TRACES SWEEPING OUT

Detail from tablecloth embroidered by Mary.

Holbrook, New York, 9:11 a.m.

John and Melinda are still asleep, which is really no wonder after the emotional intensity and all the activity of the last few days. The house is on a busy street and for most of the day and night, there are cars going by. And, of course, the mowing of summer lawns, although I'd say it is quieter than Brewster. 

I didn't sleep well last night. I managed to keep myself from those too dark places, but just barely. The sadness in the house leached out and I felt my bones absorbing it. It is never easy to see or be around suffering, amplified in the case of your loved ones, and John fluctuates from being relatively jovial and normal to the knife-pain of shock and loss.

Detail from Czech vest made by Mary or her mother in the 1930s.

Much later.

Funny, as you absorb the loss of someone, after awhile, you think, “Okay, I get it! I understand loss. You can come back now, okay?” John and Mel have been riding the waves of this all day. I can’t say that it makes any one of us that pleasant to be around, or at least, emotionally reliable.

John and Mel are setting off some fireworks. I am curled up on the couch writing and listening to She and Him sing You Really Got A Hold On Me. And then there’s Calexico, Two Silver Trees.

“Traces sweeping out across the static night

You are draped in white like the blossoms of the tree”

John remarked earlier that it was already not his mother’s house anymore. Which is kind of sad. Fireworks. Wine (frothy sangria made from pear juice, blueberries, pineapple, mango from a condolence fruit basket and raspberries from her yard). Parliament/Prince We Can Funk blasting from a Bose docking station. Not the things of Mary’s world. And she’s been gone less than a week.

More than one family member related to me that Mary had predicted her death on June 16^th, which was the day her mother died. She made it all the way to June 29^th, which is a hell of lot more accurate than most of us are likely to be.

Most of the family was out of the immediate room when she breathed her last. Her next-door neighbor Harry was in the room. Harry is from Turkey and a devout Muslim. Mary was a very devout Catholic, yet they were dear friends and Harry cried as much as anyone in the family. He even made John cry at the funeral (a good thing). When Mary breathed her last, Harry was at her side, reading a prayer from the Koran.

This quite struck me. Mary, who fled the Czechs and Slovaks being sold out by Chamberlain and other Allied agents of perfidy selling out those sovereign nations to buy off Hitler, dying in America with a dear “infidel” at her side. Mary, at sixteen, taking the train with her mother across Eastern Europe, to flee to America. And here she dies with someone from what could well have been an alien culture. For me, this was some measure of her heart and soul. For all her staid ways and old-fashioned notions, she could recognize goodness and love wherever it came from.

Hydrangeas at the church.

IN THE SOUP AND TO THE DUST

Wow. Waking up in the soup, or waking up in soup, as this is generic summer humidity and grey soup. The dog's mouth (although it does not smell as badly). Sigh. Got to get up (after having worked on my curation gig ... by the way, this seems like a good a time as any to post a link: Here. It would be lovely if you all would check it out and perhaps sign up to follow it. We all want me to continue to have this little gig, don't we?)

I missed my 11:30 Bridgeport to Port Jefferson ferry, but made it for the 12:30. I will get to the viewing at Moloney’s in Holbrook late and quite underdressed. I will miss most of the 2 – 4 visitation … (or is it called a viewing?) but there is another from 6 – 8 and then a mass, I believe. I don’t know if I can go to two masses in 12 hours, but then who knows how I will be feeling or what my friends want. At this point, I am in their service.

So, I will try to snap some photos on this ferry ride. Google maps gave me absurd directions to get here (Bridgeport) not made any easier by the rain which began as I left Brewster and stopped pretty much as I got to Bridgeport. I know, it is hard to not envy my such excellent timing.

And we are off. I’ve never been across the Long Island Sound before! It’s expensive to take the ferry ($54) but it should be shorter than heading all the way back down to NYC and then out the Long Island Expressway, surely one of the most damned highways in the U.S.

Much later, like seriously bed time. 

In Holbrook, after two viewings and before mass and actual funeral tomorrow. The family, with whom I have been embedded, has been dealing with the death for days now, whereas I just beamed in. 

And now I am tired and not entirely sure how to assess nor "vibe" with it all, so perhaps going to sleep is the best idea now. We are up early tomorrow to go to Mass and to the cemetery, and to a group lunch, and who knows what else. Quiet time in the form of sleep may be just what I need.

JUST LIKE ANY OTHER DAY

It is more than the heat. The last 36 hours or so have been quite unsettling, disorienting. The heat just keeps the balance off. 

On Friday I headed down here to Brooklyn again to hang out with Tupelo and to go to a couple of Celebrate Brooklyn gigs. All that went relatively well, although I was extremely logey and feeling the need for a nap, which I didn't really get.

Celebrate Brooklyn was okay, but we sat in a steady drizzle for a good 45 minutes or an hour during the Aurelio Martinez set (he is excellent). And yes we had umbrellas. By the time Ladysmith Black Mambazo came on, we were just damp damp damp. And although they sing beautifully, I was too tired and clammy to sit still for much longer. We left. The bandshell was utterly utterly jammed and it was quite an ordeal to go against the tide to get out.

John had sent me a message earlier that Mary, his mother, was moving into another phase of the final passage. She was not expected to live through the night. Likely that, too, added to my general unease. I didn't sleep all that well, comfortable though it is here. In the middle of the night, I got up to check the time and found this very sad email message:

something to chase my black & - blues away.  (Really more of a black, purplish, bruisey looking BLUES.)  So depressed -- there should be a new word for it.  Caught in the Bermuda triangle of anxiety, paralysis and panic with a lot of intense unfathomable sadness in the middle.  I feel like I'm going down.  They'll never recover my body -- they'll just say, 'the sadness is just too DEEP.'  And of course they'll be right.  

You know? -- ' don't try looking in there, no no no -- that can come to NO GOOD.  Stay outside that triangle.  Absolutely nothing interesting about it.  No life down there.  Not even those evil looking fish with the phosphorescent glow & Komodo dragon scales and super-Piranha fangs....'  Ya know?  

Okay -- just trying to let this train of thought go.  Sending the train through that dark dark tunnel of UNlove.  No light at the end of that tunnel.... just keep going.  

Okay -- I'll try to keep walking.  Something's burning on the stove now.  Great. 

 Yeah. I do know.

I had an unexpected conversation at a meeting on Saturday morning. I was still absorbing all of that, not sure of what I was feeling. I spent a bit of time reading The Light Between Oceans (do not believe the reviews, not worth the time) because I had started it, it is reasonably skimmable, and I am almost behind on my yearly reading challenge so I need some fodder while I plough through The Brothers Karamazov. 

When I finally staggered around to find my cellphone, there was a message from John that his mother had passed away at around 11:30 a.m. Sigh. So keep that pallor on the day.

Seems like everything 
lead up to this day
and it's just like every day 
that's ever been.
Sun goin' up 
and then the sun
it goin' down.

I don't even entirely know where the rest of the day went. I worked on the graphic novel and read. Stumbled around, even if only in my thoughts. I finally caught up with my own mother via telephone. And I took a satisfying nap (always important to me).

Os Mutantes were playing at Celebrate Brooklyn and they were part of the reason I came down here. It was tough to get out of the house after the nap, and I had missed the opening acts. I encouraged myself to just check it out. So I walked up to the park, found a seat in the second row of general admission, sat down, and the band came out and played. That did make me feel a bit better about my place in the universe. But, alas! Os Mutantes didn't raise my spirits much, and I was starving, so I left after about 30 minutes. I got a taste. Plus, I made an effort and got out of the house.

Oh why this chronicle? Because I haven't written in a couple of days? Because that edge of dualities I wrote about earlier this week has spread into a fog of life obscurity and a calm, constant confusion and questioning. I feel very insecure and that I know nothing. Least of all myself. I could easily doubt gravity at this moment. And I am clueless about where to find ... Solace? Knowledge? Direction? Purpose? 

I feel this for more than just myself. Seems as if more and more of my friends or our wider circles are less and less happy, accomplished, or sure/secure. I can feel the tension or see small tears in the fabrics of well-being or reasonable status quos. If there were ever a moment for me to find ... um ... religion, well this would be it. Yet, what I know of them does not appeal. I trust very little.

One way or another
One way or another
One way or another
this darkness got to give
One way or another
One way or another
One way or another
this darkness got to give

I am not so sure.

Tupelo likes ice cubes in his water bowl.

OF THAT TIME

Of that time, there is still much we do not know.
— Tom Bissell, The Select Mainstream: Contemplating the Mirages of Werner Herzog


I felt good enough today to take a 30 minute walk, which I read in a NY Times article I should do five times a week. As I presently live in a pretty place, that seems as if it shouldn't be too much of a hardship if I can just get in the habit. And so I did the walk. And now my knee hurts again, but we shall see how it is in the morning.

My three trees in summer.

I cannot get John's mom, Mary, out of my mind. Just a few weeks ago, she was giving him hell about going up to Schroon Lake. Now she is in hospice care, sleeping through the morphine, on oxygen. I never went to visit her as often as she asked. I suppose it should not be as dizzying as it is, but there you are. Here today, gone tomorrow as we hear.

What a fighter and survivor was Mary. Sure, she was a first-class noodge of the old school, but hell she came from Slovakia, lost a child and a first husband before WWII. Mary got through it. And she has three solid children to show for it. And many grandchildren and even some great-children. Feisty, opinionated, and I even saw some of her party skills at John's and Mel's wedding five years ago.

So, no matter her faults, I can swear that she has raised at least one first class child. John has been a companion for my life and I have no doubt that he will continue to be. We've been through some shit. But, as real friends do, we got through it and moved on. So how could I but love, respect, and lament one who has given ME such a gift? Godspeed, Mary. No doubt flights of angels lead you to your rest. And you deserve it.

These lilies are all over the place.

Meanwhile, the deluge is finally here. The cats barely know what to do with so much noisy rain, thunder, and lighting.  On another hand, Cooder has showed up some, so it is cooler.

Not at all how I feel at the moment, but as I am writing this Billie Holliday song has been playing: Laughing at Life.

I may not be laughing at life, but at the very least, I have a rueful smile (and some of you know that crooked mouth smile quite well). I seem to be afflicted with no end of mosquito bites and some more fucking poison ivy.  No idea where that came from. So I am itchy, okay.

Let it be.
Let it be.
Let it be.
Let it be.
There will be an answer,
let it be.


Let it rain.

VEILED

Today is one of those days where the veil is very thin. Life and death, happiness and misery, light and dark abut and nearly blend. 

It's not so much than anything is directly wrong with me. In fact, there have been more than a few moments, instances, in the last, say, week, where I felt reasonably blessed. And that with a very painful knee (much much better today, thank you for asking. I was awake and walking around for at least an hour before I even thought about it.), miscellaneous bleeding bug bites, rashes, swollen fingers, dwindling bank accounts, and the rest. The bright side still had some sheen.

But it is grey today, if less warm. What a trade-off for me: comfortable weather or light. One or the other. Well, at least Cooder came down to walk around today.

One of my close friends is going through some hella-changes at the moment, most confusing, even from my ringside seat. I can feel the pain and the confusion and I have little comfort or advice (well, that might be okay). 

I think I am mostly sad about my friend John's mom who is dying of cancer. No matter than she is 92, when someone that central to your life goes, age is irrelevant. John is being stalwart, clear, kind, grown-up, and dear, which, for me, makes it all the more poignant. Perhaps we are such close friends that I can just feel his pain, even from far away. 

But many of us are at that age when death is more of a resident than a visitor. And maybe  I'm just working on my grieving for my mom, for Cooder, for Tupelo, for Albert (who is ailing lately), still for Carl, and then myself, the myself I failed to become. (Now that is a philosophical concept.)

M lost a friend of 10-years last week. Another close friend of hers got a cancer diagnosis yesterday.

And meanwhile, there are the blossoming lives around us. A moving to Arizona, E going to Berlin. Becky's Landon standing by himself for the first time last night. Susan having her second baby. Hannah and Lyz's twins turning two. Sloan sending out smiles every day.

I know. I know. Cycle of life. Big fucking deal. The ins and the outs. Those transitions can really hurt.

'TWAS A STICKY DAY

'Twas a sticky day
Many clouds did grey the sky
Many negative words were heard
From people inside and out
'Twas a sticky day
Air conditioning was required
And the fans they never stopped
'Twas a sticky day ...

With apologies to Paul Simon.

It is still sticky although I can hear Big Bertha, my rusted, trusted vintage Westinghouse fan cooling further the screened in porch. Cooder has spent most of the day under some bed or other waiting for the unpleasantness, that she neither understands nor approves of, to pass. Emmylou, infinitely more hair-laden, made her usual rounds, albeit somewhat slower. And she did spend a good portion of the day flat.

Sticky and Scratchy, that's me today. Yeah. I am somewhat uncomfortable what with a strange rash on my right knuckle (I thought it was a mosquito bite but apparently not) and my strangely painful right knee. Oh, the breakdown of the body.

For those of you who have yet to reference and absorb the article I linked y'all to last night, here's another quote from Albert O. Hirschman:

"Creativity always comes a surprise to us; therefore we can never count on it and we dare not believe in it until it has happened. In other words, we would not consciously engage upon tasks whose success clearly requires that creativity be forthcoming. Hence, the only way in which we can bring our creative resources fully into play is by misjudging the nature of the task, by presenting it to ourselves as more routine, simple, undemanding of genuine creativity that it will turn out to be."

Hmm ... I'm taking my sticky and ouchy body to bed.

FALLING INTO TRUTH?

Why "Take Me to the River" this morning? Is it "I haven't seen the worst of it yet"?

Yet much is pleasant here. Cooder is grooming herself in the SIP sunspot. Emmylou is meatloafing casually nearby (but come to think of it, the practice of meatloafing is, by definition, casual. There is no such thing as an anxious meatloaf, I don't believe.)

A and E are doing yoga in the front room. Maybe next time they will let me join them.

Days later. 

No idea when I started writing this post. Maybe Friday. Sigh. 

It was brutually humid today, soupy and disorienting, pretty much the whole day. A and I, were rather out of it to say the very least. I think we were both suffering from lack of sleep. I can barely recount where the day went, but I do believe substantial guest laundry and dishes were done (not together). I also got caught up on Veep and True Blood. And work on Monsterwood and my regular gig.

Bombino and Amadou and Mariam at Celebrate Brooklyn were utterly revelatory. I had seen Amadou and Mariam before, but I had not seen the unleashed beauty of Amadou's guitar playing which was on beyond formidable. The Prospect Park Bandshell crowd was as crazy and enthusiastic as I have ever seen it. A sea of a-rhythmically dancing mostly white people... but impressive nonetheless. 

I also had time to read on the train up and back. I spent some time with the New Yorker which was just lovely. Malcolm Gladwell has a most interesting book review of Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman which I recommend most highly. Hirschman had some very interesting ideas about doubt and the benefits of failure. 

"While we are rather willing and even eager and relieved to agree with a historian's finding that we stumbled into the more shameful events of history, such as war, we are correspondingly unwilling to concede—in fact we find it intolerable to imagine—that our more lofty achievements, such as economic, social or political progress, coul dhave come about by stumbling rather than careful planning .... Language itself conspires toward this kind of asymmetry; we fall into error but do not speak of falling into truth."

There's a taste. I had a lot more enthusiasm and interesting thoughts when I first read this, but days and nights have passed and it is about all I can do right now to send a link.

More soon!

HAVE YOU SEEN YOUR AURA LATELY?

 Just wondering ... while I was out buying last minute anchovies and citronella candle for A's graduation b-b-bque, I found that I could have a spiritual check=up at the A&P shopping center. 

My aura must be pretty good at the moment, thank you for asking. It has been a hectic few days and I think I was on my feet for most of the hours of today. As self-appointed chief bottle-washer, I had plenty to do to keep ahead of the dishes. I am pleased to report that the kitchen is fairly clean, the dishwasher a-chugging along, and no major damage done. B & K2 are giving sleeping on the SIP a whirl, which sounds divine in this hot and muggy weather.

M's two sisters, J-A and K1, were here for the party and it was a thorough delight to hang out with the actual sisters of my bff-sister. Their husbands were also pretty darn grand. We cooked and kibitzed and ate. I did get a picture of all the females of the clan that were present, and a fine looking bunch they are:

Interestingly, if not surprisingly, all the x-y carriers left the scene when pictures were taken. 

And the freesia and nasturtiums are a-bloomin' as well. This will have to do for a check-in today.

FRENCH SICILIAN BREAD AND COMIC BOOKLETS

One of the ponds.

For those of you who asked about the cicadas, today I am getting the full brunt of them. Louise and I are in Rhinebeck, sitting outside, and working on Monsterwood. When I opened the backdoor to step onto the patio, it sounded (and still does) as if I were hearing a flotilla of sirens several blocks away. Quite a cacophony here. 

Meanwhile, and perhaps because of the din, I am singing the Go Go's How Much More? in my head. "How much more can I take before I go crazy?"

Many many hours later.

Isn't it amazing that you don't do the right thing, even when you know better? I had lots of things to say earlier and now that it is tomorrow, I am just plain old sleepy. And as we all know, that is nothing even vaguely new. I should have known better with a girl like me.

The weather was so beautiful, so right, you couldn't have paid for it if you wanted to, which might be a long-winded way of saying it was priceless. Just on the slim edge between warm and cool, which means completely comfortable. We sat in the shade in two Adirondack chairs, smelling the jasmine. 

Eventually, Louise was busily ploughing through my latest set of changes, and I decided to make Tuscan-style bean and tuna salad. I put edamame in it, so I don't think it was very Italian, but it sure was good. 

Sadly, the mosquitos got to my feet on my last evening in Brewster. There must be some way into the screened-in porch. I'll have to look for citronella candles and keep some bug repellant out there. 


I didn't really write about Calexico or the other events of Brooklyn. But I did manage to get in a nice catch up visit with my very most dear Becky MacGregor Clark and to finally meet her son! 

Landon Patrick Clark

And, as is often the case, I see the city with fresher eyes these days and want to photograph everything. Here are a garden doorstep and an interesting shop front in Williamsburg.

CHIRRUPING CRICKETS IN THE NIGHT

Yo, peeps? Where are you? Give a girl some props. As of 11:53 p.m., only five of you have looked at my last two posts, which I thought were pretty good, and this is the kind of thing that discourages me.

Meanwhile, made it down to Brooklyn, scored awesome seats at Calexico, and had a lovely time on an even lovelier night. In attendance avec moi, were one of the B's, AJ, and Mary. We kind of had wine, women, and song, and that sounds fairly excellent to me.

But as I already posted once today, I think I will wait 'til a greater degree of sanity and perhaps sobriety, although I am not too far gone, and try to relate the overall excellence that was Calexico on the morrow.

It is quite warm here in Brooklyn.

Now, two days later ...

Back in Brewster, hanging late on the SIP with Cooder in one of the four rocking chairs. Emmylou was out here, too, but seems to have moved back into the house. The crickets are chirupping along and I can see the waxing moon through the screen.

THE BUZZING OF SUMMER LAWNS

7:50 a.m.

Why is it that today I wake up at a Christian hour? When I gave myself permission to sleep in? and it isn't just that the machine happy neighbors are busy with their buzzy machines at 7:30 in the morning, as I was wakened before dawn with the extremely chirpy birds cacaphoning merrily. Gosh, and I was having a fun dream about flirting with the bass player for Led Zepplin who was really more of a feminist and a nice guy than I would have ever imagined. I was trying to explain to him, and he was reasonably listening, why I didn't really like le Zep back in the beginning. And then we were discussing the blues, (and expressiveness in music), he making the usual argument that you have to suffer if you want to play the blues, me making an argument for the informed, impassioned, and emotionally impaled listener, that a close and careful listener was part of the musical equation. Plus, he had loose curly black hair and blue-eyes.

Oh good. Now that it is 8:16 the mowing of summer lawns has stopped. No man is an island, unless you live in suburbia where it is only marginally necessary to think about your neighbors and the noise you might be making. 

A and I almost finished the SIP project. Then we made a kitchen-sink-ingredient Thai-style stir fry. We topped that off by having dinner on the SIP.

Well, I might as well get cracking as I still have to clean my desk. But very excited about Calexico tonight!

Lovely, right?

Emmy enjoying the evening later. And it's more or less okay if she sits on this table.

Well, I might as well get cracking as I still have to clean my desk. But very excited about Calexico tonight! And Cooder is pretty insistent that it is greenies time.

I had enough lights to put some up over my bed.

Post-script: I was never going to sleep this morning. The workmen just arrived to pump out the septic.

HIDE-AND-SEEK SUN

We saw some sun today, although it was a hide-and-seek kind of day. The temperature rose and fell according to the light, of course, so you had to run around with a sweater, at least. 

Where the day went, I am not entirely sure. And I am a bit extra distracted this evening as the mother of a close friend is very ill. I had a telephone conversation with another friend who is in similar straits to my own, which doesn't do much to cheer one up. My bank account is quite low, particularly after I filled up my gas tank and bought a bunch of greenies and other kitteh supplies.

So, although I am feeling kind of sad and bereft, anticipating my close friend's loss and knowing that loss is what all of my cohort will be dealing with shortly, I just don't want to carry on too far. 

At least I woke up with two kittehs on the bed with me.

Emmy does not understand why Albert and I can go out and she cannot.

LET IT RAIN

Sadie Thompson here, writing from Pago-Pago. This rain is crazy boring! Bring on the marines!





















Yeah, rain. And lots more to come. I moved the tomato plants onto the screened-in porch because they were drowning practically. I should probably venture out and move some of the others. It's the grey and lack of sun, more than the wetness, that gets to me.

I guess A & E are still sleeping. Oops, here comes one now. I was up a little too late, but I was able to sleep without medication. Fun and somewhat crazy dreams starring my friend Janine C. and John Slattery. I woke up to an Emmylou sleeping very near to me. Progress!

Now it is tomorrow and I am still awake, although I think sleep is possible. Still raining although there were several hours of respite. We did not get the derecho here, no thunder and lighting nor gale force winds. It is kind of cold though.

I needn't worry; I have two cats on my bed! I'd take a picture and post it however I have no idea where my iPhone is. That and my feet are cold. 

A and I took on the task that no likes to do: cleaning out the refrigerator. M was so pleased she said she thought angels would sing each time she opened it.

I did a bunch of laundry having found a missing cache of clothing when I visited my storage space. And I listened to more of Dearie.

Down the street to the south.

Up the street to the North.

My grand-niece is in Europe with her father who is the drummer for Burt Bacharach. Her blog is quite charming. You can check it out here.

The best thing one can do when it is raining is let it rain.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow