ROOTED IN LOVE

I definitely know how the vegetable and animal kingdoms must feel (and I know that theoretically I count as an animal); the confusion in the seasons is quite disconcerting. I think it is mid-summer whereas it is only early April. Helllooo!

And now, my friends, it is mid-April and getting warm. There just never seems to be enough time to write. Or I am just dumbfounded and not able. Even now, when I am taking a few minutes to get started, I know that I will have to stop to take my mom to the tax accountant very shortly. In fact, I should go wake her up from her afternoon nap.

I’ve been gardening a lot. I think the adage “A watched pot never boils.” would be more accurately “A watched seed never sprouts.” But then they do and the impatience is refocused on the plant becoming what you dreamed it might be. So, my first planting of (the evidently dreaded, at least in California) morning glory is spiraling up and I am waiting for the first buds.

A long interim sets in ...

The gardening is going well, so that's something. Mostly what seems to come up are weeds, but the nasturtiums are jammin'. No blossoms on anything I have started from seeds. 

A month or so ago, I noticed that our across-the-street neighbor was getting rid of a bunch of stuff, among that, a potting bench! There was a scroungerman or perhaps I should say urban scavenger, with his truck was going through the treasures as well. I tagged the bench and he helped me get it to our backyard as it was far too heavy for me.

Now it sits beneath my bedroom window, serving as a shaded nursery for all the plants I have been propagating. Oh, and Emmylou uses it to get in and out of the house. Unfortunately, my desk is under that same window, and hence she tracks dirt in and out (there's a split infinitive that cannot be avoided). Then she has to pick her way through the open iPad and laptop and desk lamp and speakers, which is a delicate maneuver. Emmy enjoys helping with the gardening. (The pretty godetia in this photo is not nearly so pretty now. Anyone have any maintenance recommendations?)

I, too, am an urban scavenger, although I mostly raid healthy plants in order to propagate them. There's jasmine growing all over the place, on parkways, in planters on city streets and such. I feel I am just helping out by a little pre-emptive pruning. I did find a discarded Ikea cutting block that is just perfect as a grill-side table.

I am still reeling from the devastating news about my dear friend. While I was looking for that word, devastating, I looked up "tragic" as well. They do mean similar things. Tragic is "causing or characterized by extreme distress or sorrow." Devastating is "causing severe shock, distress, or grief," and "highly destructive or damaging." Tragic seems much more monolithic, stationary. Devastating feels like a process, a river, a deluge with waves. Tragic can be locked up, put far enough away to look at. Devastating is a moment-to-moment struggle.

Way back when, when I had a birthday, there were many generous people who gave me a nice, light shower of gifts and money. (Thank you all again.) I was able to go out and buy one of the new books I was jonesing for,  Jane Hirschfield's new book of essays, Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World. This is the opening paragraph.

Good art is a truing of vision, in the way a saw is trued in the saw shop, to cut more cleanly. It is also a changing of vision. Entering a good poem, a person feels, tastes, hears, thinks, and sees in altered ways. Why ask art into a life at all, if not to be transformed and enlarged by its presence and mysterious means? Some hunger for more is in us—more range, more depth, more feeling, more associative freedom, more beauty. More perplexity and more friction of interest. More prismatic grief, more longing, more darkness. More saturation and permeability in knowing our own existence as also the existence of others. More capacity to be astonished. Art adds to the sum of the lives we would have, were it possible to live without it. And by changing selves, one by one, art changes the also the outer world that selves create and share.  

If you substituted the name of my friend for the word art, you would come close to describing my cherished ami. Ami, too, is a better word than friend, as it is rooted in love.

HOME REVISITED: MIDNIGHT

I am the shadow in the shadow of the wicker.

The wicker is in the shadow in the shadow of the vine.

I sat here when? Ago. Blinked at the flicker

Of a falling star. Said the moon: Be mine.

Said the star: Will be. And then, and now and then,

The shadow is in the shadow is the shadow of Again.

And went away. Or came. What happened? O

It is June again and moony. Song, song,

So-ong, the crickets. And blop, blop, b-lop,

The frogs. And ago, ago, ago

Says the rational man in the shadow. (This is his sop

To the passionate man in the song.) O do I belong

To that rational man? To that passionate, singing man?

Which body shall I wear to memory

When I arise from shadow?

Shall I cry Mother or write prose?

Turn Catholic or blow my nose>

If I rise and go inside,

My dead setter will have died:

“Here, Tug, here, Tug, here on the lawn,

Here in the shadow.” Tug is gone

To watch my shadow being born.

I was at the center of the shadow.

I am the shadow at the center of thought.

The house behind me is a house I know,

At every sill and step the house forgot

All but song, so-ong, and blop, b-lop.

That music is because it cannot stop.

For the center of music is another music

And the center of the center is a stir,

And what is time that visited my father

With worms and roses and religious physic

And gave his house to me to sit and gather

Shadow at the center of the music of the stir?

—And a rational man? And a passionate, singing man

And now,

                 and then,

                                    a third, an invisible man

Singing and trusting and distrusting the song

At the center of the center where the shadows throng.

— John Ciardi

THE PARADE OF OUR MUTUAL LIFE

You know, you think after losing a parent and a younger brother, plus a couple of familiars, your career, your home, your livelihood, and maybe your will to continue to exist, you think you'd have a pretty good handle on loss and grief. Turns out that isn't the case at all. Maybe grief has no bottom. Maybe I have a lot to get through this time around (not that I ascribe to reincarnation). Maybe I am grieving in anticipation of losing Cooder and my mom. I don't have a fucking clue about anything except that my heart is broken and I hurt. 

Welcome to middle age where you don't know who or what will go next. And you don't know if you want it to be you. 

I am not at liberty to disclose details of this particular round of sorrow, other than to say a dear friend, a most precious being, will be leaving sometime much too soon. I suppose I should have been reading between the lines and not hoping for the magic to work, not expecting that our friendship and association would be restored, if even for a time. 

But no.

And now I must assimilate, calculate, understand how to fill the gap. That the far-flung and mind-blowing conversations and bottles of red wine and flights of fancy and listening to his particularly astute arrangements of Dylan songs in front of the fire are not part of my future. 

As this person goes back to my germinal years in my (mis)chosen profession, I have had occasion to be in touch with many from that distant past. That, too, has brought feelings, compromises, hurts, and sweet memories to the surface. It's interesting that in our educational system, the culture in which we are brought up, does not prepare us to cherish the relationships that form and anchor our lives. 

We are connected whether we want to be or mean to be. Associations, working partnerships, even feuds and missteps all form us and, at this moment at least, seem to be of value and honor. 

So yes, I am going to bring out that chestnut of a poem that is MY RITUAL of respect for those in my life, currently present and those that have moved on ...

A RITUAL TO READ TO EACH OTHER

If you don’t know the kind of person I am

and I don’t know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.   

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood

storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail, 

but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park, 

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact .

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy, 

a remote important region in all who talk: 

though we could fool each other, we should consider— 

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.   

For it is important that awake people be awake, 

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep; 

the signals we give—yes or no, or maybe— should be clear: 

the darkness around us is deep.

— William Stafford

I have taken on the responsibility of discreetly sharing the sadness with some of our associates. The hard part is that I have not been able to get away; the great part is I, too, have been able to partake of some of the love and wisdom brought on by our mutual sadness and share in a truly communal grief.

One friend astutely wrote:

When I heard about P’s and J's turns for the worse (J's doing much better) at the beginning of 2013, I fell to pieces. I wished I could have swapped places with each of them, to spare them. They were so much more deserving of life than I. I spent that year (like Townes Van Zandt) waiting around to die. It dinna 'apen.

So maybe I have a rough idea of how you feel. I don't what to do. I couldn't help them, I couldn't swap places and I couldn't go on ahead to make things ready for my "liege lord."

All I could do was wait for the end and feel the loss.

Hemingway said the most inane thing when some big writer died, "Men are dying who have never died before." Stupid, but on an emotional level I understand what he meant. These are "our" deaths, our great people, our friends who are dying. This pain is ours, is ancient and unrelenting.

I wish him the best in his journey.

I wish you the best in yours.

Love is never enough, but it's all there is.