Down the Memory Lane

It's New Year's Eve.  Why am I going through his old notebooks on this day?

Little scribbles pull so much out from the past.  I hear his voice saying them, or for some hear myself saying and him laughing.  

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 - When you are on a train, never get yourself near a woman with pushed-up hair.  No exception.
 - I don't have the tits to do that.
 - Namida-kun Sayonara! (Japanese old pop-song lyrics)
 - Is there anything as beautiful as a Spring day in Moscow?

 - Mekuso hanakuso o warau (eye-snot laughs at nose-snot) 
 - Grammy died in a ditch just about a mile out of Antigonish. (his song for Grammy)
 - Tenno Shinda, Showa 64 nen. (The emperor died in Showa 64.)

 - He never speaks until he drinks.

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Then I found an entry on this day 9 years ago, December 31, 2001.

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We went into town 

came out of the L

To a bright winter morning

The avenues were bright 

But the streets were in shadows

And the wind flowed up between them. 

Halfway down 18th Street 

We stopped in a bookshop

To warm ourselves and her

looking at music books

and me looking at art ones

Until we were ready to continue on down the block

to Bed, Bath, and Beyond.

D's typical day -97

from D's notebook
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    I walk into the place where I get coffee.  A little after eight in the morning.
In this coffee shop the women wear little white paper hats.  The Irish woman wears glasses, too, always knows what I want.
    Anyway I walk in, and the Irish woman is saying to a much younger, stout, Indian woman (who also works there)
"What are you about? You're starin' into space."
"Oh," says the young woman.  "I was just thinking about Billy."
"Billy? Who's Billy?" the older woman says, cocking a brow.
"Oh, I don't know," says the girl.

    Sometimes I go to a place for lunch called "The Italian Deli."  It's not Italian. The owner, I think, from the Bureau of some kind of Inspection paper posted on the wall with a photograph on it, signifies that the owner is Asian, maybe from Malaysia.  So many congealed consonants in the name.  The Italian Deli has a $3 lunch special.  Ham, salami, cheese, lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise on a roll, with a can of soda and a bag of chips thrown in.
    So anyway the other day I walked in and said to the guy (my father's age) who makes the sandwiches,
"Uh, I'll have the special."
"The Summer Special?" he said.
"Yes."
"Summer's over."
"......"
"But we've got an Autumn Special, it's the same price."
"What is it?"
"Same thing."

Philadelphia

Back from my mother-in-law's in Philadelphia.

I didn't know the absence could take so much space -her small house was thick with the deads' breaths (including the dog's).

Christmas evening, D's mom and sister made fire.  Taking turns, they poked and turned the logs.  I watched.  When the flames flared and hissed, three of us stared into it for a while, in silence, as if listening to the house remembering the deads.

                            

Christmas is Coming

It's my third Christmas without him.

For some people out there, it's the first Christmas, or the second, without their loved ones. 

Right now you may be lost in horrible pain, but please be patient.  Someday not too far ahead you'll be happy again, I promise.

Story of Kiki Feet

... And then this guy came into the world. 

Confession of a surviving wife

Around his death, I distorted the logic badly.  I had to find somebody's faults, something to blame.  I crawled on the floor picking them up, even a tiny fragment of them, and held them tight.  Naturally many of them came from D's mom - she was the closest person.   I snapped at her, held grudge on her words, and hid from her.   I'm sorry Mom, and thank you for not giving up on me.  

Confession of a city boy -2

Continued from part 1

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    Here's what ended up happening.  They got out of the car, put my bicycle in the back, with saddlebags and all.  I got in the back of the squad car and they actually drove me back to the youth hostel.  Embarrassing for a fifteen year old.   But that wasn't the worst.  As we pulled up the gravel drive to the hostel, the policemen thought it would give me a kick if they turned on the flashing light and the sirens, like maybe it would impress the other kids.  We roared up the drive way, lights blazing, siren blaring, and every single person in that camp spilled outside and gathered around the car.
    The biggest and blondest boy in my group chested up to me, grinning.  In absolute bliss.  "Half Pint!  You got lost!  You got lost!  We're on Nantucket!  It's an island!  It isn't more than two miles wide at any one place!  You got lost!??"
    Retort, I needed a retort.  "Whoa," I said.
    I don't think this helps.  I don't think it makes anything clearer, by way of an example.  I'm up here in the wilderness.  I'm trying to tell you how I might as well be on Mars.  And what is that going to mean?  There's no such thing as a street here.  There are only roads.  And they don't have names.  If they do have a name, it is something like "Moose Point."  But if someone asks me, where were you yesterday, and I say "Moose Point," they look completely blank, or say, "You mean Syler's ridge?"
    I went fishing, of all things, the other day.  This is something that normally I wouldn't voluntarily do.  But I'm trying to be neighborly, make human connections, not hide when someone rings the doorbell.  So when B said "Let's go smelting," I said sure, why not, sounds great.  Smelting was almost a new word in my vocabulary.  I had thought it was something to do with iron ore.
    Anyway, when the time came we got into his pick-up truck and drove way the hell out somewhere.  Along these "roads," which are not paved, by the way.  B pointed out roadside attractions.  "That's pulpwood,"  he said.  Or, "there's an old foundation behind those trees."
    But there's no address for smelts.  And B didn't know exactly where they were.  We stopped by some gully to ask a man who was wearing green coveralls and a trucker's cap on backwards, standing by the side of the road and doing something with a rope.  A character I definitely would have speeded up to pass.
    But B stopped, rolled down the window, and asked, "Are there smelts running around here?"
"Gear shift under tier axle steering rod belfry ocelot."  The man replied.
"Oh, yeah..."  replied B.
    Auto mechanics.  Car trouble.  He has a problem with his car, I thought.
"Yont nor screen throttle bar schism."
"O.K., we'll try over there," said B.   And we proceeded to the smelting grounds!
    The way to catch smelts is to find a stream that runs down into the ocean. Then as they try to get upstream to spawn or whatever, you catch them.  This must be done in complete darkness, straddling the stream, with a flashlight in one hand and a net in the other.  Really, you don't even need the net.  The poor, dumb animals are struggling out of the ocean, and then upstream, against the current, over stones, and really, by the time the flashlight shines on their silvery bodies, they just don't care any more.  You can just pick them up in your hand.
    But they know where to go.  Which is more than I can say.  I didn't even need to catch them.  I certainly didn't want to eat them.  It was enough for me just throwing a beam on them, and watching them go by.  There's a good clue, there's a nice metaphor.  Whoa.
    I am lost!  And I keep moving in order to stay lost!

                                            - the end.

Confession of a city boy -1

Found in D's notebook, written probably in 1991 when he lived in Nova Scotia for the Summer.   It's long so I divided into two parts.
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    I thought that I'd have a chance to explain to you about all this, about the way I approach this, but it's been ten years now, and if anything, it is even more confused.
    I come from the city. That's my orientation. Not the city but just a city.   Well, not a city, more like the edge of a city, but inside the city limits.  All right, let's say the suburbs, O.K.?  I come from the suburbs.  A rich suburb, even.  It's a string of towns outside Philadelphia, and it is called the Main Line.  There's a train that runs through these towns into the city, and it's called the Paoli Local.  There's a saying, "Nothing is so holy as the local from Paoli."  Oh, it's rich.  Full of the so-called Philadelphia lawyers and overbred snobs.  In The Main Line Times I read an anecdote about a famous rivalry between two expensive boys' academies.  A man was remembering playing in a football game, and before the game the coach says, "If you lose this game, you'll never live it down.  You'll grow up and every time you get on the train, you're gonna see these same guys.
"And they will look at you over their newspapers and you will look at them, and they will have one up on you.  Do you want that?"
    A really established, traditional environs, built around an old city.  But I brought it up because I'm from the city, I measure where I am by streets.  If I don't have streets with clearly marked street signs on the corner of every block, I'm disoriented, lost, nervous.  I got so lost once on a bicycle trip, when I was about fifteen.  I was on this trip with a bunch of these academy type Main-Line boys and/or their sisters.  Scions, blond, broad-shouldered, or wiry, good-at-sports.  Intense.  They all had nicknames for each other.  Tiger. Red. Curly, Tiny. Half-pint.  You can guess who was Half-pint, can't you?
    Anyway we were on Nantucket island (of course, of course), and this was around 1976 or 7, and I was about half-way to discarding the belief system of this academy football coach.  I had long hair and was into marijuana and said "whoa" a lot.  So I guess we were speeding along some road, almost raining, and I got sidetracked by something along the side of the road (whoa!).   When I looked up, or came to, or whatever, everyone was gone.  We were supposed to end up at a youth hostel, but I didn't know where that was.
    So I found a policeman.  Because there were no blocks, no signs, only ridiculous roadside clam joints and souvenir stands. I flagged down a squad car.  The policemen were positively jolly.  That's the only adjective that fits.  I remember because this demeanor was so different from the no-nonsense, harried bark that comes from a Philadelphia cop, which is what I wanted, actually, because it's the least embarrassing.  Just "Where's the hostel?"
"Nine blocks up, two right!"  And then a roar of tires and spitting gravel.  But no, that didn't happen.  These cops grinned!  "Lost, eh?"  well, well.  "Youth hostel?  I know where that is.  Other side of Siasconset!"  This of course meant nothing to me.  In my head I was screaming "What block?  What street?  What number!"

                                  continue to part 2

Going Home

I like bridges 

because they are between places. 

Ten minutes of every morning and evening, 

I'm far from everything, 

even from my Deadman

That's what I like to think.

Spirits in words spoken

There's a word in Japanese "Kotodama," meaning, the spirits in spoken words.  In ancient Japan it was believed that words you speak have special power and can bring you blessings or bad fortune.  I've also heard that, when you strongly believe what you say, your voice would contain some special overtone that makes the words penetrate people.  

D's Mom and I went to a neighborhood church last Sunday; it was the first Advent Sunday.   The words spoken there certainly seemed to have Kotodama in them because I was choking even though I didn't understand half of what they said.   

 I felt relief for being closer to the dead but at the same time very uneasy especially when everyone sang and chanted.  I couldn't say one syllable of the words written in the book - as if, even in a whisper, it would fill the church and reveal my inside full of doubts. 

D wrote on a cardboard box, I think shortly before he died, "I BELIEVE IN GOD," in capital letters.

GRIEF COUNSELORS

Found in D's notebook, written in 1997 

Painting title: GRIEF COUNSELORS

Reporter: The bombing has left many people homeless. What is being done about their situation?

Spokesman: Grief counselors are being airlifted to the area, and they will of course -

Reporter: Airlifted?

Spokesman: yes, they're parachuting into the area.

Reporter: Grief counselors are parachuting into the area?

Spokesman: As we speak. Each grief counselor is equipped with a grief pack that includes water, blankets, inspirational poems, caramels, and clean, white underwear. 

Reporter: What about the wounded?

Spokesman: Well, we like to give them a day or two out in an empty field, lying on their backs looking up at the stars. It gives them time to "simmer down" and realize what's happened, and then...

Reporter: What! An Empty field? 

Spokesman: Well, yes. We're grief counselors, we're there when people are grieving, letting it all out and just needing a hand on the shoulder.  I mean a guy who's just had three fingers blown off is probably feeling a pretty strong emotion, but it's not grief.