Desolation Angel

I dreamed that The Amazing Bob died (which he did – nine years ago Friday) and I could no longer afford to stay here in Valhalla. I was alone. Not only did I have to move but I couldn’t even afford a shitty-ass room in a shared apartment in the most rundown building on the worst street in the last ungentrified, still sketchy neighborhood in Boston. I didn’t even have a cat to console me.

This dream scenario is light-years from reality. During those horrific early grief days I had Jen, Oni, Coco, Rocco, Hillel, Celeste, and other friends caring for me. I didn’t need to leave Valhalla. Still don’t.

 So, what’s the dream about and why am I having it now? As I said on Sunday, this anniversary of TAB's exit is hitting hard. I blame America’s Fascist Party (formerly known as the Republican Party). All of ‘em, including every last motherfucking tiny-brained person who voted for them. Also too, I fault those fuckers who didn’t vote whether it’s because they think their vote makes no difference or they were too damn lazy to get off the damn couch. AND there’s a special place in Hell for the eejits who voted for that grifting Russian puppet Jill Stein. She shows up every four years to get attention not unlike Punxatawney Phil. At least Phil, who has the decency and care to show up every year, isn't helping throw critical elections to Russian assets.

I wish I believed Hell was real. I might take comfort in believing that all these assholes would burn forever in a lake of fire (or suffer much more creative Jan Van Eyck or Hieronymus Bosch brand of eternal punishment)  

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. 
~ Dante Alighieri 

Maybe this world is another planet’s hell. 
~ Aldous Huxley  

Which world though? If it’s one in this solar system, I’m betting on Uranus! (of course and yes I’ve the sense of humor and maturity of an 11 year old)

I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea. 
~ Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground 

Same, dude, same. Drop a spot of Jamo in mine, please.

And, as Sartre said, Hell is other people. I think me and him would have gotten along just fine – at a distance for both our sakes.

Meanwhile back at Grief City – Ten understands me so well. He brought me onion rings, tatertots, and vegan sausages for brekkie in bed this morning. YOU might think this sounds absolutely beyond weird and icky BUT it was precisely what I was craving.

Grief changes shape, but it never ends.
~ Keanu Reeves

Sometimes solace looks like onion rings for breakfast.

And I believe in the future
We shall suffer no more
Maybe not in my lifetime
But in yours, I feel sure
Song dogs barking at the break of dawn
Lightning pushes the edges of a thunderstorm
And these streets
Quiet as a sleeping army
Send their battered dreams to heaven, to heaven
For the mother’s restless son
Who is a witness to, who is a warrior
Who denies his urge to break and run
Who says, “Hard times?
I’m used to them
The speeding planet burns
I’m used to that
My life’s so common it disappears”
And sometimes even music
Cannot substitute for tears
~ Paul Simon, The Cool, Cool River 

Grief is the price we pay for love.
~ Queen Elizabeth II 

Feeling Blue

 You know what’s a truly shitty way to start the day? Lemme just tell you, it’s when you wake to a text that a friend has died. Scott and I weren’t intensely close—we weren't in frequent contact—but we were awfully fond of each other. We shared studio space in college (it was me, Kevin, Myla and Scott) and reconnected on ShoutyFace eons later. Scott was a talented artist, a warm and supportive human AND he had a great sense of humor. There’s now a hole in my heart with his name on it.

In other news, I had my post-MRIs visit with my main neurologist, Doctor Plotkin, on Tuesday. My spine (and its accompanying mass of tumors) is basically fine. The giant meningioma stuck on my bean's right frontal lobe? Not so much.

The chemo meds have slowed but NOT, as desperately hoped, stopped its growth. Surgery is now in the forecast—not immediately but, most likely within the year. When I’m sliced open (by the by, this will be my eighth brain surgery) is, more or less, up to me.

Plotkin feels I need more recovery/rehab time after the surgery-a-thon and proton radiation fun of 2020 through 2022. Yes. Agreed. Still, I don’t want to wait too long. The farther I push off OR time, the older I get and the greater the chance of other shit going wrong with me. Complications—I don’t need more of them.

The chemo meds cause fatigue (amongst other fun stuff) which means I’ve not been as active as I need to be in order to bring up my strength and stability. Essentially, I’ve got to push past my enervation in order to get in shape for surgery. Not so easy during the cold, snowy New England winter months. One thing I’m looking into is joining the Y again (for the worst months—December through March) and walking the indoor track. Definitely not scenic BUT it’s out of the wind, ice and snow.

My balancing act is between waiting until I’ve become stronger before they cut me open AND not waiting so long that I’m weaker from the chemo sparked fatigue (therefor less able to become strong again post op). I really don’t want to spend another month in Spaulding Rehab.

So, I’m basically Goldilocks looking for the time frame that’s juuuuust right. I’m thinking—let’s see how I get through the winter, what my next MRIs look like and go from there. A June op date would be nice. It’ll be warm then, I can sit on the veranda reading and get some sun whilst my bean heals. 

Sounds good, right?

All At Once

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us, only sky

Imagine all the people
Livin' for today
Ah

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

Imagine all the people
Livin' life in peace
You

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Imagine—John Lennon 

What we have still not learned is how to treat our fellow human beings... We have to find a way to coexist without doing harm to one another and that is whether it's in the United Stated or in the Middle East or in the African continent or in Asia or anywhere on the planet.
~ Martin Luther King III

Six

Six years ago this evening, The Amazing Bob shuffled off this mortal coil.

In the gardens of memory, the palaces of dreams, this is where we will meet.
~ Lewis Carroll, Alice Through the Looking Glass

Today is also the 160th anniversary of the first time Carroll told Alice's adventures to Lorina, Edith and Alice Liddell.

No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away.
~ Terry Pratchett

Unable are the loved to die. For love is immortality.
~ Emily Dickinson

Me and TAB in our early days.

If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character, would you slow down? Or speed up?
~ Chuck Palahniuk

Grief is a most peculiar thing; we’re so helpless in the face of it. It’s like a window that will simply open of its own accord.
~ Arthur Golden

Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.
~ Dr. Seuss

I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.
~ J.R.R. Tolkien

It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses.  
~ Colette 

Daddy Day

Celeste, Daddy and me 1971

Today’s a big day. It’s Father’s Day AND the one year anniversary of Daddy’s death. It feels like he’s been gone eons longer than one measly turn around the sun. It also feels like he’s still here.

I often forget that my hearing’s crapped out and have the impulse to call him. I want to tell him about something interesting or amusing that’s just come to mind, ask what he's up to, tell him my plans for an upcoming travel adventure. It’s jarring as fuck when I remember that he’s gone.

There’s so many sad songs about fathers and sons.

There’s Father and Farther by Jim Boyd

Sometimes, Father, you and I,
Are like a three-legged horse
who can't get across the finish line
no mater how hard, he tries and tries and tries.

Sometimes, Father, you and I
Are like a Warrior,
who can only paint half of his face
while the other half cries and cries and cries and cries.

Now can I ask you Father?
If you know how much farther we need to go?

Pop was Mardi Gras king at his care home

Father and Son—Yusef/Cat Stevens

It's not time to make a change
Just relax, take it easy
You're still young, that's your fault
There's so much you have to know
Find a girl, settle down
If you want you can marry
Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy

I was once like you are now
And I know that it's not easy
To be calm when you've found
Something going on
But take your time, think a lot
Think of everything you've got
For you will still be here tomorrow
But your dreams may not

Papa Was a Rolling Stone by The Temptations

Papa was a rolling stone
Wherever he laid his hat was his home
And when he died, all he left us was alone
Papa was a rolling stone (my son, yeah)
Wherever he laid his hat was his home
And when he died, all he left us was alone

Jen, me and Daddy take a selfie

And the killer of sad father and son songs, Cat's in the Cradle by Harry Chapin

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man in the moon
"When you coming home, dad?" "I don't know when"
But we'll get together then
You know we'll have a good time then

My son turned ten just the other day
He said, thanks for the ball, dad, come on let's play
Can you teach me to throw, I said-a, not today
I got a lot to do, he said, that's okay
And he, he walked away, but his smile never dimmed
It said, I'm gonna be like him, yeah
You know I'm gonna be like him

Glorious as these tunes are, none of them look at all like me and my Pop. Where are the happy father/son, father/daughter songs? Where are the songs where the father's present, emotionally supportive and just flat out hilarious? They MUST exist.

Was my father perfect? Fuck no—who is? He was the parent I needed, the parent I loved and I'm having a hell of a time accepting that he's gone versus temporarily absent.

The gift my father gave me every day of my life was he believed in me.
~ Jim Valvano

More Fire and Rain

Coco was not just a cat. She was my constant companion, my partner and helpmate through so many hard times. That she's gone now feels unreal and flat out WRONG.

I found a picture of you, oh-oh
Those were the happiest days of my life
Like a break in the battle was your part, oh-oh
In the wretched life of a lonely heart

Now I’m back on the train, yeah
Oh, back on the chain gang
The Pretenders—Back on the Chain Gang  

Paraphrasing Mr. James Thurber:

If I have any beliefs about immortality it is that certain cats I know will go to heaven, and very very few people.

(His heaven has certain dogs versus cats)

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.
~ Isaac Asimov

Don’t cry because it’s over, Smile because it happened.
~ Dr. Seuss

A home without a cat — and a well-fed, well petted and properly revered cat — may be a home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?
~ Mark Twain

How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.
~ Winne the Pooh

I am ultra-lucky to have had her with me for as long as I did. She was such a very, very good girl.

Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.
~ Vicki Harrison 

I need a cookie, dammit!

I feel overwhelmed by all the insane horseshit, insurrection and death flying through the air right now. Of course I do – I'm a sentient being aren't I?

I’m just happy the National Guard (troops from Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York and Virginia joined those from D.C.) are already in D.C.

This quote by R.A.Wilson is perhaps the best summary of Republican "Christianity." It seems ridiculously apt this morning:

“The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization.”

I’m resoundingly sad over other shit too – not just the attacks on democracy and civilization. Yesterday would’ve been The Amazing Bob’s 79th birthday. The 27th of this month would’ve been our 35th anniversary. He’s been gone four and a half years now and some days it feels like he left this good Earth just yesterday.

Also, apparently my bean likes to be all organized and shit (at least as far as mourning is concerned). I’m also grieving the loss of Kevin Scott.

The intense heartache when a precious loved one dies feels, at first and for a long while, unsurvivable. The pain became less searing as time rolled by. I no longer felt like I was constantly being stabbed by flaming, sharp sticks. That evolved into days, weeks and months of peace. Grief always rises again though. It ain’t toothless on these revivals but the anguish is less screamingly intense.
~~~~

"For in grief nothing "stays put." One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?

But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?

How often -- will it be for always? -- how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, "I never realized my loss till this moment"? The same leg is cut off time after time.”
~ C.S. Lewis

"The world is too fucking big. Sometimes, I can't even carry myself through all the love and fear."
~ Sherman Alexie

TAB and Kevin are MIA physically but not emotionally. They're both wound around my heart and always will be.

“That's your solution? Have a cookie?' Astrid asked. 'No, my solution is to run down to the beach and hide out until this is all over,' Sam said. 'But a cookie never hurts.”
~ Michael Grant

The Void

There's an ocean out there somewhere!

What I may be missing most during this shutdown (ya know, apart from a competent, NOT on-the-take president) is music. Yeah, I know – I’m ALWAYS feeling the void where tune-age used to be.

Why is the absence more sharply and desperately striking now? Eh, music was always a major balm in hard times (in grand seasons and hours too…OF BLOODY COURSE).

That and I’m doing the 10 album challenge on ShoutyFace. This is the one where a friend tags you with the direction to post the covers of 10 albums that are important to you – sans commentary, just the cover.

Narrowing my choices to JUST 10 is difficult to say the very least. My cousin Gary’s also playing. Yesterday he posted Aladdin Sane. I can NOT believe I didn’t have that in my original list! I remember the first time I heard the title cut – the piano, especially at the front of the tune –  knocked my socks, underdrawers and glasses clean off. It continued to do so every damn time I heard the song. ABSO-FUCKING-BRILL is what it is.

Shit…I could live an entire happy life inside that cut alone. Also too, same album, Panic in Detroit .

Aladdin Sane put the Carmina Burana/O Fortuna spinning on the old internal turntable. Why? How are they related? //shrugs// It’s another piece I could live inside. Naturally Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense immediately follows which leads to David Byrne’s The Forest.

From there I end up inside Aaron Copeland’s Fanfare for the Common Man.

Somehow I’m now inside Paul Simon’s Spirit Voices and Cool, Cool River.

OK…more. Last night, Jen, Oni and I were watching an episode of Lucifer. That’s the show about the Devil, who’s abandoned Hell for Los Angeles. He runs owns a hip piano bar/nightclub and is also a consultant to the LAPD.

In one scene from last night’s show, Lucifer and a Beyoncé-type singer end up dueting Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive . It looked brill and pained me that I couldn’t hear it.

 Waddya know – I just found a YouTube clip of it! Watch and listen for me.

So, it’s a bleak-ass cold, rainy day. It’s a Monday and I’m grieving the loss of music.

Go Your Own Way

I dreamed death. MY, how cheery.

OK, no. This was, more specifically, about the recent one year anniversary of my friend Tom’s death. I was at a party – his widow was there. I bravely approached her. Why did this require courage?

In real life, we were never chums. Neither were we sworn enemies. It was just always abundantly clear to me that she endured, rather than enjoyed, my company. I tried to play nice for Tom’s sake – mostly I just made myself scarce.

Why, in this nocturnal movieola, did I bother to greet her at all? Because I, so very recently, lost my own beloved long-time partner. The first deathiversary is the worst. I wanted to offer solace and commiseration. I wanted to be all palliative and shit.

That had, in fact, been a wish of mine both during Tom’s last months and after he took that last train for the coast. I understand the pain and want to help. Maybe, for me, it feels like one final way of connecting with a pal who, until he met his future wife, was more good, good brother to me than mere friend. I learned so much from him.

Back in the dream, his widow, in polite but def terse tones said, essentially, “thanks but piss off.” I did.

But it's all right now, I learned my lesson well.
You see, ya can't please everyone, so ya got to please yourself.

As if that rough yet civilized rebuff wasn’t enough, the same scene played again with another recently dead friend’s spouse. I’ve always been fond of this woman and thought it was mutual – it is, just not in this DreamWorld.

I’ve GOT to remember that we all grieve differently. We all process pain uniquely. Yes, there’s overlap BUT…grief isn’t like a math problem where two plus two plus five plus nine will always equal 18. Nope.

Tom’s widow is a bit of a bruised introvert and, likely, only wants contact with safe friends and family. Gotta respect that.
 
Mary is/was similar – she retreated into a shell for more than two years after her partner’s death.

Me? I blogged through it all and, for a bit, became more socially outgoing. We all gotta go our own way.

I Was Just Wild About Harry

I’d never met Harry live and in person – he was a Blog World acquaintance. I’d comment on things he wrote (his blog – The Rise and Fall of Harry Hamid) and vice versa. He was sweet, warm, creative. I looked forward to hearing from him.

Given our age difference (me being a decade and a half senior), we had a surprisingly large overlap in our contemporary music loves (and by contemporary I mean stuff that was new and fresh back in my long past youth, when I had hearing). He was a fan of Robyn Hitchcock, King Crimson (Neil, Jack and me era), Captain Beefheart, Eno, Peter Gabriel and Roger Waters too. BROTHER!

Harry Hamid AKA Jerry C Larson Jr was just 46 years old when he died this past Tuesday. He had done so damn much in his short life – so much good for those in need. He was a Supervising Staff Attorney with Houston Volunteer Lawyers (HVL) working in their HIV/AIDS unit. Before that he was  the Executive Director of Southeast Texas Legal Clinic – their singular focus was representing people living with HIV/AIDS.

We lost a warrior.

At the begiining of May, when I was on the cliff edge of losing half my sight, Harry commented on my post Outta Control.

It's scary to think about. Feeling trapped and not being able to be independent entirely because of health issues is something I've been dealing with but had never given serious thought to before. I do now. You are able to approach these issues much more head-on than I am. I need that.

I wanted to ask what do you have, what are you going though? Why didn’t I? I suppose I felt that if he wanted to say more, he would. I didn’t want to make him uncomfortable.

We commiserated on the intermidable wait times in the hospital on Bored Now.

In comments on The Struggle is Real  – a silly post about my deep love of Ten’s brill cooking AND my unsurprising weight incrase (TWO pounds!)

Prior to getting sick in March, I had never prepared a meal that took longer to fix than it took to eat. Now that I"m eating through a stomach peg, I find myself obsessed with recipes and cooking for my parents, who are caring for me. Haven't tried quiche yet, but I'm learning, slowly, how to cook, so this illness has had some good come out of it.

And, in the very last convo, we bitched about the the peurile nits who get 99 kinds of upset when women are cast to play their boy-crushes (Aliens on Dr. Who, Bond, etc.).

Damn.

I’m missing Harry.
I'm Just Wild About Harry – Judy Garland

Get It While You Can

Three+ years on and I’m still haunted by dreams of The Amazing Bob in hospital. In this one though, we were at St. E’s not MGH. Weird. We never spent any time at St. E's even though we lived in Brighton for a fair number of years.

In last night’s ep, the docs were gonna let me take TAB home. Alive and everything! I was getting dressed in my own hospital room, for the cab ride home. I was taking care to pick an outfit that I knew TAB pariculary liked. It's always good to inspire we're-leavin'-the-hospital smiles

But first the good docs had to show me a real time Xray (like an ultrasound) of the rat bastards blocking my man’s arteries. But wait…are they, instead, showing me some of the motherfuckers who're killing time on my spine and in my brain?

OK so maybe I’m haunted by all the goddamn time I’ve spent in hospital both with and without TAB.

To live is to be haunted.
~ Philip K. Dick, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

A truth that’s dawned on me – a real haunting has nothing to do with actual scary ghosties and everything to do with plagues of hard, sad memory. That's what a ghost is – a persistent, upsetting, even fright-filling fragment of memory come back to visit.

I welcome TAB’s ghost in Dream Land. I just wish he’d visit at non-hospital times too.

I now know how your anger
came from skeletons
that rattled in your heart
and you couldn't escape them.
~ Susie Clevenger, Dirt Road Dream

In my case, it’s not anger from skeletons, it’s melancholy wistfulness from the Ghosts of Happiness Past. I don’t want to escape them. Nope. I’ll keep them close, in my heart. This doesn’t mean I’m failing to embrace present tense happiness. Oh no, fuck that shit. Get it while you can, mes amis.

In this world, if you read the papers, darling
You know everybody's fighting ah with each other
You got no one you can count on babe
Not even your own brother
So if someone comes along
He gonna give you some love and affection

I'd say get it while you can, yeah
Honey, get it while you can, yeah
Hey hey, get it while you can
Don't you turn your back on love, no, no
Get It While You Can – Janis Joplin

Rough Weekend

And NOT just because it was bug bashingly hot either.

Jen and Oni are on vacay out west. They’re “glamping” somewhere off Vancouver Island without WiFi. KEE-RIST I miss them!

Are they at Clayoquot Wilderness Resort with its en suite “tents” (prices start at $5,700 per person for a 3-night stay – kinda doubt it). Maybe sleeping in the trees at MUCH more reasonably priced but still too much for my wallet, Free Spirit Spheres. These start at $314 a night and there’s no obvious note on the site about bathroom facilities. Ya know, us old babes generally get up to hit the head sometime around 0 dark thirty. I do NOT relish the idea of climbing outta the trees to whiz at 1 AM – especially at $314 per. There are more conventional (but BIG) treehouses for $200 a night, yurts and A-frame cabin/prospector tents (sleeps six for $120 a night).

Look, I don’t do this camping crap AND if I’m gonna go rough (as in, NO flush toilet) I want to be way out in nature (versus in a glamping “community”).  Cindy and Giovanni’s yurt, in the middle of nowhere with no humans around for miles was pretty fucking AMAZING.

Other, more serious weekend shit?

On Friday, a good friend went over to her sister’s place and found her dead on the floor – victim of an apparent heart attack. Wow. Just imagine the intense shock, the panic.

Then, on Saturday, I found out that a VERY dear friend of mine had attempted suicide. Lucky for us, he was unsuccessful.

This tune’s been running around my bean – Billy Joel’s Only the Good Die Young. Fucking weird. For starters, the tune’s about some dude who’s trying to get laid. It's not about dead people and loss.

Come out Virginia, don't let 'em wait
You Catholic girls start much too late
Aw but sooner or later it comes down to faith
Oh I might as well be the one

Only the good die young? Please brotha!

Are you saying that Nelson Mandela, who lived to the fine old age of 95, wasn’t a “good” man?
What about Susan B. Anthony, suffragette, labor activist and anti-slavery activist. She was 86 AND good, right?
 Rosa Parks? You ‘member her. She lived to be 92.
And then there’s Lupe Anguiano, civil rights activist, environmentalist, champion of labor, who’s still fighting the good fight at the age of 90.
Also, Jimmy Carter anyone?

On topof that, young is entirely relative. Fer instance, I think of folks in their 40s as just barely off the tit and out of nappies. (I know – not fair. I suppose I’m thinking of my own dreadfully late maturation) A friend's father died in his early 60s. OUCH! That was young. The Amazing Bob said so long and thanks for all the fish at 74. Not young/young but too damn young to croak. I thought I was gonna get ten more years outta him.

Don’t be throwin' around these adjectives without clarifying reference points!

Also, dunno what Catholic school girls Joel was trying to get busy with BUT, as a rule, us mackerel snappers were *ahem* an easy touch. Ya know, girls just wanna have fun and shit.

Just curious, etc.

On this day, almost exactly one year after The Amazing Bob shuffled off to the unknown,  I was all curious about Moses and his particular god and shit. Why? Distraction action, babies. It's the name of the game. I can't be rockin' the death and loss deal 24/7 ya know.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~

OK, remember how Moses (I’m talkin’ about the Bible dude NOT the jazz man here) came down from Mount Sinai with god’s Ten Little Life Hacks all neatly carved in stone? 

In the movie, (which is a real, true and faithful historical document, right?!?) pre-mountain climb, Moses was all dark haired. Specifically, our man was dark haired and molto studly. Afterward though, he’s rockin’ a shock of white and his long ass beard’s gone frosty too. Do you think, mebbe, his pubes blanched as well? Just curious, and shit.

Plus, I only mention it but our boy's skinsuit went from a lovely deep toast color to kinda pasty. What's up with that? Seeing and/or speaking with God(s) rips the melanin clean out of a person? This seems suspiciously Mormon-y.

And, if all this wasn't enough, it looks like Moses put on a few pounds up there on Sinai. So then, God’s high in calories too?! Sheesh!

This Moses contemplation shit naturally puts Mose Allison's tremendous tune, Your Molecular Structure, in mind.  OK, it’s also playing on the old internal hi-fi because it's that time of year.

In our early courting days, The Amazing Bob made me a mix tape which featured that sweet, sexy song front and center. Jesus, my TAB was a charm talkin,’ romantic thriller!

Your molecular structure is really somethin' fine
A first-rate example of functional design
That cosmic undulations is steady comin' through
Your molecular structure baby, me and you

Your cellular organization is really something choice
Electro-magnetism 'bout to make me lose my voice
Got all my circuits open, my system's reading "go"
Your cellular organization baby, stop the show

Your molecular structure is really somethin' swell
A high-frequency modulated Jezebel
Thermodynamically you're gettin' to me
Your molecular structure baby, ooh wee!

Ooh wee!

Today , Ten and I are road-tripping to Vermont. We'll stop here and there along the way to pick up important goods like PASTRY, Prosecco, weed and such. Then on to Cindy and Giovanni's upstate farm. I suspect it doesn't matter how much time goes under the bridge – I will always need indulgent solace at this time of year.

Three Years On

I haven’t gone full metal Eeyore in a while. Ya know why? Ten.

On reading the very first comment he left here on Tell Me a Story, I felt a long dormant jolt. I wondered, the hell is this feeling. And then it came to me – OMG, this is a crush. I have a crush!

Yup. Big time. 

What’d he say to start me up? Dunno, can’t find it now (dammit!). He reminded me so much of The Amazing Bob though. Of course I knew he wasn’t TAB (duh) but, like TAB, Ten's kindness, gruff lived-a-life-or-three humor and smarts radiated.

Like I was caught in a tractor beam, I was pulled in.

I wondered, should I feel bad about this? After all, TAB had only been gone a couple years and I was still heavy with grief. I confessed my crushing to Jen. I made her read Ten's comments so’s she could tell me:

1. If he really did have a whiff of TAB about him
2. If having this big-ass attraction was too soon, unseemly and stone proof of my long suspected shallowness.
3. In my sea of grief, was I looking for a TAB replacement? That’d be pretty damn rude and unfair to Ten, ya know. Also too, I’d be setting my-own-self up for a Grand Canyon sized fall.

Jen allowed that:

1. Yes, Ten reminded her of TAB too. They seemed to have like sensibilities.
2. NO, it wasn’t too soon OR unseemly and, NO, I wasn't being shallow.
3. No. Though swimming in sad I was most def not scouting TAB successors. I just couldn’t imagine (and you all know that I have quite the active and expansive fantasy life) anyone tripping my trigger ever again.

And then a stranger appeared on the Western horizon.

You will lose someone you can't live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn't seal back up. And you come through. It's like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.
~ Anne Lamott

Ten and I are waltzing, tangoing and lindy hopping together now. We both have limps but that doesn’t stop the dance.

Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope.     
~ Elizabeth Gilbert

That was Michal. Michal lost her beloved four or five years before TAB took his final bows. She gave me hope.

Someone Saved My Life Tonight – Elton John

We Deal

We do not "get over" a death. We learn to carry the grief and integrate the loss in our lives. In our hearts, we carry those who have died. We grieve and we love. We remember.
~ Nathalie Himmelrich

There’s the peaceful death of old age when the body simply slows down to an eventual full stop. My mother went out this way. Sleep became a sanctuary and, ultimately, she didn’t come back from there. She felt no pain or fear – my father, who lived on, felt it all.

There’s the scary as fuck, slow arduous death when body parts fail one after another but the mind is still rock solid. That was The Amazing Bob’s lot. The battle with his bod finally became too much. He would’ve loved to continue on but the carriage in which he was traveling had four broke wheels, a thoroughly crapped out suspension and the fuel injection wasn’t, ya know, injecting anymore. Oh to live free of these treacherous skin suits! To be free form, fluffy, floating, sentient clouds would be divine.

And then there’s the horror of sudden, violent death. Two years ago, Ten’s 16 year old grandson, Jonathan, was killed in a motherfucking, assholian car wreck. The driver, who hit him head on, was, at the same damn time, texting AND illegally passing a too-big-to-be-seen-beyond truck, The driver walked away without injury. Jonathan as well as his girlfriend’s mother, also in the car, were both killed.

If the driver had been drunk, she would’ve faced charges – vehicular homicide or vehicular manslaughter. Mebbe involuntary manslaughter or second-degree murder? If the driver had been, not just stunningly stupid and insanely careless, but buzzed or utterly potted, she would have faced felony charges. Had she rocked a darker shade of pale than white she undoubtedly would have.

Grieving is intense and it is non-stop intense. Even if things are quiet, and you're sitting there in your chair, kind of staring off into space, inside, the intensity is raging.
~ Nathalie Himmelrich, Grieving Parents: Surviving Loss as a Couple

Jonathan’s girlfriend, Korin, had both her beau AND her only parent horrifically ripped from her. She now lives with Jonathan’s mother, Ten’s daughter.

There are no words, not in English, Spanish, Arabic, or Hebrew, that have been invented to explain what it’s like to lose a child. The nightmarish heartache of it. The unexplainable trepidation that follows. No mother loses a child without believing she failed as a parent. No father loses a child without believing he failed to protect his family from pain. The child may be gone, but the years the child were meant to live remain behind, solid in the mind like an aging ghost. The birthdays, the holidays, the last days of school—they all remain, circled in red lipstick on a calendar nailed to the wall. A constant shadow that grows, even in the dark. As I was saying…there are no words.
~ D.E. Eliot, Ruined

Yesterday would have been Jonathan’s 18th birthday.

Close Watch

I’m headed into unhappy anniversary time. It was June, three years ago, when The Amazing Bob’s cancer vaulted into serious overdrive. This came on top of all the other fun crapoli he had to deal with. What ultimately took him out was acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Cancer laid the foundation for ARDS' cruel attack.

Janice suggested that I’m angry. Gee duh, ya think!? Anger's kinda my normal resting state. She feels that I need to not suppress the rage but allow myself to experience it. Once I acknowledge it, let it out to steam and play for a bit, it’ll pass like mist at sunrise.

Sounds great but here’s the thing – who am I agitato with/at? She posited TAB. Could I honestly be mad at TAB though? For what? The crime of dying on me? That makes no goddamned sense at all. HE didn’t dial up the cancer, crushed disks OR the blisteringly assholic, motherfucking ARDS.

A person I used to know found himself in the similar spot. His beloved father was terminally ill. The young man blamed his much loved, dying father for his very own death. The kid was resentful IN SPADES. I never understood why he would, unjustly, blame his father until now. The son was so horrified at losing his Da and needed a target for all that disconsolate rage. He desperately needed the man’s impending death to make sense as in, this wouldn’t have happened if my father had exercised more/less, had eaten more/less, had created flying hamsters while walking on the moon more/less, and IF, IF, IF.

 I don’t know how this son ended up working through his intense pain, his loss. Maybe blaming his dead father worked a treat for him, eh? Possibly, he alienated and lost friends with his scattershot acrimony. I'm betting on it.

Me? I like to dance tight with reality. What’s apparent to me right now is that realistic, related, worthy and sensible targets for my ire don't exist. I’m NOT about to let this shit leak out on the undeserving – that's the road to Lonely Town.  I did, however warn Jen and Ten that I might accidentally go off on either of them for, ya know, not reading my mind accurately or quickly enough.

Bottom line, I’m angry at the universe for taking my Amazing Bob away. BUT how can one express one’s rage at the universe. It’s kind of a big, blobby thing and all.

The other side of the Asshole Universe coin is that it did give me Ten. You can take it from me mes ami, Ten ain’t no bloody consolation prize!

It’s weird to be blithe and mega sorrowful at the same time. Life – it’s a damn puzzler, innit?

John Cale – Close Watch

Seemingly Outta Nowere

I can’t predict when this shit’s gonna jump me like some wildly coked up fiend. I should be able to don’cha think? Yesterday it hit me like 40 tons ‘o’ cement overshoes.

I was texting with Perry, Kevin Scott’s bestie/love/roomie/caregiver/angel. For years, eons even, I’ve wanted to be in touch with Perry but I’d lost his address AND could NOT bring his bloody last name to mind. It made me crazy (more so). And then, one wonderful day before I flew to Oregon to begin Ten and Donna’s Excellent Adventure, Perry found moi – yurs fucking truly! In-fucking-credible mes ami!

In any case, post text, I got knocked over by a grief tsunami of biblical proportions. I realized later that what I was dealing with was an avalanche. Talking with Perry tipped off my long dormant Kevin grief which ignited my fresh Tom Gardon sorrow which sparked my never far from the surface TAB heartache. The morto cherry on top? Sean Vigle.

Yup, I was goin’ down for the count in a maelstrom of melancholy.

It’s the same with people who say, ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’ Even people who say this must realize that the exact opposite is true. What doesn’t kill you maims you, cripples you, leaves you weak, makes you whiny and full of yourself at the same time. The more pain, the more pompous you get. Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you incredibly annoying.
~ Rob Sheffield

I answer the heroic question 'Death, where is thy sting? ' with ' it is here in my heart and mind and memories.'
~ Maya Angelou

Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Look closely and you will see
Almost everyone carrying bags
Of cement on their shoulders

That’s why it takes courage
To get out of bed in the morning
And climb into the day.
~ Edward Hirsch, Gabriel: A Poem

There are no happy endings.

Endings are the saddest part,

So just give me a happy middle

And a very happy start.
~ Shel Silverstein, Every Thing on It

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.
~ C.S. Lewis

Ain't no shame in holding onto grief...long as you make room for other things too.
"Bubbles" – the Wire

 She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.
~ George Eliot

When we die, we will turn into songs, and we will hear each other and remember each other.
~ Rob Sheffield, Love Is a Mix Tape

Kevin Scott is Talking Heads’ Slippery People or maybe Psycho Killer.
Sean Vigle is Inside Out by his old band, Erector Set.
The Amazing Bob is Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue.
Tom Gardon is Captain Beefheart’s Tropical Hotdog Night.

What song will I be? I’m hoping for Jeff Beck’s The Shapes of Things or Paul Simon’s Cool Cool River but, ya know, it ain’t up to me. The tunes float down into the survivor’s beans independent of my wishes or yours. They just happen.

I asked Jen – what song would she want to have people remember her through. Bad Brains’ Don’t Bother Me AND Neil Diamind’s Cracklin’ Rosie. Our Jen, she has some massively diverse likes.