New Orleans mid-July?
It's 84 degrees at 6:30 in the mornin.
How'd people ever survive these summers in layers of petticoats, whalebones, and wool?
In hats and bonnets and 30-eye boots?
In dockworker muslin and loose-virtue satin?
I mean, at least their bloomers didn't fill the bend, makin easy peein,
allowin a little breathin.
Long bfore electric fans and air conditionin, fore summer ice, fore sno-balls were a glimmer in anybody's eye, those heavy, torrid ghosts started pilin up, started pushin their gossamer elbows into heavy draped corners, makin it so stuffy y'could hardly breathe. Not sure when their voices gained such body. Grew corpulent. Insistent. Not real sure when they figured out they were more 'ghost' than most ghosts.
They thick out here, too. Ain't just a few of 'em,
mutterin outta boredom or feelin sorry for themselves or even grumblin vengeance (though those kind are t'be found everwhere). Ghosts round here, most of em been watchin the livin so long it seems like they forget they're on th'other side. Chattin you up while you're tryin to mind y'own business down by the river at sunrise. Y'think maybe it's a coupla people behind j'yuh, talkin soft and slow, but then realize they answerin the thoughts inside y'own head.
Think maybe it's just people behind j'yuh.
And it is.
Sorta.
If y'look at it a certain kinda way.
______________
Heat used't piss me off when I was a kid, made me angry.
Angry!
Still does a lot of people, I guess.
I figured out a while ago idn't anybody to get mad at. Can't up and punch anybody and make y'self feel better, make the heat stop. Best to just start workin nights if y'can, stay outta the sun, stay outta groups of other hot bodies. Stay in the cool where the cool is. Stay outta them dead people's air. Most people think ghosts just mostly come out at night, but I dunno. I dunno that at all. I think mebbe, in the summer, mebbe those ghosts talkin more than uzhul. Mebbe that's why it feels like walkin int' somebody's mouth when y'go outside.
Mebbe.
Can't hardly hear the cathedrul bells in this weather, either.
Sound tiny.
Far away.
Like they tryin t'find y'underwater.
Or in a bubble.
Or across a Divide.
Like mebbe you the one slipped over.
Sometimes it's hard t'tell.
________________
I never been wunna those people knew f'sure I was always alive. Got labelled "bipolar" cause of a lotta things stemmin from that. Like when I know I'm alive, when I can feel all my fingers and toes and feel m'blood movin the right way, that's kind of a rush, feelin Alive down t'the cells and feelin each an evry one uh them cells, too. I got that certainty that I'm one place or thuther. They say that's the "manic." But when it's sure I'm dead, or should be, but my body's still here, stiff and forrin, I feel like a damn criminal. Feel like I done somethin bad and m'gonna get caught any second and gonna be in a worlda pain like my daddy never dreamed of showin me. Can't trust anybody when y'hidin from Death herself. Even if y'don't know why y' hidin, or whether y'care to keep at it.
Nice little label, though, innit?
7 letters and an image of both our planet poles, penguins and polar bears, for explainin away this weird doorway to somethin we suspect but don't understand.
A door our bones believe but our prayers say ain't so.
Well I say it's so,
even if I do say it kinda quiet 'cause I don't always like feelin like Cardinal Richelieu caught me eatin pussy while hostin the Heretic's Hen Party. It's funny how somethin so simple and true can get so many people mad. Like tellin em their dad gives shitty blow jobs.
Even if it really is true.
I figure science is about a thousand generations away from catchin up with any single part of our intrinsic knowledge, the stuff we know without knowin how we know it. I mean, there's the backwater reptilian stuff, the fight or flight thing that's kept us alive for long enough to kill most everything else on earth, but that ain't knowledge at all; it's instinct, despite what the tv's been tellin y'. I reckon there's lotsa people in lab coats wanna check into how we connect with ghosts and th like, but most people seem too scared to really let 'em have a go at it, includin other people in lab coats. Mebbe mostly those people.
Eitha way, those things the Real Smart People say don't exist?
Well, those things seem to like it just fine down here.
This town.
When the air gets all thick, when y'can't hear god's bells a block away, y'can hear a few more voices than there're people on the street. If y'gotch y'ears rilaxed. Pretty much all y'gotta do t'do that is just turn off that ninny in y'head that's got her fingers in her squeakyclean ears, glazey wide-eyed, scream-singin "jesus loves me this i knoooow!" or some other igneurnt, off-key shit like that. Sounds like a small thing, turnin her off. Like turnin down a volume knob or somethin. But that little bitch got some lungs and she gets freaked the fuck out if you try to lookit things she don't wanna see.
I'm just sayin.
Might be more trouble n y'think is all.
But, mercy! is it worth it.
I been led to honeybees when I'uz losin hope I'd see any ever again.
Been told to stay way or to leave where I was and'm still livin b'cause of it.
Been brought to pain I cud help in healin so's to ease another's sufferin.
Been shown wondrous things I couldn't ever share cause ain't nobody'd see it or undestand it if they did.
Had a hand put on my shouldr, stoppin m'mouth when somebody else needed t'talk bfore he went batshithomicidalcrazy and hurt more'n just my ears.
Been comfutted more often than I mebbe deserve, balm f'my heart when my body was ailin and torn.
Met long-dead grandmamas that seem now, in retr'spect, to've been leadin me to New Orleans, leadin me twhere I mebbe meet mself.
Yeh that heat's suh'm else.
Gets miragey out there and if y'din know bettuh, yd swear yjust heard yr own voice callin from cross the Square.
An mebbe y'did.
Or mebbe that granma ynever met akshally sound a lot like you.
_________________
Those doors?
Those doors to th'other sides?
They got well-oiled hinges in this town.
This town built so high on dreams, the dreams become the city and the city become its dreams.
Sometimes I think we all ghosts.
You get down here to the Bottom, and we all down here.
We all down here.
Showing posts with label Muerte. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Muerte. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Sunday, July 6, 2008
First Second Line
Seen a lotta Death in the last few years.
Lotta Death.
And suddenly,
I find myself in a town that understands how that is.
Got invited, a couple weeks ago, to participate in the second line of a jazz funeral for someone I'd never met. I was concerned about participating in what was such a personal event without prior knowledge of the deceased. Didn't want to intrude where the heart is so tender.
I'd been told, within my first night or two in New Orleans, that one of the bartenders at Harry's Corner was sick, hospitalized shortly before I moved to town. Three weeks later, one of the other bartenders, with that dazed look I now recognize a mile off, told me,
"Well, you heard about Freak, that he's been in the hospital."
"Yeah, of course! How's he doin?"
"He's dead."
"Oh jeezus.
"...Oh, jeezus, darlin, I'm so sorry."
"Yeah, y'know...
"I'm just tired of this shit.
"After Katrina, with all the death there, afterwards seemed like people just kept dyin. Had a friend...y'know, we couldn't get the things we needed, things were still so fucked up with the city. Had a friend who had a seizure one night. Had a seizure and died cause the ambulance couldn't get there for 30 minutes. Thirty minutes and she was dead. Of a seizure.
(and in a small, tired voice:)
"...I'm just sicka people dyin...
(*...sigh...*)
"So, look, we're gonna try and get together a second line for him this Sunday.
"Y'all should really come.
"Come down for it. Really."
Now, I'd bowed out of a lotta goings-on since I'd been in town; just didn't feel like bein in-the-swing-a-things social. But, I wasn't about to miss this. Not when the grieving, red-eyed and exhausted, had personally asked me to attend. Not when an hour of my time, an hour's worth of participation might provide a little comfort, put a tiny bit of fill in the gaping hole of Loss. I know how much those little things mean, even if you can't always remember 'em later.
Sunday, I dressed up purty, grabbed a parasol to combat the sun, and a nearly transparent hanky belonging to my dead father-in-law. Wasn't quite sure what to do with the hanky, but Otter told me, "You'll want it." Went down to the bar where people were gathering, where the Treme Brass Band was warming up, where heavy hearts and love were beginning to swell. I felt an emotional break coming soon; the air was thick with its impending eruption. One of the other bartenders from Harry's, squinty unaccustomed to the midday sun, spied me and came over to hug me. I was still a little unsure. My own experiences with Death in the Public Eye had not exactly been pleasant.
"Are you sure it's okay if I'm here? I mean, I never even met the guy."
"No, no, sweetheart, it's good you're here. You'll see.
"...You got an extra parasol upstairs?"
The band started playing on Chartres and Dumaine, right in front of the bar, and began to walk slowly down the street. The dirges with which they began, though written slow and heavy, did not weigh on us as much as elegies are wont to do. Notes deep slow sad respectful mournful, but somehow not feelin sorry for themselves. From the first bass drum shuffles, the first sousa-brass-bottom, it was obvious that this crowd understood to the bone how intractably Life goes on, with or withoutcha.
I stayed back as far as I could, bringing up the end of the line, mostly outta respect for the grieving, partly cause I wanted to see and hear as much as possible. The procession wound through the Vieux Carre, motorcycle cops on either end, and made its way slowly to the home of the deceased. People held hankies in the air, half-steppin to the beat. Soft. Comforting each other. When we reached the front door of the house, Freak's sweetheart took his ashes inside for a last tour, and then brought them back out. The crowd stilled while the bandleader, the diminutive bass drum player, began to sing in a faded, beautiful tenor,
"Just
a closer
wawk with theee..."
Some heads bowed. Most looked up and around, as if greeting the new ghost while bidding his body farewell. As the sweet threnody came to and end, the briefest of silences hung over around among us. Brief and pregnant. Like the pause at a rollercoaster's apex.
And when we began again to move?
Oh, that's when it became...
That's when I began to understand how Death lives in New Orleans: differently from any other place in this country, fer damn sure. The bass drum kicked up the tempo. The Sousaphone, improbably, became light on its feet, bouncing fat notes to the heavens and, progressively, every booty within ear shot right along with it. People clappin on those downbeats. Wavin hankies and twirlin parasols. Sweet dancin the second line, twirlin little circles, laughin mouths open to the sky.
As we wound through the tight neighborhood streets, we stopped at every bar the late lamented had worked in his many years here in the Quarter. At every bar, we stopped and payed respects. Former coworkers stepped out onto balconies and banquettes, grieving and glad they had had a chance to spend some of this man's life with him. One of the tavern owners brought out glasses of cold beer for the band and mourners, and lord was it welcome in that heat! We headed down Decatur for a few blocks; tourists staring, locals waving and grinning and dancing on the sidewalks as we passed. They knew we carried the dead, and so they danced. And danced!
On the sidewalk, I see a group of kids, aged maybe 10 to 15, hands full of shiny music, watching us and talking rapidly amongst themselves. They quickly come to a concensus and run, horns and drums in hand, to the front of the line, exchange a couple words with the bandleader, and then join the musicians, playing bright and joyful and fulla love. A block down, from the opposite side of the street, yet another band of kids joins the procession. The music has tripled, quadrupled in volume, and people are really startin to get involved.
Wellwishers and friends drift in and out of the cortege to hug each other and swap favorite stories about this beloved human. There is laughter everywhere. Two lovely girls on tallbikes ride close past us, moving air against my body, and shout joyous "Yeaaa! We love yoooou! We loooove yooou!" A young couple joins the end of the promenade, taps me and asks,
"Hey, what's going on?"
I am ebullient; I am full of greasy, bubblin goodwill. "It's a second line for a longtime bartender here in the Quarter. Come on in and dance with us fo'while, darlin!"
Christ, there is music everywhere! I have never seen a life so supremely celebrated! Never seen so many people get it, that we are so damned fortunate to be able to count among our living blessings Friendship, Laughter, Love, and a hell of a lot of good Food and Dancin. As we make our way back to Harry's, back to where we started, folks are flatout cheerin!, whoopin and hollerin and shakin bootys to beat the devil. A couple of obviously-local guys step in line directly behind me and put their hands on my shoulder, nod & grin, grills all shinin, and start singin with the band, shoutin themselves bloody and loved. "Yeh!Yeh! When I layhay...mah burden dowowown!" The crowd's Joy is palpable, is a natural Force beside within between around us, and,
and I have not been in a nexus of Love like this in a very, very long time.
While I watch my new friends carry their compatriot's ashes down the street, dancing and pumping parasol points toward the sky, while I watch these people who've buried so many, who have more cause to grieve than most anybody in this country, I am so very, very humbled by their strength, by their staggering Love. I can't help but think of the last people I helped lay to rest, and today, today! I finally feel like I am bidding farewell to them in proper style.
Oh, you who call yourselves America, you UStians! Take a lesson from the beautiful people of New Orleans: Death is an ending. Not The End, mind you, for Life goes on and on and on, with or withoutcha.
With or withoutcha.
Come
join the Caaaab-aaaaa-raaaaaaaaay!
Lotta Death.
And suddenly,
I find myself in a town that understands how that is.
Got invited, a couple weeks ago, to participate in the second line of a jazz funeral for someone I'd never met. I was concerned about participating in what was such a personal event without prior knowledge of the deceased. Didn't want to intrude where the heart is so tender.
I'd been told, within my first night or two in New Orleans, that one of the bartenders at Harry's Corner was sick, hospitalized shortly before I moved to town. Three weeks later, one of the other bartenders, with that dazed look I now recognize a mile off, told me,
"Well, you heard about Freak, that he's been in the hospital."
"Yeah, of course! How's he doin?"
"He's dead."
"Oh jeezus.
"...Oh, jeezus, darlin, I'm so sorry."
"Yeah, y'know...
"I'm just tired of this shit.
"After Katrina, with all the death there, afterwards seemed like people just kept dyin. Had a friend...y'know, we couldn't get the things we needed, things were still so fucked up with the city. Had a friend who had a seizure one night. Had a seizure and died cause the ambulance couldn't get there for 30 minutes. Thirty minutes and she was dead. Of a seizure.
(and in a small, tired voice:)
"...I'm just sicka people dyin...
(*...sigh...*)
"So, look, we're gonna try and get together a second line for him this Sunday.
"Y'all should really come.
"Come down for it. Really."
Now, I'd bowed out of a lotta goings-on since I'd been in town; just didn't feel like bein in-the-swing-a-things social. But, I wasn't about to miss this. Not when the grieving, red-eyed and exhausted, had personally asked me to attend. Not when an hour of my time, an hour's worth of participation might provide a little comfort, put a tiny bit of fill in the gaping hole of Loss. I know how much those little things mean, even if you can't always remember 'em later.
Sunday, I dressed up purty, grabbed a parasol to combat the sun, and a nearly transparent hanky belonging to my dead father-in-law. Wasn't quite sure what to do with the hanky, but Otter told me, "You'll want it." Went down to the bar where people were gathering, where the Treme Brass Band was warming up, where heavy hearts and love were beginning to swell. I felt an emotional break coming soon; the air was thick with its impending eruption. One of the other bartenders from Harry's, squinty unaccustomed to the midday sun, spied me and came over to hug me. I was still a little unsure. My own experiences with Death in the Public Eye had not exactly been pleasant.
"Are you sure it's okay if I'm here? I mean, I never even met the guy."
"No, no, sweetheart, it's good you're here. You'll see.
"...You got an extra parasol upstairs?"
The band started playing on Chartres and Dumaine, right in front of the bar, and began to walk slowly down the street. The dirges with which they began, though written slow and heavy, did not weigh on us as much as elegies are wont to do. Notes deep slow sad respectful mournful, but somehow not feelin sorry for themselves. From the first bass drum shuffles, the first sousa-brass-bottom, it was obvious that this crowd understood to the bone how intractably Life goes on, with or withoutcha.
I stayed back as far as I could, bringing up the end of the line, mostly outta respect for the grieving, partly cause I wanted to see and hear as much as possible. The procession wound through the Vieux Carre, motorcycle cops on either end, and made its way slowly to the home of the deceased. People held hankies in the air, half-steppin to the beat. Soft. Comforting each other. When we reached the front door of the house, Freak's sweetheart took his ashes inside for a last tour, and then brought them back out. The crowd stilled while the bandleader, the diminutive bass drum player, began to sing in a faded, beautiful tenor,
"Just
a closer
wawk with theee..."
Some heads bowed. Most looked up and around, as if greeting the new ghost while bidding his body farewell. As the sweet threnody came to and end, the briefest of silences hung over around among us. Brief and pregnant. Like the pause at a rollercoaster's apex.
And when we began again to move?
Oh, that's when it became...
That's when I began to understand how Death lives in New Orleans: differently from any other place in this country, fer damn sure. The bass drum kicked up the tempo. The Sousaphone, improbably, became light on its feet, bouncing fat notes to the heavens and, progressively, every booty within ear shot right along with it. People clappin on those downbeats. Wavin hankies and twirlin parasols. Sweet dancin the second line, twirlin little circles, laughin mouths open to the sky.
As we wound through the tight neighborhood streets, we stopped at every bar the late lamented had worked in his many years here in the Quarter. At every bar, we stopped and payed respects. Former coworkers stepped out onto balconies and banquettes, grieving and glad they had had a chance to spend some of this man's life with him. One of the tavern owners brought out glasses of cold beer for the band and mourners, and lord was it welcome in that heat! We headed down Decatur for a few blocks; tourists staring, locals waving and grinning and dancing on the sidewalks as we passed. They knew we carried the dead, and so they danced. And danced!
On the sidewalk, I see a group of kids, aged maybe 10 to 15, hands full of shiny music, watching us and talking rapidly amongst themselves. They quickly come to a concensus and run, horns and drums in hand, to the front of the line, exchange a couple words with the bandleader, and then join the musicians, playing bright and joyful and fulla love. A block down, from the opposite side of the street, yet another band of kids joins the procession. The music has tripled, quadrupled in volume, and people are really startin to get involved.
Wellwishers and friends drift in and out of the cortege to hug each other and swap favorite stories about this beloved human. There is laughter everywhere. Two lovely girls on tallbikes ride close past us, moving air against my body, and shout joyous "Yeaaa! We love yoooou! We loooove yooou!" A young couple joins the end of the promenade, taps me and asks,
"Hey, what's going on?"
I am ebullient; I am full of greasy, bubblin goodwill. "It's a second line for a longtime bartender here in the Quarter. Come on in and dance with us fo'while, darlin!"
Christ, there is music everywhere! I have never seen a life so supremely celebrated! Never seen so many people get it, that we are so damned fortunate to be able to count among our living blessings Friendship, Laughter, Love, and a hell of a lot of good Food and Dancin. As we make our way back to Harry's, back to where we started, folks are flatout cheerin!, whoopin and hollerin and shakin bootys to beat the devil. A couple of obviously-local guys step in line directly behind me and put their hands on my shoulder, nod & grin, grills all shinin, and start singin with the band, shoutin themselves bloody and loved. "Yeh!Yeh! When I layhay...mah burden dowowown!" The crowd's Joy is palpable, is a natural Force beside within between around us, and,
and I have not been in a nexus of Love like this in a very, very long time.
While I watch my new friends carry their compatriot's ashes down the street, dancing and pumping parasol points toward the sky, while I watch these people who've buried so many, who have more cause to grieve than most anybody in this country, I am so very, very humbled by their strength, by their staggering Love. I can't help but think of the last people I helped lay to rest, and today, today! I finally feel like I am bidding farewell to them in proper style.
Oh, you who call yourselves America, you UStians! Take a lesson from the beautiful people of New Orleans: Death is an ending. Not The End, mind you, for Life goes on and on and on, with or withoutcha.
With or withoutcha.
Come
join the Caaaab-aaaaa-raaaaaaaaay!
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Anniversary 2: DeathMatch
I've been lying in bed, awake awake awake, listening to the rain that's not raining, to the thunder that ain't rollin, to the stuttering scramble in the back of my head that wants to talk about stuff that I find rather trying.
Or boring.
Or...
Or, fuck, just kinda self-indulgent, these 716 days later.
Squirming under my own deadlights.
I've been assiduously avoiding all mention of memorials, of Tragedies, of Community Grieving and alternative therapies. I've glanced at and tossed every email with mention of Survival or Healing. I'm trying to stay out of the glare of notoriety that follows follows, sometimes, even down here. As occasionally desperate as I am to talk and write about the Living Room Murders (which is how my head classifies that rot)...
I'm really pretty fuckin tired of even thinking about it, much less writing or talking.
Guess even I've gotta vomit sometimes...
Thing is...
The thing is,
is that while I'm still plagued by weeks-long nightmares now and again, I'm doin pretty well for myself. The sun and sand and thousand Anole lizards have done me a world of good. I do not, as has been suggested, feel guilty for surviving. Why the hell should I? I miss Jesus/Jeremy like nobody's business; think about him often when I cook, when I taste a good Malbec; but I'm doin okay without him, y'know?
Without all my beautiful Seattle family.
I gotta.
Just, y'know...
I just gotta.
And that's just how Life's gonna rub me right here.
That's just the rub, and they ain't nothin wrong with that.
Ain't nothin but a seasonin.
I learned a long time ago that, for me, the best remedy for damned near everything is perspective. Loooots of perspective. And the best way to jumpstart that heave-ho of a gargantuan process is to physically change perspective. Go check out the view from the other side of the living room. Go from Seattle to Key West. Switch climates, countries, cultures, cant. Switch up everything so as to force the brain out of its cozy little ruts of erudition. It is high time for another jump and shimmy, if I may say so (and I do), but for now,
For now, I know I made the right move. My Seattle family seem to be leaving the city, one by one. Two of them, completely separately, have said it felt like the city just didn't want them anymore.
The city wallows in its mourning.
The city does not understand how to bring laughter out of no-laughing-matter.
The city takes itself (and us) way too muthafuckin seriously.
We die tomorrow and
and every day we wake up breathin is a beautiful day.
Lemme reiterate:
We die tomorrow
(ain't got time to waste on hurtin)
and
and
and
and every day we wake up breathin is a
Good
Goddamned
Day.
...A good goddamned day.
(oh lordy i do love drawin breath, i love it and i try to be conscious as all hell of my continued ability to swell my lungs with oxygen and nitrogen and a thousand airborne chemicalspoisonsdiseases, because i am alive alive alive. i am alive.)
I just kinda dropped off the face not too long after the Thing, so I kinda feel obligated to acknowledge it somehow, to give some sorta shoutout to my misrepresented, misunderstood, monumentally beautiful family.
To tell them that I think about them every day.
To let them know how much their lives mean to me.
To remind them...
Just to remind 'em how fuckin awesome it is to be alive, and how ridiculously fortunate we all are to know each other.
Now that the sun's up, maybe I can get some sleep
Maybe I can get some sleep
maybe sleep....
Or boring.
Or...
Or, fuck, just kinda self-indulgent, these 716 days later.
Squirming under my own deadlights.
I've been assiduously avoiding all mention of memorials, of Tragedies, of Community Grieving and alternative therapies. I've glanced at and tossed every email with mention of Survival or Healing. I'm trying to stay out of the glare of notoriety that follows follows, sometimes, even down here. As occasionally desperate as I am to talk and write about the Living Room Murders (which is how my head classifies that rot)...
I'm really pretty fuckin tired of even thinking about it, much less writing or talking.
Guess even I've gotta vomit sometimes...
Thing is...
The thing is,
is that while I'm still plagued by weeks-long nightmares now and again, I'm doin pretty well for myself. The sun and sand and thousand Anole lizards have done me a world of good. I do not, as has been suggested, feel guilty for surviving. Why the hell should I? I miss Jesus/Jeremy like nobody's business; think about him often when I cook, when I taste a good Malbec; but I'm doin okay without him, y'know?
Without all my beautiful Seattle family.
I gotta.
Just, y'know...
I just gotta.
And that's just how Life's gonna rub me right here.
That's just the rub, and they ain't nothin wrong with that.
Ain't nothin but a seasonin.
I learned a long time ago that, for me, the best remedy for damned near everything is perspective. Loooots of perspective. And the best way to jumpstart that heave-ho of a gargantuan process is to physically change perspective. Go check out the view from the other side of the living room. Go from Seattle to Key West. Switch climates, countries, cultures, cant. Switch up everything so as to force the brain out of its cozy little ruts of erudition. It is high time for another jump and shimmy, if I may say so (and I do), but for now,
For now, I know I made the right move. My Seattle family seem to be leaving the city, one by one. Two of them, completely separately, have said it felt like the city just didn't want them anymore.
The city wallows in its mourning.
The city does not understand how to bring laughter out of no-laughing-matter.
The city takes itself (and us) way too muthafuckin seriously.
We die tomorrow and
and every day we wake up breathin is a beautiful day.
Lemme reiterate:
We die tomorrow
(ain't got time to waste on hurtin)
and
and
and
and every day we wake up breathin is a
Good
Goddamned
Day.
...A good goddamned day.
(oh lordy i do love drawin breath, i love it and i try to be conscious as all hell of my continued ability to swell my lungs with oxygen and nitrogen and a thousand airborne chemicalspoisonsdiseases, because i am alive alive alive. i am alive.)
I just kinda dropped off the face not too long after the Thing, so I kinda feel obligated to acknowledge it somehow, to give some sorta shoutout to my misrepresented, misunderstood, monumentally beautiful family.
To tell them that I think about them every day.
To let them know how much their lives mean to me.
To remind them...
Just to remind 'em how fuckin awesome it is to be alive, and how ridiculously fortunate we all are to know each other.
Now that the sun's up, maybe I can get some sleep
Maybe I can get some sleep
maybe sleep....
Friday, February 29, 2008
Hide & Seek with Mistress Death
"I'm figurin on livin t'be 'bout a hundr'd an fifty.
When I was a young kid, i c'n r'member seem like people only live to be about 60 or 70;
80 was old;
today you got people livin ovah hundr'd. So, by the time I get close to a hundr'd, people gonna be livin to be a hundr'd an fifty, I figure.
Butchya nevah know.
I mean, accidents happen.
Lightnin might strike in a little while.
Y'nevah know.
...
But as far as Nature goes? If I can stay away from all the drunks,
the crazy people...,
I'll live to be an ooold man.
Real old.
Trust me."
-Wild Bill Treagle,
Alligator wrangler.
With all our fancy schmancy and high-falutin', why the hell we plan on dying so young? Why do we think we've gotta lie down in front of our genetics and beg for mercy? Why do we try fighting our body's own aging with Pills and Treatments and Cures that ain't doin anything but pandering to our scruff-necked paranoia? Why's it such a big leap to figure that, if our bodies have evolved in (re)markable ways, our brains have probably evolved right along with us? Why does acknowledging the freakasaurus mightiness of our mental faculties, acknowledging their ability to meet our genetic proclivities head-on a truly level playing field, seem like such a grand act of ignorant faith? Why does it still have a ring of the fundamentalist snake-handler to it?
Why are we so unwilling to accept that we're capable of a hell of a lot more cool stuff than we've been led to believe?
Why do we, docile as the hopelessly brainwashed, accept the idea that we've gotta die too young to have really understood anything?
Why do we think we can't live forever?
We're fatalists who won't admit we're fatalists.
We're terrified of our own power ("god within us" isn't s'posed to be literal).
We're scared to wake up to the next dream.
We're too fucked up and too fuckin wonderful for me to sort out before my coffeeshift starts,
but think about this:
We have more control than we think.
Way more.
An' sweet Mistrees Death just sittin there grinnin,
waitin for us to figure it out.
When I was a young kid, i c'n r'member seem like people only live to be about 60 or 70;
80 was old;
today you got people livin ovah hundr'd. So, by the time I get close to a hundr'd, people gonna be livin to be a hundr'd an fifty, I figure.
Butchya nevah know.
I mean, accidents happen.
Lightnin might strike in a little while.
Y'nevah know.
...
But as far as Nature goes? If I can stay away from all the drunks,
the crazy people...,
I'll live to be an ooold man.
Real old.
Trust me."
-Wild Bill Treagle,
Alligator wrangler.
With all our fancy schmancy and high-falutin', why the hell we plan on dying so young? Why do we think we've gotta lie down in front of our genetics and beg for mercy? Why do we try fighting our body's own aging with Pills and Treatments and Cures that ain't doin anything but pandering to our scruff-necked paranoia? Why's it such a big leap to figure that, if our bodies have evolved in (re)markable ways, our brains have probably evolved right along with us? Why does acknowledging the freakasaurus mightiness of our mental faculties, acknowledging their ability to meet our genetic proclivities head-on a truly level playing field, seem like such a grand act of ignorant faith? Why does it still have a ring of the fundamentalist snake-handler to it?
Why are we so unwilling to accept that we're capable of a hell of a lot more cool stuff than we've been led to believe?
Why do we, docile as the hopelessly brainwashed, accept the idea that we've gotta die too young to have really understood anything?
Why do we think we can't live forever?
We're fatalists who won't admit we're fatalists.
We're terrified of our own power ("god within us" isn't s'posed to be literal).
We're scared to wake up to the next dream.
We're too fucked up and too fuckin wonderful for me to sort out before my coffeeshift starts,
but think about this:
We have more control than we think.
Way more.
An' sweet Mistrees Death just sittin there grinnin,
waitin for us to figure it out.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Big Ol' Cycle
man, this death stuff is heavy this week; the moon's getting darker.
this is part of a letter to my brother, d~, dated 24 august 2006. i'd forgotten it had been over a year. how did i forget?...
...feel all weird posting this, self-indulgent as all hell, but...sometimes that ain't so bad. -rd
on another note of longing, my amazing, ornery, foul-mouthed, big hearted, "darlin-i'll-always-keep-a-cowgirl-hat-for-you" texas grandad just died monday; his funeral's today. i am so fucking heartsore i can hardly breathe these mornings, too fed up with death and dying and suffering and missed opportunities and untold stories and lost links to other perspectives that i deeply treasure. i'm fuckin heavy with love that has lost three outlets this year, and with grandad it lost one of its main arteries. oh, d~... if ever there were a year to learn how to mourn and how to survive.... goddamn it. it's been 5 years since i've seen grandad. five motherfuckin years. i never wrote, never called. couldn't bear to hear his robust voice made small and flat by telephone lines. couldn't bear to try and write all the stuff i only know how to say with my eyes, to try and waste all my splendid vocabulary on a man who had no time for such things, who only had time for gut feelings that are too big for words. he was the first grown-up man i ever loved. ever. he was the first one to ever tell me i could do anything boys could do, that i'm just as smart (if not moreso) than boys and not to let anyone ever tell me different; he was the first one to lay out so many truisms in such plain language, language no one else i've known has been able to match: "just cause a boy's got a pecker don't mean he can tell it from his brain." he stood up for me to my dad. he wrote to me every year on my birthday, these past few always asking me to come and see them when i got the chance. ...fuck! fuck, Fuck, FUCK! and today they're putting him in the ground. today, six feet of earth step up to close the bridge that death first set afire. oh, d~, my heart wails a ululation as deep and slow as the very earth's rumblings today; i cannot separate this sorrow from the immense, unstoppable river of all humanity's woe. jeremy and jason's deaths were large rooms in my house burning down; grandad's exit is fully a third of my foundation rattled loose and crumbled beneath me. i don't know where to stand. i haven't been able to tell anyone about this, outside my housemates i mean, who were there when i found out. it's like i don't know how to say it. i don't know how to say "my grandad's dead" without it sounding small and insignificant, without belittling the enormity of its impact on me, without making it sound like just another body has passed from the earth instead of one of its titans. grief is a growling like no other hunger. i feel like a goddamned seive, full of holes, my love and perpectives and reasons for actively living, draining and changing, eroding down to nothing so that i might have room to rebuild them. ...at least, that's how i'm dealing this year. today, though...
today my bones cry.
this is part of a letter to my brother, d~, dated 24 august 2006. i'd forgotten it had been over a year. how did i forget?...
...feel all weird posting this, self-indulgent as all hell, but...sometimes that ain't so bad. -rd
on another note of longing, my amazing, ornery, foul-mouthed, big hearted, "darlin-i'll-always-keep-a-cowgirl-hat-for-you" texas grandad just died monday; his funeral's today. i am so fucking heartsore i can hardly breathe these mornings, too fed up with death and dying and suffering and missed opportunities and untold stories and lost links to other perspectives that i deeply treasure. i'm fuckin heavy with love that has lost three outlets this year, and with grandad it lost one of its main arteries. oh, d~... if ever there were a year to learn how to mourn and how to survive.... goddamn it. it's been 5 years since i've seen grandad. five motherfuckin years. i never wrote, never called. couldn't bear to hear his robust voice made small and flat by telephone lines. couldn't bear to try and write all the stuff i only know how to say with my eyes, to try and waste all my splendid vocabulary on a man who had no time for such things, who only had time for gut feelings that are too big for words. he was the first grown-up man i ever loved. ever. he was the first one to ever tell me i could do anything boys could do, that i'm just as smart (if not moreso) than boys and not to let anyone ever tell me different; he was the first one to lay out so many truisms in such plain language, language no one else i've known has been able to match: "just cause a boy's got a pecker don't mean he can tell it from his brain." he stood up for me to my dad. he wrote to me every year on my birthday, these past few always asking me to come and see them when i got the chance. ...fuck! fuck, Fuck, FUCK! and today they're putting him in the ground. today, six feet of earth step up to close the bridge that death first set afire. oh, d~, my heart wails a ululation as deep and slow as the very earth's rumblings today; i cannot separate this sorrow from the immense, unstoppable river of all humanity's woe. jeremy and jason's deaths were large rooms in my house burning down; grandad's exit is fully a third of my foundation rattled loose and crumbled beneath me. i don't know where to stand. i haven't been able to tell anyone about this, outside my housemates i mean, who were there when i found out. it's like i don't know how to say it. i don't know how to say "my grandad's dead" without it sounding small and insignificant, without belittling the enormity of its impact on me, without making it sound like just another body has passed from the earth instead of one of its titans. grief is a growling like no other hunger. i feel like a goddamned seive, full of holes, my love and perpectives and reasons for actively living, draining and changing, eroding down to nothing so that i might have room to rebuild them. ...at least, that's how i'm dealing this year. today, though...
today my bones cry.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Death? This is Doxy...
Every now and again, I am drawn along a necrophilic path of curiosity that never fails to uncover the most amazing observations of humans' relationships with Death. The woman to the left is from the Capuchin catacombs in Palermo, Italy. I have as yet been unsuccessful in gathering any other information about her. The Capuchin tombs are listed, along with the Sedlec Ossuary in Czechoslovakia, the necropolis of North Ossetia, and the burial sites of the Tana Toraja in Sulawesi, in a little article on humankind's most impressive extant tombs.Further down this morning's path of beautifully confrontational mortality, please behold Kittiwat Unarrom, an artist who absolutely caramelizes my little bread baker's heart. In his shop in Ratchamburi, Thailand, he fashions the most heart-stoppingly realistic representations of (bits of) human bodies...out of bread. I read a blurb about him in Juxtapoz several years ago and only yesterday found this little video of the gentleman working in his shop. It's fuckin awesome.
Uhmmm, lessee...more dead stuff...
Yes, of course! The inimitable Sarina Brewer of Custom Creature Taxidermy has stitched together the most enchanting little capricorn in the whole wide world (and it's even blue!). Ms. Brewer's a naturalist with what appears to be a deep reverance for life, beginning to end. She deals with death by honoring the already-dead (roadkill, etc.) with beauty and immortality. I totally have a crush on this woman for both her aesthetics and her pragmatism; would that more people could see like she sees.
Another amazing artist in the necrophilic realm (and another girl, oh my palpitating heart!) is the taxidermist of A Case of Curiosities. She's done some chimerical physical illustrations of 18th and 19th century Russian, French, and German fairy tales. ...I'm talking real kittens in princess dresses here. Secondly, she's got a really lovely piece on exhibiting human corpses (mummified or taxidermied) and its longlived status as social taboo.
Yeah...,
Yeah, Death has been on my mind again, as she is during life-changing and -challenging spaces. I'm getting married, and so it is perfectly natural that my preternatural obsession with our inevitable quietus should resurface now, now, now.
My awe-inspiring brother D~ and I were recently discussing awareness as it applies to personal mortality. Knowing, or at least being pretty goddamned sure that we will eventually die, we agree that it behooves us to be as aware as mortally possible up through the very last moments of our lives, to be awake, in the most naturally esoteric sense, down to our very last inch. I have, of course, been reading about this awareness stuff through my whole life, through teachings of christ/buddha/mohammed, and etc. However, all my efforts at willful awareness, through meditation and the like, have proven pretty fruitless. The only times I have been really, truly in my skin, in my every breath, in whatever I have that feels like a living soul, are times when I have deliberately put myself in the way of Death:
Skydiving. Cliff-jumping. Formerly ingesting and insulflating massive quantities of potentially mortally harmful chemicals. It's like...
It's kinda like doing psychomimetic substances, specifically organic ones. Mushrooms, for example, always make me hyper-aware of beauty. When I'm up for a fungal, kaleidoscopic afternoon, colors seem brighter, more vivid, more like themselves. Ditto all organic shapes, smells, textures, tastes, and on and on. They help me remember how the world felt when I was a little, little girl. Y'know, back when I knew everything was made of magic way, way older than god.
Lovely as hallucinogens are...well, frankly, hallucinogens are tools, are means to an end. They are a cut-to-the-chase way to kick my brain out of its entanglement in the short-sighted day-to-day quagmire that we pass off as Reality with a capital 'R'. Visionary plants are not solely for recreation; they are not toys. They are keys to the doors in our own perceptions, our own realities. I take, have sporadically taken for years, mushrooms (and their organic cousins) to show my brain what it feels like to be open. 'Cause, y'know...sometimes I forget. The goal, though, the goal is to eventually be at a point where I can see Beauty for what it is all the time, without any additional help from the plant kingdom.
And it works.
Not quite like LSD does; I don't have uncontrollable flashbacks or disorientation. I don't suddenly see giant dahlias in my sautee pans or hear the cats talking to me (they do that all the time, anyway). It's way gentler than that.
I just perceive more. I actually notice season changes, even the super-subtle ones to be found here in the subtropics. I am much more prone to stop and smell the frangipani than I was before taking mushrooms. I observe and appreciate life. I know that the reward for occasionally sitting and watching the daily drama that takes place among the tiny anole lizards in my yard will far outweigh the "lost" time I could've spent doing something more industrially productive. I remember that this stuff, the unending performance of all living things, is actually important, each timeless moment of it, for reasons that are prohibitively difficult to articulate to the consumer-minded. And, difficult to explain or not, I am a hell of a lot wealthier for it.
So, back to the Death thing, I like to do stuff like skydive and cliff-jump and whatnot because these also function as tools to help my brain learn how it feels to be really, really present. While circling up and up and up in a little Cessna just built for jumping out of, Death is sitting, in all but physical form, right next to me, thigh to thigh. And lordy, is that girl grinnin! I've gotta be cool, gotta be calm so I don't do something stupid and panic-driven that might endanger myself or the pilot or the jumpmaster. Thus, it behooves me to look over at Death, acknowledge that she's got a job to do and know that I cannot stand in her way if it's my time, then just grin at her sweet and sideways, and give her a little flirtatious wink that says, "See ya at the bottom, baby; I'm goin for a ride!"
It seems to me that...well, that Death likes to give her blessing if you approach her humbly and mischeviously like that, y'know? And when I jump? Once I have come to that understanding with Death? I have absolutely nothing to worry about. Nothin. No future. No past. No grocery lists or social obligations. For all I know, I may be dead in a couple of minutes, and these sky-high, spellbound moments may be my last; I am sure as hell gonna live 'em. Peacefully. Thankfully. Joyously.
I will be Here.
Death is Birth is Death is Birth. Ain't nothin to be afraid of. In fact, I'm invitin 'em to my weddin. To all the events of my life, great and small.
All of the people I mentioned above?---the baker, the churchmen, the taxidermists and the preservationists?---all of them are working with their chosen charges in ways that pose a kind of anathema to our whitebread, plasticene, fear-based, UStian ideals concerning mortality and our relationships to Life and Death. In doing so, they absolutely honor us by gently, beautifully showing us what we fear to see: the immutable frailty of Life, and our heartbreaking, heartswelling connection to every single aspect of it.
How fuckin gracious and aware is that?
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