Shadows of a Man

A whole man

is replaced by memories

the memories

are replaced by the records

and they scatter 

and scrunch 

beneath this and behind that

like shadows

You can put them in a zip-log bag

wrap them in bubbly plastic

and put them in a safe

but you can't stop them sneaking away from you

A photograph of the man

becomes just a photograph

and only sand-like remains 

remain like sand

Walking Chopsticks

This was probably done in around 97 - 98.

The writing at the top reads:
      I should have been a pair of chopsticks
      Sitting across the floor of Chinese restaurants.
       (paragraph repeated)

_________________________________________
I've been doing a paint project of the south half of the apartment, finally.
It should be finished tomorrow.
All the dirt and marks we produced together over the decade will be gone, and I'm a bit reluctant to let go the colorful stains of oil paint on the studio wall.  

Cancer

Again found in the old Mac.  This piece was titled "Cancer" by him.

I don't know the date written but sounds like much later than the time cancer was found in 2004.

_____________________________________________

I had cancer. The doctors found it growing in my left lung. I called my doctor one day, finally, after running a fever for more than six days, and asked what I should do about it, as it wasn’t going away, and also I had a constant, hacking, cough, and so does one just ride out a fever like that or what? Doctor urbina told me to check myself into the hospital.  K and I took the train into the city to st vincent’s hospital in the west village. 

I was admitted immediately at the emergency room. I didn’t know when I went in that it would be a week before I came out again. I lay on a gurney in the emergency room for most of the afternoon. I had a fever so I remember it as being very dreamy with images drifting in and out; the old white guy across from me looking over the top of his sheet, the insane black man next to him, about my own age, who kept ranting, the various doctors, nurses, nurse’s aides, interns and hospital administrators who showed up and looked down at me, poking around and asking questions. I lay there listening to the never ending series of sounds which the patient monitoring machines make. The hums, the trills, the rhythmic pulses. I would soon get to know these sounds individually. I was constantly distracted and bothered by the sound of the iv drip, the sounds of the monitors of my vital signs which became insistent when something became unattached or I breathed too slowly, the morphine drip when I pressed the attached presser, not to mention the sounds of other patients and their machines. 

Waiting in a wheelchair to get an x-ray one day I saw a young black man stretched out on a gurney unconscious or pretending to be, and his iv drip was beating a loud three-note sequence, and it went on and on and no one did anything about it. I wheelchaired up to the high desk where the middle-aged looking black women who arrange the x-ray procedures and said that guy’s iv isn’t working. It keeps beeping a malfunction. One of them went over to look at the guy, but then I was sent into the x-ray room and when I came out the guy was gone (the x-ray guy was the same guy who did the first x-ray in the emergency room, and he asked if I remember him which of course I did on account of his pronounced limp).

Finally, after lying there in the emergency room a guy came up to me and wheeled me away down a hallway and around a corner and parked me against a wall and said to wait to be x-rayed. At my feet, across the hall on the other side of the door to the x-ray room two white cops were non-chalantly interviewing a black man wearing cuffs who just as non-chalantly answered their questions and commented pithily on the ironic turns of fortune which befall us all. Gimpy ed, if that was his name, finally came out and wheeled me into the x-ray room where we did together a kind of formal dance called putting the patient in position and taking the patient’s picture. Merce Cunningham would have loved it, the soundless barefoot and white-sneakered movements, the smart clicks, bangs and sweeps made by ed’s manipulation of the slide. Back in the amergency room I was approached by interns who seemed so young, and I’m not even that old. 

Application Form for Millionaire

I've found a blank application form for the TV show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" that D must have downloaded -- the saved date was July 2007.  

I remember that he actually went to the audition for that show.  When he told me that he was going to it, I asked why, and he said he wanted to be on TV.   He? Wants to be on TV?   It was so unlike him I thought, but I didn't really care - sometimes a man wants to be on TV, fine, whatever. 

Flashing thoughts just came -- is it possible that he did it because he was worried about me after he's gone?  Did he feel so sorry for me that he wanted to leave some money?   ... Nah! 

More Found

A couple more of D's writing was found in our old Mac.  This one was written in December 2006. (He didn't put the date but Mac did)  The last letter "P" indicates it was unfinished, but I kind of like the way it is - "P" serves as a period.   (I don't know if the story makes sense or not, but this surely does sound like his voice.  

__________________________________________________________

There’s this geezer named Paulo who wrote about giving education back to the people, having the learners be responsible for their own learning and leaving the teacher as a sort of facilitator between students and any information or access to information they might require. I have a lingering guilt about what I impose upon students. My values have an effect on the language I use. But I sometimes imagine Paulo arguing with his students (or flock. He was also a priest).

P: what do you want me for today?

S: we wanchu to teach us how buy guns

P: well I don't know um when you say we, don’t you mean I

S: no I mean we. I’m the leader.

P: well in this class technically I’m the leader, and I think all the members of the group should create the tasks for the group.

S: I’m the president of the group

P: who decided?

S: we decided.

P: when?

S: before the class, while you were inna cloister

P: why do you want to learn about guns?

S: so we can kill te bosses.

P: but thatll kill your means of production, if therz no bosses therz no work

S: we want to kill you 

P

Dear My Mother-in-Law

I can't find any journal after he was diagnosed with cancer in 2004.  Only there are little fragments he scribbled here and there, on a little piece of paper or back of a cardboard box, things like that, and most of them, especially the recent ones, are too painful for me to even glance at.  So I don't have much more of his stuff to put on this blog.

However, the other day, I accidentally found a video he took of me with an old hand-me-down Sony camera. I had no memory of it at all, but in this short video I was knitting and D called my name many times to get me look at the camera.  Finally I looked up and said "Sorry, I was counting."   That is all in it, but his voice was disturbingly alive.  If you are interested I'll show you on your next visit.  

Here is his little drawing he did while waiting at Saint Vincent's.  I'm still upset that the hospital's gone - the building at 12th Street and 7th Avenue will turn into luxury condos I've heard.  

Windy Day in Harlem

On a very windy day in April 

At the busy corner of 125th Street and Eighth Avenue,

A middle-aged black man with a white hat sang,

"Wind, blow, wind,"

and he looked around, 

then laughed like a full moon.

Sick of it

Driving country roads reminds me of the countless road trips that D and I took, I realized. 

Seeing the tree tops from the car window, slowing down at a ramp, ordering at Wendy's counter in a rural town, looking up at the sky from a parking lot of a hotel... at moments like these I expect him on my side, still!  

How lucky he is to be missed so much, or does he not care at all?  

I really should be over it; I thought I would've been a brand-new woman by now.  You weren't the world's sweetest man, right?  Help me become a whole person again already. 

Car Rental

A Conversation at a car rental desk at Denver Airport.
(between a dark-haired young woman at the desk and me)

She: I recommend our full coverage insurance.
I: No, we'll be okay. thanks, though.
She: Okay. There's no hell coverage then.
I: What coverage?
She: hell.
I: Excuse me, what was it again? Hell coverage?
She: Yes.  You are responsible for the hill, if you don't want the insurance.
I: The hill coverage?
She: Yes.
I: What kind of coverage is that?
She: Well, at this time of year, we have a lot of hail that damages cars -- YOU are responsible for that.
I: Ah, hail! Hail coverage!
She: Yes.

At the Museum

A blind man was in Chinese art section in the Metropolitan Art Museum.  He sat, in very upright, zen-like posture on a bench, with his arm folded around a silver cane and holding the museum's audio guide. 

He was listening to the device with such concentration that he looked all alone in the crowded room, as if breathing different air from the rest of us.  

As he listened, his eyes were moving busily behind the softly closed eyelids, and he sometimes tilted his head or moved his chin up and down, in trying to view something from different angles. 

With my limited imagination I could only wonder what he was seeing and how beautiful they were.  

The Girls

My sister-in-law, her husband and their two girls are in the city for a visit.

They came yesterday with the heavy rain and countless bags, 

crossed over three years' time in seven hours. 

We played "Go Fish"

had burritos and fajitas for dinner

talked and giggled and made silly faces

And read poems lying on the bouncy air bed

The girls had grown so much

now they have their own must-see destinations in New York

-- Chinatown and American Girl Dolls store.

The older one had a hard time sleeping

With the rain, winds, and occasional trucks and ambulance passing by

As I was brushing my teeth, I heard her father gently singing for her at the bedside.  

The younger one has eyes of D's.  

I couldn't help staring into them -those deep, blue eloquent eyes!

When we went outside this morning she looked at the sky and exclaimed,

"Look, the clouds are moving!"

Then she cited a poem, 

"White sheep, white sheep, on the blue hill..."

Not Bad at All

"Duckies," Aunt N used to call us.

Now I wade through the water in a singular form,
drawing simple lines behind as I go

I've got a friend
who sends me beautiful pictures,

I've got another friend
with whom I went up to the roof yesterday evening
and sat in silence under the inky sky,

I've found a great poet from Yugoslavia,
and I've got the radio talking to me softly (when I want it)

It's not bad at all!

Notes of Spoken Words

my violin teacher: "Every note has a life, every note has a reason."
D: "I'm as full of death as a drugstore"
some protesters: "No justice, no peace, 2468 we don't want to integrate"
a boy: "What time is it?"
father: "It's daytime"
Mao: "If you don't bite into the pear, then you can only imagine the taste"
again my violin teacher: "The music has to go somewhere"
D: "Poetry is much harder than rhyming"
me in 2008: "why, it's raining outside!"

A Rock of Nova Scotia

This massive rock, size of a small pillow, sits on my living room floor.  

It's just so heavy I can hardly move it.

It's the rock D fell in love with at the lonely beach 
in Nova Scotia many years ago.

He carried it stumbling along the shore, about a mile, to the old car

as if it was his whole future

At the end of that summer the rock crossed the border 
and came into our little urban life

where the voices of tides live only in its memory

“What would I do with it when ...?”

I have blurted out once and swallowed the rest, but it was too late

Hush fell in the room

like small flakes of dust,

on my guilty neck, on his sloping shoulders,

and on the massive rock of Nova Scotia

The rock still sits on the floor

cool and mute and unbudging

while the cat and I, the outlived,

prowl about in the house every day.


Seriously, 
what will I do with it?

April Fool

Death toll is still rising in northeastern Japan.

Today I bought three books online, went out and took a bunch of bad pictures, missed Garrison Keillor's radio show, and watched the movie "Breathless."

Then I opened the window listened for his voice calling me "Larry."
I am a fool of April 2nd.

Rolling Ball of Time

From D's notebook  (date unknown)
_______________________________________

I'm afraid of you
I don't like you
I'm afraid of you
Go away
Aaaaah  I don't want you
You scare me
I don't like you
*
You ask the best of me
You believe
I have the courage
Excuse my coughing
Warning!  Incoming
Every moment that passes
All the rolling ball of time
I have the courage
But excuse my coughing.
What did you want to say about the rolling
ball of time?

To D

To D,

If you are in Heaven and near God,

please ask him for mercy

Please ask him not to take any more lives of
fathers, mothers, husbands, wives,
children, and friends
from the people of Japan

Mr. Reid

I walked past the funeral home today

I looked in the window remembering the cold February day

And I saw Mr. Reid looking at me from inside the window

while talking on the phone

I looked away

and wondered if the old Irishman had remembered me

The New Yorker Cover

It looks like a cherry tree standing in the middle of the dark ground. Its pink blossoms shape like symbol of nuclear plant/power; some petals are being blown away.  The picture is called "Dark Spring."

It's the cover of March 28th issue of The New Yorker.  I was so disturbed by it I had to send a complaint e-mail to the editor.  To me, the picture was suggesting something like, "hope contaminated".

Cherry blossoms are very special to many Japanese, and the season is about to come to the affected area.  Everyone there, I'm sure, is looking forward to seeing them.  After the long winter,  Cherry blossoms come as a sign of life - make people who gather under the tree giddy and happy.

I may be overreacting, I may feel differently tomorrow, but I wish that The New Yorker didn't pick the picture for its cover.

Tomorrow

It's Sunday, around 7:00 p.m.
I want to catch a plane and fly across the ocean right now

I want to tug him down here and talk to him

I want to see my mother

I don't want to be here, far away from everyone, living and dead

I want the sun to come out now from behind the church tower over there

and I want to be at work

I want tomorrow right now

I know I can't get any of those, so I eat some chocolate.

Spring Blossoms

I hope there are lots of plum and cherry trees in northeastern Honshu, Japan.

Magnolia, lilac, and dogwood too.  

I hope every mountain there
is studded with plenty of those Spring-blossoming trees. 

They can soon make the mountains blush
so that people can look away sometimes 

and find the soft glow of delicate colors
among the ever-greens on the hill-side.

Dead Birds

In Manhattan, in the last few days I saw, though it may sound so strange, what looked like a sandpiper, dead.  I saw a dying pigeon as well.  I remembered D had written about dead pigeons -- so I dug it out.   It's short, but here it is.  

___________________________________________________________

Since this cold snap began I've seen four dead pigeons.  One, in the middle of Ninth Avenue and Forty-Fifth Street, looked like an emblem of a pigeon.  

Another, I saw the day before it died.  Walking to the subway on the first really cold day, on my way to work, I saw a pigeon which limped wretchedly and didn't get out of my way when I passed it.  The next morning I saw it again, dead.  It was in the same spot I had seen it the day before, only its head was leaning against the wall of the Democratic Social Club.  

Remains of Christmas

I smelled Christmas tree at the park this morning.
It came to me almost at the end of my first lap on the running track.  I looked around but couldn't see the source of it.  So I got off the track and walked over to where the smell was possibly coming from - a small enclosed garden trimmed with several benches facing it.

I saw newly shredded wood chips - remains of dead Christmas trees, scattered on bare dark soil.  It was nice to see the dead contributing something physically to the future, other than make rooms for the rising generation.

I remember the last real Christmas we had with a tree.  I remember finding the tree, which D and his Mom had bought, standing by the window when I came home from work.   Both D and Mom were smiling at me by that beautiful tree -- all three of them (the two people and the tree) somehow looked astonishingly dignified.

Later we decorated the tree with our sort of funky ornaments, many of them we had made ourselves.  We also had an Advent calendar that D got at the Met, which he let me open each little window every day.

18 % Gray

I can't even get near that proper number,
always too dark or too light
too intimate or too far back,
forever think about me, me and myself
My pancakes are too runny or too lumpy
meat is always ruined when I cook
I break or lose things I love first
toothpaste tube is squeezed in the middle

Uttered words that should never have come out of me and
unsaid words that should have given to him with all my heart
Stack of both are left behind with me,
I just don't know what to do with them

But now no one is forced to tolerate me
what is missing or excessing is totally for my own inconvenience.
With my cat, who can never get hurt by my words nor my silence,
I enjoy my little imperfect life.

Wish

What is chewing me now is my own refusal to reality in the past.   His wish was never said probably because of my selfish, stubborn hope that he would get better and come home again  (as he had many times in the past) .

I want to tell people not to end up like me, not to avoid talking about death, especially when it comes into perspective.  The sick one is far more dauntless and noble about it than you are.  

When I'm gone, please burn my body (and leave my soul alone), my thanks and apology in advance, to whoever has to take care of the mess of my life.

            --phew, that was heavy. 

Torn Mind

From D's journal, March 2003.
______________________________________________

Help me to be calm.  Help me to hold the rudder.
Help me affect these students.  Help me be a comfort to my wife.
I beat up my body and mind daily.  It's a wonder I'm alive.
Help me realize that it's not shameful to care about your health.
Why do I think this?  It's like some sort of flagellating christian mixed with a self-destructive rock star.  I enjoy wit only. I like to look at things and laugh.  I like to stupefy myself.

dandelion

I have a new friend
whose name softly lingers in the room when pronounced.
She is a kind of person who keeps teardrops in her empty teapot.

I visited her in her apartment the other day
She lives among beautiful things,
things that watched us eat and listened to us talk.

As I left she lent me her precious book,
a book with creased pages, sticky notes, and some water stains
a book that had breathed her smiles and sighs (and perhaps sobs)
in between its pages.

I cup my hands around this fluffy ball
that resembles dandelion seeds.

Another Sundown, Almost

Hey,
Salute to you, wherever you are.

Yuri Gagarin

From D's journal,  February 20, 2003.
_________________________________________
Heaven, says Yuri Gagarin.  I've already seen it.
God is a stone buried deep in a riverbank.
Slingshot over the sky and then
Only the noise of machines, Yuri Gagarin
Listens to the hisses and shudders and blips
Of the Sputnik and eyes gaping crosses each
Sound out one by one until the last sound
Is his heartbeat.  God is the water
Running, beating, pooling,
Subsiding into earth and stone.
Yuri Gagarin is walking along the towpath.
The river is dry, the chalky sound of bones is God.
Kashmar. Ochin plochka.  Uzjets.
The universe expands like a candy wrapper
Think of the continuous sound of the earth.
Yuri Gagarin jumps into the air
Hangs himself from a cold front gasping.
A crow attaches its red claws to his lapels.
Don't listen to the silence, it says.

________________________________________________
If you have seen Heaven, send me just one word "yes,"
maybe by jotting down, or even a check mark, on the surface of the moon.
Then I will not bother you any more.

5:15 pm

I used to be so afraid of it - 5:15 pm.

The fear was so intense that when 5 o'clock approached every day, I felt like a piece of ice was pressed against the back of my heart; often I couldn't stay still, literally.   I had to fiercely find something to get my mind off of the time -some kind of shelter or at least something to hang onto, to protect myself from the approaching tornadoes.

It is now a story of the past and almost a funny one, remembering how serious and desperate I was when in the midst of it.

Now I know that everything fades away - if you, someone out there, are in the middle of something like that, please know that it will end.

Shut Doors

From D's journal, January 1996.
_______________________________________
Lord, I wish I believed in something.  I can't even stand my body is so heavy, weighing me down, an encumbrance I wish I was rid of.  K. said tonight: when you remember something, you see a picture, but where do you see it?  Not through your eyes?  Sometimes gems come from her, though she's closed to me, as I am from her.  But that's the nature of human beings, they can't ever really know each other.
_______________________________________

I had always envied him for his sharp eye for the truth; this was sadly true, probably, I was closed to him and he was to me.   I don't know how I can make it up to him for things he couldn't tell me,
all the thoughts and worries he kept to himself even though I was right there the whole time.

Friendship Revisited

An art gallery that D's old friend owns (or his family owns) was mentioned in The New Yorker.  When I read that - it was Thursday - I called him up and visited.   I was surprised by my own action, calling someone out of the blue and asked if I can stop by (although his place is just ten blocks away from my work)!

The last time I saw him was at D's memorial service, about which I don't really remember much.  Since then he sometimes left messages on my phone, checking in on me, for quite a while, and then the connection seemed to get lost, totally because of my self-pittying, hide-in-a-hole behavior.  I'm glad that I got to apologize to him about it.

He showed me pictures of his handsome wife and two boys, now seven and three, on his Blackberry.  Looking down at the tiny screen of his phone, he looked older, confident, and so happy.  We sat for a while and talked.  When D was mentioned, I could see his thoughts drifting to his past, and I was sure he saw mine too.

My heart was warm when I got outside into the cold February evening, and everything around me looked beautiful.

Unfolding?

From D's notebook. (written probably in 2003)

________________________________________

I had a love affair once

tragically hip

I stole the break-up line 

from "Breathless"

I looked into my heart

trying to decide if I was 

in love with you

Christmas carols all around. 

________________________________________

Am I opening a Pandora's box? 

Well, whatever it is, it sounds beautiful, I have to admit. 

Threesome

Insomnia, my old friend, has decided to move back in with me.
Every night it sits cross-legged in the middle of my bed and stares.

I sip chamomile tea after dinner, try not to watch TV or open my laptop before bedtime.  Slipping in between the sheets, I try to show my insomnia how relaxed I am.  The room is equipped with whisper-quiet humidifier, books are piled high on the night table ready to be picked up, my cat is sleeping at the edge of the bed within my reach.

None of these works.  The nasty thing is back in full power, as if it has just returned from a long and perfect vacation, wherever it was.

I lie awake - my pillow is soft under my ear.  I think of some "comrades," blinking in bed like me, somewhere in the city.  I look out the window.  Sometimes the moon comes into the frame for a while.  An airplane silently flies across it with flashing lights.

The square vessel, with the three of us on it, is floating down the river of the night.

If I were...

If I were to die now, what would happen to things in this apartment?   I have so much junk.  How can a person die clean of such mess?  (D was lucky to have me still here. )

All the things so dear to me now will turn into meaningless rubbish the instant I stop breathing. Some will embarrass me to death.  (I will have to die twice) Gosh, I should start doing something about it. 

I have many slides of his paintings (including lost + sold ones) packed with other photographs, somewhere in the closet.  I will dig them out soon, when I can stand looking at him.  

We'll then have a slide show, with all the curtains down in this room.  Coffee and chocolate will be served.  

Scrutinized

I've always liked to observe people but somehow never really realized I am too an object of someone else's gazes.

The more I read D's journal, the more I feel that he kept watching me, with his cool blue eyes, constantly reassessing me and modifying his image of me.  (how unnerving!)

He knew my weaknesses and frailty like a railway track knows the old train whistles - he probably sensed that he couldn't trust me with his heavy load, or maybe he thought I would break. (I wouldn't have, would I?)

Now I'm haunted by his unuttered cries.

Here we go

OK.  I can't go on like this, keeping one side in shadow.  It'll be hard but I think D deserves recognition of his fear and isolation, what he was carrying along for so long.  I believe this also will help me putting things behind.
1994 and 95 were the hardest years for him, I think: just found out his illness and was away from home (we were in Japan).

Ready?  An entry in '95.
_________________________________________________
No one can pick me up, patch me up.  Boy. Boy,
funny boy, sad boy.  I spin me round, I look at the sky.
My disease is warm in my belly like a baby in the womb.
I want to work, work, make some mark before I die.
The tumbling innumerable births and deaths in me, in the spinning world.
_________________________________________________

Snow Again

Again, New Yorkers had to wade through knee-high snow to get to work this morning.  Many people were annoyed and complained about the difficulty commuting.

At one point today at work, I opened an email message from the building manager - it was one of those boring, routine notices to all the tenants.  At the end of the message, though, Tony, the manager, said,

"Enjoy the snow."

Damn straight, I thought. 

To his father

Excerpt from D's journal in 1995.

_________________________
The first person who taught me anything about looking at paintings was my father.  When we went to museums he would send me running through the galleries with specific missions; find "impasto".  What's that tree?  That's a "framing device".

To his mother

An excerpt from D's journal in 1995.
________________________________________________
Whenever I write I assume that what I write will be read.  The idea of a diary, a personal journal of innermost thoughts, to be read by no one, seems pointless to me.  As the child in toilet training must think, why take a crap if there's nobody there to appreciate it?

So I write with an audience in mind.  The standard I try to maintain is the standard that my mother, no nonsense literary critic that she is, has taught me.  Be succinct, be witty.  Maintain a style.  I can't say I've done that in this book.
________________________________________________

(I secretly hope this will justify my putting his private stuff in front of an audience, though small.)

Old Guilt

I just came back from a run.

Running does strange thing - after a while you forget that you are running, and that's the time buried thoughts float up to the surface like bubbles from a river bottom.  And pop! came an image, of Prospect Park, Autumn 2007.   D and I are sitting on a bench side by side eating apples and watching families strolling about.  Next to me is a pile of books from the library. 

That was a strange moment that I felt death around us, though at the time I couldn't name it.  It was more like a thin haze or dust collecting and separating us from the rest of the crowd in the park.  I wonder if that was a lingering note I sensed from what D had been touched by.  I wonder what he was seeing, sitting on the bench in the chilly Autumn afternoon. 

Be Truthful

I know yesterday's post was a bad one.  What was I doing, trying to be cute?
      Stop decorating.
      Be objective.
      Describe texture.
      Present images, not emotion.


After work I went to an art gallery in Chelsea, to see photographs by Todd Hido.  Those of empty dirt roads and motel rooms were just breathtaking.

Some shots were probably taken from inside a car, through the windshield wet with rain.  One of them:  a dead end of a dirt road, exposed by the head lights.  Tall, disturbed weeds stand thick in the center of the circular lights, and a road sign shines back with intense yellow, suggesting the driver's fright inside the car.

America's vast loneliness oozed out of those photographs and I was wrapped around by it.  I hope my words were able to show you a little hint of what his prints had given me.  I hope you and I can go see them together in February.

No Way!

"No Way!"
Suddenly a voice sounds in my head. It must be this angry little creature living inside me because I do know that he's DEAD and I'm here alone - over the past 1,000 days I never saw him.

This thing springs up out of nowhere when least expected, like I'm in a meeting at work or lying in a dentist's chair. Stomping its feet, it cries, "Impossible!"
"How could you accept it?"
The shriek pierces my chest and drains my breath, but I know it will quickly lose its power.

The next moment, with a little whine the creature shrinks and disappears.
The room is bright with the soft Winter sunlight again.

Where the dead exists

People say the dead will live within the loved ones or alongside them. I don't believe that as much as I want to believe, but the evidence of his existence is here and keeps living with me.

One of those things is a wash cloth, with which I helped him rub off bandage scum from his arm, when he came home from a few-day hospital stay in December 07. The cloth has a spot where gray dots of adhesive stuff stuck on the fiber. It's still sticky when I touch it today, and I wonder if that is permanent, as long as the cloth stays intact. (I don't know why I keep it - is it called obsession?)

Some of other places he still exists in are: my cell phone, Yahoo e-mail, database of some fundraisers, who occasionally send him an invitation to donate. Oh, Netflix too. I keep hiding behind his name when I rate movies.

A man and his car

This is an entry on D's journal in 1995, when we lived in Japan.
__________________________________________

There's a guy in our building who is very neurotic about his car. K and I sometimes see him in the parking lot at night, just sitting in the car. Other times he obsessively polishes it. This morning at 7:00 am, I was standing on the balcony looking at the sun rise when I saw him come out of the building and approach his car. Then he stopped dead.

On the hood of the car was a tremendous white blot of bird shit. He must have stood there a full thirty seconds, taking in the horror of it. Finally he opened the car door, took out a rag and cleaned it off, but not before first wiping the dew off of all windows and the side mirrors.

It's little moments like these that for some reason, really make my day.

Mini-illusion

This picture has been on our living room wall for years.
I love it from the day one to now; I never get tired of looking at it.
As I stare, very very slowly the clouds rise and the ledges give way, almost revealing something beyond them, like I'm driving a car heading to these hills. It's a mini-illusion I can get lost in, for a few seconds. It works every time.

I often wondered if D had gone over the ledges in this picture, and the thought gave me comfort.

HAPLESS

From D's notebook. (around 2001)


HAPLESS

3 guys break into the home of a single mother in Flushing with two kids, young kids.

2 of the guys force the woman outside into her mini-van. They want to take her to an ATM to get cash. They leave the one guy to guard the kids. A neighbor smells something fishy and calls 911. The police pursue the van into Manhattan. Meanwhile guy 3 is left there in Queens with kids.

GUY 3's DECISION:
"Fuck man they ain't comin' back."
He takes them to a bus stop. He leaves. His two friends are caught. He is still on the loose.

--- I think this was from a news -I vaguely remember him talking about it.

.

It's a New Year,

and the ground under my feet is firm again.

I will not cry on a subway,
I will not keep your tooth brush,
I will not search your name on internet,
I will not count the days,
any more.