88. Death

The past two days I've kept running into death. 

In a sense, lately, death is all around me—in the continued (eternal) absence of our Milo. No more early morning walk, no more breakfast to be portioned out (kibble + a few spoonfuls of canned food), no more exuberant greeting when we arrive home from running errands, no more afternoon walk, no more tossing of the increasingly vanishing dog toy (his last two: a llama and a red panda), no more sticks thrown, no more river swims, no more evening meal (which increasingly became whatever he would eat, chiefly roast chicken, and salmon skin when we had salmon for dinner, and freeze-dried duck), no more sigh-and-thump as he settled onto his bed by ours. No more forbidden licking of my toes. No more neck scritches.

But we've got his little shrine—his ashes-containing box, his consolement cards, his pawprint pendants, his fur—to which I've added a calendar I made, for 2012, of his first year, and I rotate the pages every so often. Milo flying along a path! Milo standing tall at Sonora Pass! Milo chewing on his chew toys! Milo at SEATAC on his way to his new home! I intend to make a little book from some of the many, many photos I took of him over the years. He was my muse, my joy.

As a friend commented the other day after attending the memorial service for a good friend of hers, "And of course, the unsolved question of what happens to dead people, where are they, where do they go? They seem to suddenly just disappear." Same goes for dogs. 

Cats too. We'll be finding out, but hopefully not too soon. That said, I have lost cats—four of them—but only one of those did we "put to sleep." That cat, the empress Tisiphone, I cried buckets over. But that was thirty years ago. The pain has dulled to fond remembrance. (The other three disappeared in the neighborhood. We found the remains of one—the victim of a coyote. I know: we should keep them indoors. I won't argue my case for not doing that here...)

So, the past two days:

On Sunday, my writing group received word that our leader couldn't attend our Monday meeting because her partner was in the hospital, so we were postponing for a week. Yesterday (Monday) evening, she wrote that he had died, at 10:10 p.m. (There is something so poignant about that precise time.) This evening she wrote that we will still meet next week, that "I am in shock but still walking around." 

That's the strangeness of it, isn't it? You still walk around. Or maybe some confine themselves to bed in a deep depression. But mostly: you still have to walk around. Go to the bathroom, pour a glass of water, make your way to a chair in the sunshine and cry. Somehow, you take yourself to the store and buy groceries (I'd probably go straight to the Ben & Jerry's freezer). You keep going. You just do.

Today, I read on FB of two more deaths: my Antioch U friend Consuelo's kitty Bear Boy, and the longtime companion of the mother of another Antioch friend, Monique. It was moving to me to read their tributes to these important beings in their lives.

Then there's Country Joe McDonald, whose "Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" was so pertinent then, and seems just as pertinent now. He died on March 7, age 84.

And today my friend Nina's computer died! She's getting a new, modern, much lighter one, and fortunately she had backed up the more important files. But still: even transitioning to a new laptop requires adjustment. Death is never easy.

But the biggest death these past few days happened just a few hours ago: my Howler friend Sherilyn's father, Ron, who suffered a stroke nine years ago, finally slipped to the other side. All these nine years, three of us—Sherilyn, Kim, and I—have met pretty much every morning (travel aside) to spend ninety minutes writing or in other creative pursuits (and pretty much all day on weekends). This evening at 6:06 she texted: "Ron has died. He passed away comfortably in his sleep about 15 minutes ago. Thank you for supporting us."

It's strange how in the chest that simple statement hit me. All these years, Sherilyn has been flying back and forth every week between Burbank, where she and her husband, Grant, live, and Santa Clara, where Ron and her mom, Cindy, live, to take care of him. There were caregivers early on, but then the pandemic hit and caregiving became a two-person gig. Though it was mainly Sherilyn on watch. Grant would come up every so often to help out. It was a small, but twenty-four-hour, operation, keeping Ron going.

And now he's gone. 

Just this last week, they signed up with hospice. Ron stopped eating several weeks ago; it was just a matter of time. And hospice seemed to spark Cindy into action, making plans. She announced, for example, that she'd be selling the house and moving back to Hawaii, where she's from. She started going through Ron's shirts. Hospice seemed to provide an opening, a new horizon.

And now he's gone. And the new horizon can swim into view.

I'm excited for Sherilyn, and for Cindy. Sad too, of course, but Ron really went away with that stroke. 

I asked Sherilyn if she'd send a picture of Ron, because I'd never seen one. I had this vague image of a man lying in bed, a big man, an Asian American man, but I didn't really know what he looked like. She sent this:

Bellagio Hotel, Las Vegas, 12/2014—a couple of years before the stroke. "We have tons but the fastest search was 'Las Vegas,'" she wrote. "He loved Vegas! Proof he's from Hawaii!"

He looked like a big happy bear of a man. I'm so sorry he spent his last almost ten years living the diminished life he did. 

I trust Sherilyn and Cindy won't mind that I featured them here. It's just so strange for the death of someone I never even knew to hit me so hard. But in a way, I've lived with the three of them for nine years now. Their story, what little I know of it, is in my own heart.

87. Travel plans

Thanks to Mr. Trump's war and rising gas prices, I was goosed out of my normal lethargy when it comes to booking airplane tickets, and over the last few days I, yes, booked airplane tickets. In June, to Berlin and Oslo; in August, to Brazil. 

It feels good to have that done. 

It feels good, too, to have a respite from this benighted country to look forward to. 

Not that I'll stop looking at the news, but still. Soon I'll have entirely new universes to explore. Berlin: WWII, the Cold War with its Wall, jazz clubs, walking in the Havelhöhenweg, and more. Oslo: spending time with family and revisiting favorite spots—the Vigeland sculpture park, the Fram polar exploration museum, the new library, the opera house . . . and more! Brazil: São Paulo and then the Pantanal. 

Here are a few pictures of the Pantanal. It's a vast wetland I first heard about from a Brazilian fellow traveler in Botswana almost thirty years ago, and it's stuck in my head all this time. Lately, I see more and more stories about its diminishment due to climate change—fires, drought. I am crossing my fingers that this August will be a good season for seeing birds and wildlife—including giant river otters, giant anteaters, jaguars, yacaré caiman, hyacinth macaws, and 650 other bird species. 

Humankind is destroying this planet. The government of the country I happen to live in doesn't seem to give a shit. I feel a need to visit the wondrous places while I still can—by which I mean both me, physically, while I can still move around; and while these places still exist, because they won't for long, at this rate.

I am looking forward to my travels. They help me stay buoyed up.

I despair for what the youngest generations will be coming up against. It won't be easy. Even if we have the most innovative, forward-thinking people in charge. Which recent votes have shown isn't particularly likely.

86. This is just to say...

Today's poetry group prompt involved parodying an existing poem. One of the examples was William Carlos William's "This Is Just to Say." 

I have eaten 
the plums 
that were in 
the icebox

and which 
you were probably 
saving 
for breakfast

Forgive me 
they were delicious 
so sweet 
and so cold

And here's a representative parody:

Variations on a Theme

Kenneth Koch

1

I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.

2

We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.

3

I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.

4

Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!

Our prompter today, Karla, also mentioned that way back when, Garrison Keillor hosted the poet Billy Collins on his Prairie Home Companion, and they had fun with this very same poem. Here is one of the some thirty-four parodies they offered up:

BC: Listen to this poem—

I stand by the window,
Listening to dogs
Barking in the cold rain
That falls like vinegar.
A brown leaf reminds me of my grandmother.
And eating gooseberries in the Piazza Navona
That summer of our first love.

—It's a poem written by a computer!

GK: How can you tell?

BC: By the little sprocket holes on both sides.

(Mind you, this was performed in 2002. But still: AI anyone?)

It (by which I mean WCW's original) is a perfect poem, really. Parody it all you like—you can't defeat it.

But finally, here's a short film about Williams (1883–1963). You really can't help but love him. At least, I can't.

85. Michael Pollan, conscious human being

My title is a little tongue in cheek, but not much. Michael Pollan, of course, is an author, starting with Second Nature: A Gardener's Education (1991) and including most famously The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World (2001), The Omnivore's Dilemma (2006), and This Is Your Mind on Plants (2021), about psychedelics. As his interests have evolved he's become a philosopher, and lately has been delving into the question of consciousness—as in his brand-new book A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness. Because of this book, he's been popping up in interviews, on podcasts and on TV. So I thought I'd feature a few of those here, plus a couple of ancillary references.

Stephen Colbert spoke with Pollan last week:

He was also Terry Gross's guest recently on Fresh Air, and the guest of David Marchese on the New York Times's "The Interview":

In the first video above, Pollan mentions a 1974 essay by Thomas Nagel titled "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" which I happily found online, and you too can read it here.

But finally, what really brought me here was the poem by e.e. cummings that Colbert recites in the second video, which a FB friend of mine, Leslie, mentioned in her daily post. She also quotes a different poem of cummings's. So I will end with both those. You're welcome!

[since feeling is first]

since feeling is first

who pays any attention 

to the syntax of things

will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool

while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,

and kisses are a better fate 

than wisdom

lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry

—the best gesture of my brain is less than

your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other: then

laugh, leaning back in my arms

for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

[you shall above all things be glad and young]

you shall above all things be glad and young

For if you’re young,whatever life you wear

it will become you;and if you are glad

whatever’s living will yourself become.

Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:

i can entirely her only love

whose any mystery makes every man’s

flesh put space on;and his mind take off time

that you should ever think,may god forbid

and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:

for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave

called progress,and negation’s dead undoom.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing

than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

84. Pantoums

Thursday is my poetry day: every week, a number of us from all over the country, plus Peru, meet in the afternoon to read some prompt poems, write for half an hour, and share. These past few weeks too, Thursday mornings at 9, I've been meeting with six others, led by Kathryn Petruccelli (who has various outlets: the blog Poet Roar, the Substack Ask the Poet, and recently a podcast, Melody or Witchcraft), in a generative workshop that she calls Small Observances, Big Ideas, or SOBI. 

Today, coincidentally, both groups ended up focusing on a poetic form, originally devised in 15th-century Malaya, known as the pantoum. The basic idea is that in each four-line stanza (after the first), you take the second and fourth lines of the preceding stanza, and they become the first and third lines of the next. The new second and fourth lines are fresh. And on and on you go, until the end, when the third and first lines of the very first stanza become the second and last lines of that final stanza. Clear as mud? 

Here's the poem we used as our guide in the SOBI group this morning, with the lines numbered so you can see the pattern:

Naturalization

Leah Silvieus

1     When I came to this country, I was reborn
2     with a pistol in my palm.
3     They called me a natural:
4     That bullseye, gorgeous!

2     With a pistol in my palm
5     the weight like a future son,
4     that bullseye gorgeous
6     like summer sunlight on stainless steel.

5     The weight like a future son
7     dreaming blood on my hands—
6     like summer sunlight on stainless steel,
8     bright like Christ.

7     Dreaming blood on my hands,
3     they called me. A natural,
8     right? Like Christ,
1     when I came to: This country I was, reborn.

Here's another one. As the poet River Dandelion says, the pantoum is a powerful vehicle for exploring intergenerational stories. 

Halcyon Kitchen

Kiandra Jimenez

Granma cautioned in a kitchen off Century and Hoover:
Never throw your hair away. Burn it. Till yellow
cornbread bakes and greens release pot liquor,
her garnet-polished fingers unraveled each cornrow.

Never throw your hair away, burn it till yellow
flames flick up and turn orange, blue. Overhead,
her garnet-polished fingers unraveled each cornrow,
wrestling. I reminisce, standing over her deathbed.

Rain picks up and turns ocher, blue. Unsaid
were simple things. Oxtail stew and yam
recipes I recollect, standing over her deathbed.
She smoked Mores leaning in the kitchen doorjamb,

when simple things — oxtail stew and yam
recipes — were not measured nor written. Cooking while
she smoked Mores leaning in the kitchen doorjamb,
her left hand in the profound curve of her hip. She’d say, Chile,

ma recipes are not measured nor written. Cooking while
I sat alongside the stove waiting for the hot comb, meantime
her left hand in the profound curve of her hip, she’d say, Chile,
I may be dead and gone, but you mark my words. Sometimes

I sat alongside the stove waiting for the hot comb, meantime
I loved watching her smoking, cooking, talking with More fingers,
I may be dead and gone, but you’ll mark my words. This time,
she is quiet. I hold maroon-polished hands as her soul lifts, waits, lingers.

I loved watching her smoking, cooking, talking with More fingers.
Halcyon rain picks up, soaks me blue. Nothing unsaid.
She is quiet. I hold maroon-polished hands as her soul lifts, waits, lingers,
restful. I’m remembering — standing over her deathbed.

It seems to be a good vehicle for grief as well, with its obsessive circling. That was the subject of one of the two I wrote today, which I'll share here. It adheres to the strict form, by which I mean no monkeying with wording (though monkeying with punctuation is perfectly okay). For my second assay, I took a lot of liberties with the form. But I'll leave that one for another day.

Grief

Fragile solace of memories.
You are a ghost now,
here, not here,
wavering shadow in bright sunlight.

You are a ghost now,
sadness a sheer blanket:
wavering shadow in bright sunlight,
salt sponge of tears—

sadness a sheer blanket
to be lifted, somehow—
salt sponge of tears
urging the heart to recall,

to be lifted somehow,
here, not here,
urging the heart to recall
(fragile solace of) memories.

Book Report: Notes from No Man's Land

5. Eula Biss, Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays (2009) (2/22/26)

I'm not even sure what to say about this eclectic collection of essays. They explore geography, and race, and identity in America—Biss writing as a white woman, but also imagining, considering, other identities. 

The book comprises five sections. "Before" begins the volume, about Alexander Graham Bell and his telephone, which led to telephone poles that studded this country, from which Black men were eventually—conveniently—hung. In "New York" Biss explores various aspects of race from a personal viewpoint—through stories of her mother, who embraced African culture and married more than one Black man; through the story of an in vitro pregnancy that resulted in twins, one white, one Black, and the grandmother who wished to have a relationship with her Black grandchild; through her own experiences as a young teacher in Harlem; and in an examination of her relationship to New York City, through the lens of Joan Didion's "Goodbye to All That." In "California" she discusses her experience covering "Black news" in San Diego, an extended stay living and learning Spanish in Mexico, and the "fantasy" that is California. "Midwest" takes us to the "utopia" town of Buxton, a model of amicable race relations built in 1900, a ghost town by 1920; the college town of Iowa City; the metaphorical no-man's land, a place (or time) betwixt and between; and an exploration of identity via the vehicle (inherited and yet also somewhat arbitrary) that is our name. In "After" she takes on being sorry, both on a personal level and as a national attempt to right wrongs.

In "Three Songs of Salvage" she writes of being taken by her mother 

to the bembés where the orishas were called down. We watched the drummers sweat and the dancers shake, and we ate salty beans and rice with the other kids. We listened to the dancers sing and we sang, when we sang, in a language we did not understand. The more distance my mother put between herself and what she knew, between her mind and the words it understood, the closer she felt to the imponderable.
     The smell of cigar smoke came up through the floorboards every night in those days. I closed the red metal grate in the floor, but the smell at night was not as bad as in the afternoons, which stank of goat skin stretched on the barn to dry. I fell asleep to the distant sound of drums, which I was not always entirely sure was the distant sound of drums. Rain, blood in the body, explosions in the quarry, and frogs are all drums.
    . . . I know now that I left home and I left the drums but I didn't leave home and I didn't leave the drums. Sewer plates, jackhammers, subway trains, cars on the bridge, and basketballs are all drums.

Biss explores complex ideas and associations with great intelligence. And now that I've looked for her more recent books, I realize I read—and very much enjoyed—another, Having and Being Had, about (loosely) capitalism. I wonder what she's exploring now. I'll keep a lookout.

83. February 19ths past

A few photos from my Flickr archive (long since abandoned, though I've recently reemerged there with a new Project 365, my fifth). Just some memories, from February 19ths long ago (2008–2011). I was hoping Milo would show up, and there he was! I want to keep remembering him here. 

I've linked the years to the associated Flickr page, for description and comments.

2008

2009

2010

2011