Too Young to Lose My Best Friend

 I'm listening to my Cocteau Twins Pandora station. It was one of the groups she'd introduced me to, along with the Bush Tetras, Hazel O'Connor, the Sugarcubes and Bjork, Echo and the Bunnymen, the Violent Femmes, and dozens of others I've forgotten in the ensuing decades. 

I don't remember our meeting but I have an approximate year: 1982 or 83. I was a tutor and she was one of my students in for writing help. I don't remember what her issues were beyond misspellings and the occasional missing punctuation, but somehow we bonded beyond the needs of Composition 1 and our friendship took on greater importance as the years passed. She was the first to get me drunk. It was my 25th birthday and we celebrated with several of her housemates with Melon Balls, Kamikazes, and, in a final booze-filled marathon chess session played among a half dozen sleeping bodies, Malibu Rum. 

We attended a half dozen Rainbow Gatherings together, and at the Nantahala Forest Gathering, the 1st for both of us, she managed to dodge the dysentery that laid most of us low. After, she told me how she accidentally avoided getting arrested 60 miles inside Babylon, by absently reaching down to pet the head of the drug-sniffing dog that was about to find the stash in her pocket. The grateful animal, as she said it, "just looked up into my eyes with her tongue out and such a look of, 'Oh, hi, do you want to play?', that her handler yanked her back hard and that was the end of that. They had to let us go." 

I'm unsure which of us graduated first, or if she graduated. Those years, graduation wasn't really very important to any of us back then, although we all expected to. What was important then were adventures, the sorts of events that happened and you talked about them later. We attended a couple weekend workshops but didn't have the money to stay in a motel. So we slept in my car. At one, after we'd finished for the day and had some dinner, we found an out-of-the-way road, mostly dirt track, and figured it was remote enough to safely sleep there. Along 1 or 2 o'clock I was woken by her insistent, "Someone's at the door" next to my ear, not so much whispered as said in amazement. It was a cop. 

Windows rolled down in cars then so I rolled the one closest to me and said, very quizzically, "Hi?" He said, "Do you know the owner of this property? Has he said you could stay here?" I said, "We didn't even know it was property, we thought we were out in the woods." He said, "Well, you're in someone's driveway and he's not around apparently, but if he comes by you'll have to move." That seemed reasonable to me, the having to move part, so I agreed and he got back in his car and we went back to sleep. In the early morning as the fog lifted, we could dimly see a house at the other end of the drive. The owner had either never come home or he'd never left. 

Another story, this one not involving me, one she told me. She'd been walking through the Student Union on her way somewhere when she'd got a whiff of someone's patchouli as he walked by. The tribe we hung with loved patchouli but found it hard to locate. She walked swiftly beside him and asked, "Is that patchouli? Did you get it around here? I love patchouli and..." He stopped suddenly, looked down at her--in her story he was over 6 feet--and announced, "It's obvious you want to engage me in  conversation but I don't want to." And he strode off, leaving her open-mouthed in his wake, incredulous when she told me, as if it was impossible someone wouldn't want to talk with her. I could not imagine why not. I was honored by her friendship. 

We attended more Gatherings, went more places, did more things. Most everyone wanted to talk with one of us everywhere we went. Somewhere in there we became lovers, although never exclusive, in defiance of everything we'd thought we were to each other. What she became to me, I'm sorry to say, was the human equivalent of home, someone that when you go there she has to take you in. I told myself that's all I was to her as well. Of course, that was wrong, both factually and morally. When she stopped talking to me after I married, my wife encouraged me to contact her. "You're too young to lose your best friend," she told me. 

That's a lousy story to end on, so here's a better one. Another Gathering, we had dropped acid together (when we talked about this last week while she was in hospice and I'd driven 1500 miles to spend time with her she insisted it was her first time, a possibility her sister later doubted, so we'll let it go) and then found ourselves at night at a jam session where, for some reason, she'd needed to take medicine. She dropped it and the two of us bent in the shadows, heads down, rummaging around among the leaves and twigs and loam for the pill. Suddenly, something dropped on her head, bounced, and landed in her open hand. It was the pill. We laughed because the universe opened a rift in time below our hands and another above our heads. It had decided to fuck with us and that was all right with us. That is how I will remember her, laughing. 

Joys and Concerns: Wonderful Life

Part of my work since we've been isolating and locking down is to write a weekly message for the rest of my healthcare team. I call it "Joys and Concerns" after the UU check-in at each service. This is my most recent one. The links aren't in the original because my readers don't have time to click on them.

We reached a couple milestones over the weekend that will have a tremendous effect, I think, on our future. The first is particular to us, as healthcare workers. The US reached the half million mark in covid-19 deaths. Figures from Johns Hopkins University tell us we are at the top of the list of countries with coronavirus deaths, followed by Brazil, at nearly half the number. There are many articles out there helping people to visualize 500,000 people, but I'm going to use an aid that, in our media-saturated culture, might have some power left. It is as if Thanos' snapping his fingers, decimating the universe by half, had happened. Slowly. And to people you know.

The second milestone is also important, and it's relevant to how we think about humanity. NASA safely landed the rover Perseverance on the surface of Mars. Consider the ingenuity that took, the ability to create, not only machines that mathematically make it possible to figure out how to do it, but machines that deliver and release--and this is critical--the rover, full of delicate instruments, without doing it damage. Surely, such creativity, turned to the development of vaccines, has helped us to perhaps cross thresholds undreamt of.

I've been thinking about this song all morning. It's by Black, an especially obscure one-hit wonder of the 80s. It's kind of schmaltzy, both in its lyrics, its style, and even in the images in its video. But maybe milestones sometimes demand schmaltz.  

My John Ashbery Story

Lost in the bustle yesterday of both Labor Day weekend and Walter Becker's death (and that is tragic; I am a closet Steely Dan fan) was the death too of American poet John Ashbery. Ashbery is eulogized quite nicely by the New York Times but I want to add my memory too.

My friend Rick Robbins has a collection titled Famous Persons We Have Known and I've often thought about writing a book with just such a title. My John Ashbery story would be one of the best, in my opinion, because I've rarely met anyone as full of grace and politesse as John.

In the late-80s, between my divorce and last marriage, I spent a lot of time spooning with many, many people (sorry, none of them were famous), and one of them was Shelley. I've spoken a little of what's become of her since but she's not the focus here. Anyway, Shelley came from money and she knew a lot of moneyed people, most of them through her dad, a nutrition guru. One day she was driving me back from somewhere up north we'd gone, Vermont or the Adirondacks, and we passed through the town I'd grown up near, Hudson, New York, in those days just becoming a tourist mecca, and as we drove down Fairview Avenue, the main drag into town, she pointed at a pretty, older home  and said, "My friend John lives there. Let's go see him."

Now, keep in mind two things. While I had grown up near the town I knew almost nothing about it or the more well-heeled people who lived there. And that this was 12:30 at night and we had been drinking wine since probably 3 the afternoon before.

Shelley swung into the driveway--there was almost no traffic on the street--and we noisily got out of the car and giggled our way to the door, where she rang the bell. The bell's sound was mellifluous, less like a buzz summoning the host and more like a relaxed chime saying, "Hello, I've come to see you." A light came on in the hallway and the curtains covering the window on the door parted a bit to admit a white, questioning face, that became more questioning as it recognized who had rung the bell.

The door opened and John Ashbery asked, "Shelley? Is something wrong?" And she said quickly, "No, we just dropped by so I could introduce my friend Bobby to you." I was a dabbler in poetry then, writing some and reading more, and while I hadn't read any of his work, I had heard the name John Ashbery, so I knew if I'd heard it then it must have been a well-known name. We shook hands and he said, "Well, come in, please." He led us to a small cozy room that I could probably remember if I'd been more sober, but I was not. He offered us something to drink, and we wisely asked for water as we had at least an hour's drive ahead of us.

So the three of us sat there in his little sitting room in the town near where I'd grown up, the so-famous-I'd-heard-of-him poet, the drunk girl from money, and the drunker me who didn't need fame or money. The two of them carried the conversation, which was good, because it mostly revolved around Shelley's family and other wealthy people they knew, and my head was reeling at the recognition we'd just rung the doorbell of a famous person and waltzed in during the middle of the night when by rights we should be sleeping our drunks off and he should have been let alone. His water I can describe in detail: It was wet and cold, probably Poland Spring and doubtless kept cold in the refrigerator, and the glass, which was the same heavy, dull glass my parents had, sweated in my hand. It tasted lemony and clear, not like the water I'd grown up with around there. John asked me some polite questions--"What do you do? Where do you live? How do you know Shelley?"--none of which really had the sorts of answers I wished I could have told him.

But I mentioned his politesse and I can describe that, if not as completely as his glass of water, then nearly so. The word I would use about him was attentive. I felt as if he was completely there in the room with us, which again remember were two people who had invaded his home in the middle of the night for no better reason than an introduction. That he should be that way with Shelley, the daughter of a friend, didn't surprise me. But that I should be treated the same way did surprise me. I remember thinking, "This man is paying attention to me, an overfed, long-haired hippie who showed up on his doorstep out of nowhere to drink his water and take up his time, and who really has no claim on that time beyond sharing his sitting room for a little while." (This is in retrospect. I think I thought more in pictographs back then as I was rarely coherent enough for words.) I never felt, either, that I was being watched closely because of what I might do or break or steal--a sort of watching I was very familiar with in those days--but because this was how he sat with everyone. This attention I think came from his being at peace with himself and with the world, an impression that he knew what his place in life was and how he was to live it. I have since tried to emulate that peace, and if I have, it's a tribute to how well John Ashbery treated me.

After about 20 minutes, he said, "Well, if it's all right with you I would like to go to bed," which sounded from him less like an invitation to leave and more a straightforward telling us of his plans. I drank the rest of my water--Shelley had gulped hers down in a quick, impulsive way, the way she did everything--and we stood up and he walked us back to his porch and bade us goodnight. We got back in the car and drove the rest of the way talking about mundane things. At one point she asked, "What did you think of John?" and I said, "I liked him. I really liked him. He was a real human being."

Here is a poem by Ashbery. I like to pretend he might have written if he'd known what my meeting him had done for me.

"My Philosophy of Life"

Just when I thought there wasn't room enough
for another thought in my head, I had this great idea--
call it a philosophy of life, if you will.Briefly,
it involved living the way philosophers live,
according to a set of principles. OK, but which ones?

That was the hardest part, I admit, but I had a
kind of dark foreknowledge of what it would be like.
Everything, from eating watermelon or going to the bathroom
or just standing on a subway platform, lost in thought
for a few minutes, or worrying about rain forests,
would be affected, or more precisely, inflected
by my new attitude.I wouldn't be preachy,
or worry about children and old people, except
in the general way prescribed by our clockwork universe.
Instead I'd sort of let things be what they are
while injecting them with the serum of the new moral climate
I thought I'd stumbled into, as a stranger
accidentally presses against a panel and a bookcase slides back,
revealing a winding staircase with greenish light
somewhere down below, and he automatically steps inside
and the bookcase slides shut, as is customary on such occasions.
At once a fragrance overwhelms him--not saffron, not lavender,
but something in between.He thinks of cushions, like the one
his uncle's Boston bull terrier used to lie on watching him
quizzically, pointed ear-tips folded over. And then the great rush
is on.Not a single idea emerges from it.It's enough
to disgust you with thought.But then you remember something William James
wrote in some book of his you never read--it was fine, it had the fineness,
the powder of life dusted over it, by chance, of course, yet still looking
for evidence of fingerprints. Someone had handled it
even before he formulated it, though the thought was his and his alone.

It's fine, in summer, to visit the seashore.
There are lots of little trips to be made.
A grove of fledgling aspens welcomes the traveler.Nearby
are the public toilets where weary pilgrims have carved
their names and addresses, and perhaps messages as well,
messages to the world, as they sat
and thought about what they'd do after using the toilet
and washing their hands at the sink, prior to stepping out
into the open again.Had they been coaxed in by principles,
and were their words philosophy, of however crude a sort?
I confess I can move no farther along this train of thought--
something's blocking it.Something I'm
not big enough to see over.Or maybe I'm frankly scared.
What was the matter with how I acted before?
But maybe I can come up with a compromise--I'll let
things be what they are, sort of.In the autumn I'll put up jellies
and preserves, against the winter cold and futility,
and that will be a human thing, and intelligent as well.
I won't be embarrassed by my friends' dumb remarks,
or even my own, though admittedly that's the hardest part,
as when you are in a crowded theater and something you say
riles the spectator in front of you, who doesn't even like the idea
of two people near him talking together. Well he's
got to be flushed out so the hunters can have a crack at him--
this thing works both ways, you know. You can't always
be worrying about others and keeping track of yourself
at the same time.That would be abusive, and about as much fun
as attending the wedding of two people you don't know.
Still, there's a lot of fun to be had in the gaps between ideas.
That's what they're made for!Now I want you to go out there
and enjoy yourself, and yes, enjoy your philosophy of life, too.
They don't come along every day. Look out!There's a big one... 

258 candles-days 20-17

This is purely a personal joy. I never identified with goths or with new wave, but I love the music of that period. And this tarot deck is just wonderful. It has been many years since I've regularly shuffled tarot but I am often drawn to the beauty of designed decks. This one is no different. It is gorgeous.

258 candles and counting

Like a lot of people, I've been watching this election cycle with dismay. Unlike a  lot of them, I have a real love for politics. I believe strongly that humanity is homo politico (or however that might shake out), a social animal that thrives on give and take. Politics, after all, comes from polis and describes how we live in proximity to one another.

That said: Yes, I repeat, a lot of people are watching this election cycle with our fingers in our mouths, afraid for what may be. For the first time since the millennium, this is the Democrats' election to lose, and lose it they seem determined. As is so often the case, they are their own destruction, because ideal is the enemy of good. Is one Democratic candidate preferable to another? Probably. Regardless, each candidate's partisans (not, I stress, the candidates themselves, who are conducting old fashioned, strong electioneering without rancor) strain themselves to proclaim that unless their candidate becomes the party's candidate, they will sit this one out.

That, of course, may hand the election over to one of three possible Republican candidates, two of which are bad enough but the third makes an absolute sham of the process. He is not a candidate in the traditional sense (for better or worse), offering positions and potential solutions to social and economic problems. He's simply saying whatever comes to his mind or what he knows will give him play in the next 24 hour news cycle. He is a boon to news directors, who really don't need to have reporters cover any of the others; they need only to play, sometimes in entirety, that guy's latest speech or conversation. In place of suggestions for how he will handle a given situation, he offers tripe suggesting that, when elected, he will do what needs to be done. He will get us the biggest, the best, the largest, the most effective government money can buy.

I've been wracking my brain trying to think of what I can say that will mean anything to anyone about any of this. And I've come to realize this: There isn't anything I can say. But there is something I can do.

My solution, based on the Chinese proverb that it's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness, is to provide daily candles in the form of links to other people's solutions, simple or complex responses to problems that they see. But as a single candle will hardly provide enough illumination to blot out the darkness that is the pettiness and meanness that characterizes this election cycle, I will light 258 candles, one each day between now and election day. In this way, I will do my part to remind each of us we are better than the baseness of the bases.

Today: True Colors Residence.