year, but now his doctor says there’s nothing more they can do for him, so he was basically sent home to die.
Ugh. Poor, poor Ed. And poor us for losing someone so wonderful.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
88. THE BLUE WHEELCHAIR
From the Archives
(May 2005) The blue wheelchair sat abandoned by the pond.
I sat at lush gardens tonight till dark, reading. Stopped by Whole Foods earlier and picked up fresh herbs, a loaf of crunchy bread, a lime tart, and some Saint Nectaire cheese that disappointed me because it lacks the complexity of Saint Andre, which was Whole Foods’ comparison cheese.
(I knew I should have gone to the farmer’s market instead and purchased local cheese from the friendly dyke cheesemakers.)
Poured some pinot noir into a flask, then took my food, wine, Carole Maso’s Art Lover, and myself to a little creek that runs between two grassy knolls at the gardens.
A beautiful, heavy-branched willow by the water provided shade over the rough stone bench where I sat. I settled in amongst the irises that kine the boulders that line the creek that empties into the pond and read till dark as the ducks swam around me.
There’s a whole chunk of time during graduate school when I missed films and books that were not directly associated with my studies. Kenneth Branaugh and Emma Thompson were all the rage then, but I had neither time nor money to enjoy such extravagances.
Maso’s Art Lover came out during this period, too, and I missed it the first go ‘round nut, boy, what a find now!
This book is hauntingly beautiful and raw and very, very well written.
Maso’s narrative approach is intimate and disarmingly heart-wrenching and the book brims over with insights and observations and tender quirky moments that leave your entire nervous system twitching.
I don’t believe anyone in the midst of losing a father could bear to read this book, but how wonderful it must be if you find a way to acknowledge that connection as you read.
My own father has been dead for six years now and I could still hardly bear to read this story ... and the declarative sketches of her sad, suicidal mother nearly took my breath away.
Here’s an excerpt from her opening page:
•
(May 2005) The blue wheelchair sat abandoned by the pond.
I sat at lush gardens tonight till dark, reading. Stopped by Whole Foods earlier and picked up fresh herbs, a loaf of crunchy bread, a lime tart, and some Saint Nectaire cheese that disappointed me because it lacks the complexity of Saint Andre, which was Whole Foods’ comparison cheese.
(I knew I should have gone to the farmer’s market instead and purchased local cheese from the friendly dyke cheesemakers.)
Poured some pinot noir into a flask, then took my food, wine, Carole Maso’s Art Lover, and myself to a little creek that runs between two grassy knolls at the gardens.
A beautiful, heavy-branched willow by the water provided shade over the rough stone bench where I sat. I settled in amongst the irises that kine the boulders that line the creek that empties into the pond and read till dark as the ducks swam around me.
There’s a whole chunk of time during graduate school when I missed films and books that were not directly associated with my studies. Kenneth Branaugh and Emma Thompson were all the rage then, but I had neither time nor money to enjoy such extravagances.
Maso’s Art Lover came out during this period, too, and I missed it the first go ‘round nut, boy, what a find now!
This book is hauntingly beautiful and raw and very, very well written.
Maso’s narrative approach is intimate and disarmingly heart-wrenching and the book brims over with insights and observations and tender quirky moments that leave your entire nervous system twitching.
I don’t believe anyone in the midst of losing a father could bear to read this book, but how wonderful it must be if you find a way to acknowledge that connection as you read.
My own father has been dead for six years now and I could still hardly bear to read this story ... and the declarative sketches of her sad, suicidal mother nearly took my breath away.
Here’s an excerpt from her opening page:
Although there is only a slight resemblance, the man can only be her father. You can tell by the way he moves toward her. As she stands up now I can see the intricate jigsaw shapes their bodies make to fit together. They will gnaw off an arm if necessary to properly fit, bleed at a joint, tilt the head, or nod a little too deeply just to maintain the vaguely heart-shaped vacuum that must always exist somehow between them.
•
Meanwhile, as I mentioned way back at the beginning of this entry, someone abandoned a blue wheelchair by the pond. I’d read several chapters by the time I saw the thing and it was getting dark—cone? rod? cone? rod? and that whole confused sight thing—so I wasn’t sure what I was seeing at first. And the heady scent of honeysuckle was so intoxicating that I almost felt drunk. Meanwhile the ducks splashed down in the water around me as I jumped over the rocks to investigate.
I hiked up the grassy knoll and discovered that, right there by the water, was a well-used faded blue wheelchair with a sagging seat.
Maybe it’s the curse of living through a loved one’s repeated suicide attempts or maybe it’s the influence of Maso’s book or maybe it’s the fact that this garden sits near a medical center. Not sure of the source,really, but can tell you that I immediately thought that a dying patient had rolled herself—and it was a her in my mind: Ophelia, Virginia W, my cancer-ridden mother-out-law, and my sad suicidal mother all rolled into one—down from her room and into this lush, late-spring paradise swollen taut with beauty, and thrown herself into the water.
Sometimes I wonder how a person who does not have a personal experience with suicide might translate such a scene.
BEST-OF SPAM: clytemnestra portraiture. (Hmmm. Perhaps Agamemnon Spam sacrificed his daughter Spam in an effort to make it through a challenging spam editor, then Clytemnestra got revenge in a scene that was captured by a digital portraitist? Now that’s obscure.)
Saturday, September 22, 2007
40. LETTER IN AUTUMN
From the Archives
(March 2005) Today’s Writer’s Almanac features a sad but beautiful poem that Donald Hall wrote after losing his wife. It’s from his collection Without.
(March 2005) Today’s Writer’s Almanac features a sad but beautiful poem that Donald Hall wrote after losing his wife. It’s from his collection Without.
LETTER IN AUTUMN
by Donald Hall
This first October of your death
I sit in my blue chair
looking out at late afternoon's
western light suffusing
its goldenrod yellow over
the barn's unpainted boards—
here where I sat each fall
watching you pull your summer's
garden up.
Yesterday
I cleaned out your Saab
to sell it. The dozen tapes
I mailed to Caroline.
I collected hairpins and hair ties.
In the Hill's Balsam tin
Where you kept silver for tolls
I found your collection
of slips from fortune cookies:
YOU ARE A FANTASTIC PERSON!
YOU ARE ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE
WHO GOES PLACES IN THEIR LIFE!
As I slept last night:
You leap from our compartment
in an underground railroad yard
and I follow; behind us the train
clatters and sways; I turn
and turn again to see you tugging
at a gold bugle welded
to a freight car; then you vanish
into the pitchy clanking dark.
Here I sit in my blue chair
not exactly watching Seattle
beat Denver in the Kingdome.
Last autumn above Pill Hill
we looked from the eleventh floor
down at Puget Sound,
at Seattle's skyline,
and at the Kingdome scaffolded
for repair. From your armature
of tubes, you asked, "Perkins,
am I going to live?"
When you died
in April, baseball took up
its cadences again
under the indoor ballpark's
patched and recovered ceiling.
You would have admired
the Mariners, still hanging on
in October, like blue asters
surviving frost.
Sometimes
when I start to cry,
I wave it off: “I just
did that.” When Andrew
wearing a dark suit and necktie
telephones from his desk,
he cannot keep from crying.
When Philippa weeps,
Allison at seven announces,
"The river is flowing."
Gus no longer searches for you,
but when Alice or Joyce comes calling
he dances and sings. He brings us
one of your white slippers
from the bedroom.
I cannot discard
your jeans or lotions or T-shirts.
I cannot disturb your tumbles
of scarves and floppy hats.
Lost unfinished things remain
on your desk, in your purse
or Shaker basket. Under a cushion
I discover your silver thimble.
Today when the telephone rang
I thought it was you.
At night when I go to bed
Gus drowses on the floor beside me.
I sleep where we lived and died
in the painted Victorian bed
under the tiny lights
you strung on the headboard
when you brought me home
from the hospital four years ago.
The lights still burned last April
early on a Saturday morning
while you died.
At your grave
I find tribute: chrysanthemums,
cosmos, a pumpkin, and a poem
by a woman who “never knew you”
who asks, “Can you hear me Jane?”
there is an apple and a heart-
shaped pebble.
Looking south
from your stone, I gaze at the file
of eight enormous sugar maples
that rage and flare in dark noon,
the air grainy with mist
like the rain of Seattle's winter.
The trees go on burning
Without ravage of loss or disorder.
I wish you were that birch
rising from the clump behind you,
and I the gray oak alongside.
Friday, September 21, 2007
6. BREASTS AND EYES AND PARTS ...
From the Archives
(March 2005) I’ve scribbled lyrics and guitar chords into a fat blue spiral-bound notebook for years—had the thing back when I lived with my parents and was running away all the time, so at least since I was 13. (That would be the early seventies.)
If I’d transcribed all my music into the notebook, then I would have filled it up long ago, but most of the songs in here are ones I tried to figure out on my own or ones I wrote down after somebody played them but couldn't provide a photocopy of the piece.
Anyway, I’m in my forties now and, damn it, can’t read these chords anymore!
My sad reality is that I just can’t tell if I’m looking at a G or a C or an F or an E anymore ... and I DO NOT want to get bifocals, goddurnit!
(Hmmm, maybe I can get contacts for near-sightedness instead and just put on reading glasses when I need them; yeah, then I can pretend I’m not really getting old....)
And while we’re on that topic, I had my second mammogram a few weeks ago and received the dreaded letter saying that my films revealed tissue overlap and multiple new lesions bilaterally since my 2003 mammogram. Didn’t know exactly what this meant, but knew it didn’t sound good, so I scheduled a more-extensive mammogram screening and an ultrasound pronto and waited, trying not to fret.
Me and breast cancer go back a ways. Two of my friends were diagnosed with it five years ago and within a week of each other. Louisville is one of my dearest friends—someone who refers to me as her daughter. When her partner called to tell me the bad news, I got in my car immediately, lied to a nurse and said I was Louisville’s birth daughter, and was sleeping in a chair in her room when she woke up from her mastectomy.
Louisville was my academic advisor and she became my friend and mentor. My eighteen-year-old angry self showed up in her office with a chip on my shoulder and a burning desire to go to college despite my being a runaway with no savings whatsoever who knew I had no choice but to work full-time while attending classes.
I didn’t know how to manage it but knew I wanted to (the answer: lots of good advice, determination, and student loans).
I had mostly lived on my own for three years by then and worked full-time for minimum wage in a hospital kitchen (which meant I’d never starve, an important criterion when you make minimum wage).
The tough little me who managed to finish high school with honors while scraping together enough money to (mostly) not return home knew how to survive, but I lacked self-confidence and believed I had no right to actually be in college. And each time I ran out of money and had to crawl back to my parents leeched away even more confidence, especially if my father was violent or my mother was paranoid and delusional.
Louisville swears that she could barely hear me speak back then—a fact few people who know me now would even believe.
In addition to giving me good advice and encouragement, inviting me over for home-cooked meals, convincing me to stay in school when I was so exhausted that I was on the verge of giving up and, eventually, convincing me to continue my studies at the graduate level, Louisville lined up odd jobs for me.
You don’t even want to know how many faculty members’ houses I painted in the seven years it took me to earn my undergraduate degree!
I insisted that Louisville come here for treatment so I could take care of her and she agreed. And so began her year of surgeries and chemo and hair loss and radiation and leg pains and bad wigs and floppy bra inserts and hope and fear and grace.
I did freelance work, which allowed me to go to nearly all of her treatments with her.
It was a trying year, but she came out on the other side of it and has nearly completed her reconstructive surgeries at this point. She returns every three months for scans now, but no recurrences, thank goodness.
Lizbeth completed treatment about the same time as Louisville and also seemed to be doing well. Her hair grew back in and she went back to teaching a full load. Then, while traveling to a conference, she collapsed on the Louis Armstrong airport tarmac and died. The cancer had returned and spread very rapidly, killing her before she (I hope) even knew that she was sick again.
Then, in 2003, my seemingly healthy, exceedingly wise fifty-eight-year-old, vegetarian, new-age crystal-squeezing mother-out-law who moved through the world with such vibrancy—getting dropped by helicopter into the Canadian borderlands for two-week canoeing expeditions or taking off to Peru to explore sacred ruins—was diagnosed with inoperable, late-stage breast cancer.
Doctors were doubtful that she would even emerge from the coma that first brought her to the hospital, shocking us all, and we listened to this news soberly, hoping against hope that she would at least regain consciousness.
She did and we took her home in a wheelchair, grateful for any amount of time left with her.
Mud and I and our extended family walked around in shock after that, driving back and forth to the hospital as each new crisis threatened her life and doing whatever we could to care for her body and soul as her body slowly ceased functioning.
I’d known Mud’s mother for ten years at that point and loved her dearly. She felt like the mother I never really had and her numerous kindnesses, over the years, softened many of my hard edges.
My massage and craniosacral-therapy sessions with her, especially—although emotionally difficult—made me realize just how much pain and violent memories I kept stored in my body. These sessions helped me locate and eventually heal from a lot of that pain and we talked at a deep level about life and healing and death.
She was not afraid of death but was also not ready to let go of it when she died this past April.
The local dyke chorus had been planning a large-scale breast-cancer fund-raiser for over two years at that point and I got on board with the planning. Rehearsing and performing Diane Benjamin’s heart-wrenching but beautiful oratorio “Where I Live” was hard, but so important to me.
I do not like to be in the spotlight, but was determined to say Louisville’s and LizBeth’s and Mud’s mother’s name aloud during the memorial piece. And did.
And yes, I will finally wind my narrative back around to my own mammography tests.
So. The day of my tests finally arrived and I made my way to the cancer building, followed the nurse into a waiting room with changing rooms along one wall, took off my clothes, put them in a plastic bag, donned a scratchy hospital gown, and sat in the waiting room with all the other women who had either received similar letters recently or who were already in treatment for breast cancer. A steady stream of women continued to enter the waiting room, then step out of the changing rooms transformed by thin cotton into patients whose life was suddenly brought into sharp focus by fear of the dreadful C word. There were at least three such waiting rooms in our wing and they were all busy.
Nurses called us to the testing area one by one and we endured our second-tier mammograms.
Now the first-tier mammograms really aren’t all that painful if you plan them around your period—a friend recently referred to the pressure of the plates as kind of pleasant, actually, and said that she likes the attention—but the second-tier tests hurt so much that they take your breath away.
The technician screws small plates onto the questionable areas so tightly that, if you didn’t hurt so much, you’d laugh when she says “now don’t breathe.” The tests are over with quickly though, and then you return to the waiting room and wait and wait and wait.
Some of my second-tier results were also inconclusive, so I waited for an ultrasound as, every 15 minutes or so, a nurse stepped into the room and said “Ms. X, the doctor is ready to go over your results with you now”—which made us all look up at Ms. X, whose hands fluttered as she dropped the magazine she was pretending to read down onto the table and we glanced back down at the magazines that we were pretending to read.
The ultrasound confirmed that I’m just walking around with a bunch of fluid-filled cysts—probably from all that Turkish coffee I drank like water during grad school.
This was my second cancer scare since November though and I felt like doing something drastic—kissing the sky or something. I usually just go to the beach at such moments though.
(March 2005) I’ve scribbled lyrics and guitar chords into a fat blue spiral-bound notebook for years—had the thing back when I lived with my parents and was running away all the time, so at least since I was 13. (That would be the early seventies.)
If I’d transcribed all my music into the notebook, then I would have filled it up long ago, but most of the songs in here are ones I tried to figure out on my own or ones I wrote down after somebody played them but couldn't provide a photocopy of the piece.
Anyway, I’m in my forties now and, damn it, can’t read these chords anymore!
My sad reality is that I just can’t tell if I’m looking at a G or a C or an F or an E anymore ... and I DO NOT want to get bifocals, goddurnit!
(Hmmm, maybe I can get contacts for near-sightedness instead and just put on reading glasses when I need them; yeah, then I can pretend I’m not really getting old....)
And while we’re on that topic, I had my second mammogram a few weeks ago and received the dreaded letter saying that my films revealed tissue overlap and multiple new lesions bilaterally since my 2003 mammogram. Didn’t know exactly what this meant, but knew it didn’t sound good, so I scheduled a more-extensive mammogram screening and an ultrasound pronto and waited, trying not to fret.
Me and breast cancer go back a ways. Two of my friends were diagnosed with it five years ago and within a week of each other. Louisville is one of my dearest friends—someone who refers to me as her daughter. When her partner called to tell me the bad news, I got in my car immediately, lied to a nurse and said I was Louisville’s birth daughter, and was sleeping in a chair in her room when she woke up from her mastectomy.
Louisville was my academic advisor and she became my friend and mentor. My eighteen-year-old angry self showed up in her office with a chip on my shoulder and a burning desire to go to college despite my being a runaway with no savings whatsoever who knew I had no choice but to work full-time while attending classes.
I didn’t know how to manage it but knew I wanted to (the answer: lots of good advice, determination, and student loans).
I had mostly lived on my own for three years by then and worked full-time for minimum wage in a hospital kitchen (which meant I’d never starve, an important criterion when you make minimum wage).
The tough little me who managed to finish high school with honors while scraping together enough money to (mostly) not return home knew how to survive, but I lacked self-confidence and believed I had no right to actually be in college. And each time I ran out of money and had to crawl back to my parents leeched away even more confidence, especially if my father was violent or my mother was paranoid and delusional.
Louisville swears that she could barely hear me speak back then—a fact few people who know me now would even believe.
In addition to giving me good advice and encouragement, inviting me over for home-cooked meals, convincing me to stay in school when I was so exhausted that I was on the verge of giving up and, eventually, convincing me to continue my studies at the graduate level, Louisville lined up odd jobs for me.
You don’t even want to know how many faculty members’ houses I painted in the seven years it took me to earn my undergraduate degree!
I insisted that Louisville come here for treatment so I could take care of her and she agreed. And so began her year of surgeries and chemo and hair loss and radiation and leg pains and bad wigs and floppy bra inserts and hope and fear and grace.
I did freelance work, which allowed me to go to nearly all of her treatments with her.
It was a trying year, but she came out on the other side of it and has nearly completed her reconstructive surgeries at this point. She returns every three months for scans now, but no recurrences, thank goodness.
Lizbeth completed treatment about the same time as Louisville and also seemed to be doing well. Her hair grew back in and she went back to teaching a full load. Then, while traveling to a conference, she collapsed on the Louis Armstrong airport tarmac and died. The cancer had returned and spread very rapidly, killing her before she (I hope) even knew that she was sick again.
Then, in 2003, my seemingly healthy, exceedingly wise fifty-eight-year-old, vegetarian, new-age crystal-squeezing mother-out-law who moved through the world with such vibrancy—getting dropped by helicopter into the Canadian borderlands for two-week canoeing expeditions or taking off to Peru to explore sacred ruins—was diagnosed with inoperable, late-stage breast cancer.
Doctors were doubtful that she would even emerge from the coma that first brought her to the hospital, shocking us all, and we listened to this news soberly, hoping against hope that she would at least regain consciousness.
She did and we took her home in a wheelchair, grateful for any amount of time left with her.
Mud and I and our extended family walked around in shock after that, driving back and forth to the hospital as each new crisis threatened her life and doing whatever we could to care for her body and soul as her body slowly ceased functioning.
I’d known Mud’s mother for ten years at that point and loved her dearly. She felt like the mother I never really had and her numerous kindnesses, over the years, softened many of my hard edges.
My massage and craniosacral-therapy sessions with her, especially—although emotionally difficult—made me realize just how much pain and violent memories I kept stored in my body. These sessions helped me locate and eventually heal from a lot of that pain and we talked at a deep level about life and healing and death.
She was not afraid of death but was also not ready to let go of it when she died this past April.
The local dyke chorus had been planning a large-scale breast-cancer fund-raiser for over two years at that point and I got on board with the planning. Rehearsing and performing Diane Benjamin’s heart-wrenching but beautiful oratorio “Where I Live” was hard, but so important to me.
I do not like to be in the spotlight, but was determined to say Louisville’s and LizBeth’s and Mud’s mother’s name aloud during the memorial piece. And did.
And yes, I will finally wind my narrative back around to my own mammography tests.
So. The day of my tests finally arrived and I made my way to the cancer building, followed the nurse into a waiting room with changing rooms along one wall, took off my clothes, put them in a plastic bag, donned a scratchy hospital gown, and sat in the waiting room with all the other women who had either received similar letters recently or who were already in treatment for breast cancer. A steady stream of women continued to enter the waiting room, then step out of the changing rooms transformed by thin cotton into patients whose life was suddenly brought into sharp focus by fear of the dreadful C word. There were at least three such waiting rooms in our wing and they were all busy.
Nurses called us to the testing area one by one and we endured our second-tier mammograms.
Now the first-tier mammograms really aren’t all that painful if you plan them around your period—a friend recently referred to the pressure of the plates as kind of pleasant, actually, and said that she likes the attention—but the second-tier tests hurt so much that they take your breath away.
The technician screws small plates onto the questionable areas so tightly that, if you didn’t hurt so much, you’d laugh when she says “now don’t breathe.” The tests are over with quickly though, and then you return to the waiting room and wait and wait and wait.
Some of my second-tier results were also inconclusive, so I waited for an ultrasound as, every 15 minutes or so, a nurse stepped into the room and said “Ms. X, the doctor is ready to go over your results with you now”—which made us all look up at Ms. X, whose hands fluttered as she dropped the magazine she was pretending to read down onto the table and we glanced back down at the magazines that we were pretending to read.
The ultrasound confirmed that I’m just walking around with a bunch of fluid-filled cysts—probably from all that Turkish coffee I drank like water during grad school.
This was my second cancer scare since November though and I felt like doing something drastic—kissing the sky or something. I usually just go to the beach at such moments though.
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