He was back from Vietnam before Christmas that year. A Marine. His smile was rictus-like. That is, his teeth were clenched and his jaw muscles tight, so that the smile, if that was what it was, appeared sinister. He moved awkwardly, talked haltingly.
His father gave him a membership to the Elks Club as a Christmas present.
“The Elks Club : Charity – Justice – Brotherly Love – and Fidelity; to promote the welfare and enhance the happiness of its members; to quicken the spirit of American patriotism…”
What bull shit.
The Beatle’s Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band was released. It was the winter and Christmas of 1967. Strawberry Fields Forever.
“July 28, 1967: A UPI (United Press International) story on the front page of the StarNews reported that in the previous week 164 Americans had been killed in Vietnam and 1,146 wounded. That put the U.S. death toll in the war at 12,316 with 73,925 wounded and 681 Americans listed as missing or captured. The article also gave the previous day’s toll, almost as if it were reporting sports scores. On July 27, 1967, the Department of Defense reported that 11 Americans had been killed and 42 wounded, all from mortar attacks by Viet Cong guerrillas, and from a new rocket that could accurately hit targets six miles away.”
And the young man, just back from this grisly war, was given a membership to the Elks Club. To quicken his spirit.
And we listened to With a Little Help from My Friends.
With his sister, we spent the next summer in Yakima working. When we left the motel room each day, he placed invisible tape on drawers, around doors, on suitcases. He checked in the evening to see if anything had been opened while we were gone.
He rented an army jeep and carried his pistol as we drove up and down dusty, barren hills in the valley. He carried his pistol. He taught me to shoot it.
Back in Seattle, one day, he was oiling the bottom of a cast iron skillet. He hand moved round and round inside the pan. Then, when I came close enough, he put the oiled cloth on my face and moved it round and round. The same motion. The same gesture.
When we were alone in our house on Greenlake one night, sitting in front of a big window that overlooked the lake, he grabbed one of my hands and put it on his crotch over his jeans. He held it there and told me what he saw hovering over the lake. Apparitions. Things or beings I could not see. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
He slept with pistol under his pillow.
His V.A. doctor called it schizophrenia. He was given pills. He had his own medicine cabinet full of drugs.
His parents called it a phase.
One night, he locked the doors of the family cabin we frequented. His sister was out walking. He told me I’d have to choose between him and her. He wouldn’t let me go. Somehow, we all slept there. Even so.
He paced all night long. He paced all night long. He paced.
He reenlisted in the Marines when he failed to be admitted to Seattle Police force.
One morning his sister came to the cabin, the cabin where he had been living, the same cabin he had locked against her, the cabin his parents owned, She came to take him to his bus to go back to the Marine base.
She found him hanging from a rafter, under the round woven-reed basket boat he had shipped home from Vietnam.
I helped his sister’s husband clean up the cabin the next day. We had to remove every trace. Nobody would want to see that. The rope was still hanging from the rafter. There were dozens of cigarette butts on the grate in the fireplace. I imagined him pacing all night long. Smoking and pacing. Pacing some more. And finally deciding to die.
In the bathroom was a slip of paper where he had kept track of his daily weigh-ins. Evidence of him was everywhere.
He knew she would find him.
…
He wasn’t altogether gone.
Months later, some work friends and I spent a weekend at the cabin. I didn’t tell them what had happened there or that we were the first to use it since.
On the last night of our retreat, we invited his sister and her husband for dinner.
After a fine meal, we sat around a large table and oddly our conversation turned to interests in divination. We set up for a game with a pendulum made of a needle. We passed the needle around the table and asked questions to the person with the needle while another person noted answers on a grid the needle holder could not see. We had some astounding results early on. One person was able to retrieve a driver’s license number imprinted on a card held out of sight by yet another person.
Then the needle was passed to the sister.
The temperature in the room changed. We all felt it. Still, only three of us in the room knew what had happened there.
The sister held the needle and the nature of the asks changed…my friends began to pose questions as if addressing a person. After a series of (to me) chilling exchanges (using still the grid hidden from the sister), someone asked the “being” for its name.
The sister’s spouse and I were side by side and could see the grid. The sister was deep in concentration as she was asked to spell the name.
The first three letters spelled the name of her deceased brother.
The spouse and I looked at each other and without a word, tipped the table over.
We did not let the game continue.
My friends were outraged.
I could not tell them why we stopped. I never did tell them why we stopped.
We stopped because he was still in the cabin or still inhabiting us. We could not let it be so.
For many years, I saw him in crowds, in streets, in stores. It wasn’t him, of course.
I’m a bit early with my remembering of Mother’s passing. It was 2009, March 2. In October of that year, close friends Karen James and Candace Sweet accompanied me on a road trip to New Mexico. Mother loved New Mexico and wanted her ashes to be scattered there. Mother was in in the back seat of my red CRV. She was in a Mrs. Pulsifer basket. We could easily talk to her as we drove down the Columbia, through Oregon, through Boise and into the Southwest.
We rented a mobile home that belonged to my friends Rose and Eugene Vigil. It was near Taos. We visited them in their weaving studio and I ended up purchasing one of Eugene’s large blankets. It is on my wall near my loom. I see it every day.
We visited Carpio Bernal Watercrow, a Taos pueblo artist who was a friend of Karen’s and a friend of Bruce Subiyay Miller. They had been in La Mama Native American Theatre Ensemble together. Carpio sang a song for Bruce. He showed us a photo of him with Helen Mirren, published in her new autobiography and signed to him by her. They had done theatre together. He also instructed us in the way to treat mother’s farewell. He gave us feathers to place on her altar and said to put three of her favorite foods on the altar. Easy. Chicken gizzards, glazed donuts and sopapillas.
We traveled above Truchas, past mother’s favorite weaver, Cordova. Karen and Candace built the altar on a blanket we had with us. I tossed the ashes into a mountain stream..one that would carry her down to the Rio Grande and, eventually, to distant oceans. I sang. I think it was a 1940s song…With Someone Like You..something she liked. I know my arms were covered with mother’s ashes.
That night, Candace guided me on a journey, into an altered state. Karen stayed in a back room, door closed. I cried and screamed and fell to the floor and called out, “haven’t I done enough?” I don’t know how long I was gone. But I finally got up and opened the door to look at the sky.
Sage, the half coyote neighbor dog we had befriended, stood at the door step and spoke English to me. I said, not now, I’ve had enough for one night. Good Sage.
The best road trip of my life. Here are a few photos.Karen’s birthday is the 27 of February. So these next few weeks are full of sacred rememberings
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Photographs: Dr. Louanna Pettay (above) and Lillith in McArthur, Ohio visiting Aunt Dorothy
PART I
Mac
Alpine ‘s Brigadoon MacTavish was a registered AKC Scottie dog, born in Beavercreek, Ohio. I had recently seen Brigadoon on stage in Dayton, hence the name. He was a tiny brindle fellow when I got him…me probably 6th grade. He was adorable. My grandmother put Chanel number 5 on his tongue to help “sweeten” his breath. There was nothing wrong with his breath. She may have been poisoning him. They were not pet-liking women, my mother and grandmother. Dogs kind okay. Cats absolutely not. They suck babies breaths…and do more horrible things I learned about much later. You don’t need to know.
Mac had to sleep in the garage. Not nice. I fed him sweetened condensed milk and some kind of calcium to help stiffen his ears. He had clipped ears, taped to a tongue depresser. I would be horrified by this today. He didn’t live long. I was very careful, but my foolish mother opened the garage door one morning before I was up. He ran out and straight onto Hanes Road. I heard the brakes and the screams. I held him and sobbed all the way to the vet. He did not live. I never forgave. I remember vowing never to love any creature so fiercely again. It hurt too much. I soon began reading existential texts and writing dark poetry. I was one of those kids teachers should keep an eye on.
Beagles
Betsy Diffendal and I lived in an upstairs apartment in an old house in Columbus (right off State Street and across from campus. It was next door to a John Birch Society bookstore.) while still undergrad students at Ohio State. It was a good place to live. After my cousin (who thought she was Holly Golightly and decorated with bentwood chairs and Tiffany lamps) moved from downstairs, a hot sub place moved in. I would study late then run downstairs for a hot sub. I had a horse hair mattress. It came with the place. My cousin told me I had no taste (I had never cultivated taste) but offered to teach several of us how to eat artichokes. We’d never seen one. She had gone to a private school. I had a series of roommates before Betsy. One had a French boyfriend named Jacques who often slept over. Another one was from Hawaii and worked at a dancer at Columbus’ Polynesian restaurant. She danced when smoking drinks in pineapple mugs were served to customers. Sometimes when I came home between classes, she was dancing while a circle of boys were sitting on the floor in adoration or ….. She wouldn’t let me cook. Because she thought I couldn’t. Sometimes she kicked doors open when she was serving a tray of food. She was very scary. She left and I had a big phone bill to pay. All calls to Hawaii. Betsy and I got a couple of Beagle puppies and kept them in a gated yard attached to the house. They were stolen within a couple of weeks.
Lilith
Still at Ohio State and same apartment, our professor, physical anthropologist, Luanna Pettay was a great character with a BMW convertible sports car and a red Doberman with unclipped ears. I liked her because in my first physical anthro class with her, she had me pegged for an upper paleolithic left over. All these years later, I know she was correct. I have a good portion of Neanderthal DNA. What did she see?
Her Doberman was named Sam.
Betsy and I often cleaned her house located somewhere north of campus. After the cleaning, she grilled huge T Bone steaks for us…in addition to the cash. A black Doberman named Lilith needed a new home and Dr. Pettay asked if we would keep Lilith at our apartment until she was ready to be bred with Sam. We agreed. Lilith bit various people. She bit Sam. We tried and tried to breed them. Then one day when we were trying to breed them in the apartment, my friend Farouza Abdul Haq dropped by. She was a beautiful woman and a student. She, of course, wore gorgeous saris. She saw what we were trying to do and said we were simply silly. She grabbed both dogs and slammed them together..into the correct position. That was that. It took a beautiful woman in a sari to make this pregnancy.
Lillith was not easy, ever. The puppies required vet help to be born. The vet was bitten in the crotch. The puppies were all red, not desirable scary scary-looking Dobermans like Lillith. The bills from the vet were enormous, and then nobody wanted the pups. I tried to get them in a seeing-eye dog program. They were rejected. I think Dr. Pettay had thought to make money. But the pups grew and ate and Sam and Lillith ate and it was a nightmare. Betsy and I graduated and went off to our separate graduate schools. I never knew what happened after we left Columbus.
History with Dogs
Part II
Draft
Uncle Ray’s Hunting Hounds
Mr. Boo: Springer. Grandma Pat’s dog. Lived in Wellston, Ohio. A lovely black and white field dog. Smarter than the Patterson men when it came to hunting. Ofter disappointed by their lack of attention to prey. Brain went to Ohio State University upon his death.
Fleasy: The Hendershots of Wellston’s dog. Visits to their home, though pleasant, resulted in legs covered with flea bites.
Kinky: A mystic, abandoned on Hood Canal in Union. Fed by Lud in the McCleary House until we adopted him. Full breed standard poodle. Smarter than most but sometimes riddled with guilt over attempts to control forbidden behaviors.
Fred: Mixed breed son of Kinky. Known for eating whole turkey carcasses and large blocks of cheese. Moved on after a relationship split. He chose the other woman.
Bailey: Cocker. known for outstanding intelligence and athleticism. A very good dog who could play hide and seek games and catch balls on second or third bounces. Good predictive ability. Brilliant swimmer.
Cosmo: Springer. known for his books, Conversations with the Inner Dog and Koans for the Inner Dog. Contemplative. A very good buddy dog.
Apple
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Odetta at Maxine Mimms’ 80th birthday party (De Danaan)
Maxine Mimms on Oyster Bay, 2010 (De Danaan)
ODETTA and MAXINE
by LLyn De Danaan
“Nearly three decades following the launch of her career in folk song, in 1982 Odetta (born Odetta Holmes, 1930-2008) was teaching a music course as an artist-in-residence at Evergreen State College in Washington. When an interviewer asked about the content of her course, Odetta replied that her students ‘don’t have a lot of reading or assignments or papers to do. What we’re doing is confronting the biggest dragon in our world, ourselves. We’re battling that feeling our world, our social system has taught us—that if we really display or show ourselves, nobody would like us.’ What may at first seem like a saccharine reply in fact constitutes the defining journey of Odetta’s life as a folklorist, artist and activist. Hers is a story of forging an individual identity as an empowered black woman performer at a time when she felt immense pressure to fade into invisibility. Self-consciousness and rage marked the beginning of Odetta’s career, a ‘beast’ inside which she consoled through a full-throated entry into an emerging folk music revival.“
Excerpt: Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict
Maxine Mimms has been a friend since the late 1960s and a neighbor since the mid 1970s. One day, years ago, I asked to talk with her about her friend Odetta. We did a taped interview. There is a lot published about Odetta’s public life, her music, her contribution to social justice movements and activism. I wanted a little glimpse of the private Odetta. Maxine knew her well and traveled with her. She agreed to a conversation.
I: Let’s talk about Odetta. Did you sit around and talk like this? The way we do?
N: Yes.
I: What did you do?
N: Well, the thing that … You know, I was thinking when you called me and said that. What is the informal part of Odetta that I want the world to read about because they know the formal part. But Odetta was a full-grown chronologically mature woman and a total child in the informal thing. Just an innocent … she could pick up. She looooooooooved beauty. You are driving along the highway, and she shrieks “Stop!” You think there is a serious thing occurring, and that you are going to have to turn off to get to the medic … “Look at that gorgeous dandelion coming out of all of those brown leaves.” And you really want to curse her out because you’ve almost endangered your life to stop.
Actually, she had very delicate, delicate movement of her hands. It was … You know when babies lift their hands for you to hold them up, when Odetta picked up a leaf or a flower, it was always almost like a baby, just seeing something for the first time. She was totally, absolutely the most gifted professional artist with the innocence of the environment and truly loved the environment.
So, when she would sing about the environment or the songs about people, she actually became that. When I met Odetta, she had not she did not sing with her eyes open because she … the pain of looking at the audience was too great. Her music was so much inside of her navel, inside of her intestines that she couldn’t open her eyes like most artists and just relate to the audience.
She related to the guitar, and the way she sat in the chair, her feet … I never knew this until I took pilates, but her feet were always flat on the floor. She said Alberta Hunter taught her that. She said Alberta Hunter taught her how to keep her feet flat on the floor and be in tune with nature. Now this sounds so crazy. Here you are in a place made out of wood or cement or something, but your feet are flat on the floor to be in tune with it.
And when I took pilates, I thought she was talking about balance. I didn’t know what she was talking about. She was talking about singing not only with her mouth, but with her spine. That’s when I discovered who Odetta was. One of the reasons she was so great is that she sang with her mouth, her heart and her spine. She incorporated all these levels of her being, which brought you, the person that’s listening into their five senses. Odetta’s music just didn’t reach the ear, she was aesthetically gorgeous. That’s why she came out with the little thing hanging … that’s why she had a natural. She was the first black woman in the country to wear what we call a natural, that is her hair not pressed. Years ago, they used to call it “You’ve got an Odetta.”
I: Oh, really!
N: Long before it was a natural. You’ve got an Odetta. And it’s ah ha ha … because Odetta came forth to us with this dark skin. Remember now, our society had dealt with the Billie Holiday female. That’s coffee-looking, but caramel-looking and had dealt with the mixed-looking Lena Horne So when Odetta came out strumming a guitar and a voice that had three to four octaves that you could hear, which was actually opera. Now we call it folk music, but it really is opera in several different acts, with a prologue and epilogue and all that. That’s who Odetta introduced to us. But, Llyn, she introduced the way to taste … to see the music, taste the music, smell the music, hear the music and feel the music. All five senses were engaged when you listen to her in a formal thing.
But having lived with her, having been around her, night and day in and day out, what you saw on the stage when she went home, she would breathe and exhale and breathe. I would be with Odetta when her concert was over at 11, and I’ve seen it take from 11 to almost 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning for her to what I would call “come out of it” or come down. And her coming down was simply through breathing. It was the most amazing thing I have ever experienced in my life.
Now, I’ve been around a lot of artists, but hers was the most, hers was the longest experience of coming out of it and coming down than any of the other artists I’ve met, and I didn’t realize until I … really maybe until the last time I saw her, which was my 80th. (Referring to her own 80th birthday in 2007) I didn’t realize that because folk … I thought Odetta is a folk singer. I didn’t realize that what … that the opera training that she had … she was a storyteller, which is about the folk, but she made you, through the rhythm of these lyrics, feel the experience. So when she went home (from a performance), she had to leave Ireland to come home to her own house, she had to leave the hills of West Virginia, she had to leave everywhere.
So when she went home to her home in Central Park in New York, she had to actually come home, go upstairs in New York and get on whatever psychological plane or state or whatever she had and come home. It was something to watch. Sometimes, she would cry, and there was … I didn’t know the reason. When I first was around, I said, “What’s the matter?” And she would just do like this … “There’s nothing the matter, Maxine.” (Maxine moves her hands)
I: Just wave her hands at you?
N: Yeah, she would just wave her hands. “Shut up.” Because there was nothing as painful as but she just left Ireland. She just left … She just finished peeling potatoes. Or she just finished with the hammer. She just finished getting on the ship of Amazing Grace. She just finished bringing the slaves. She just finished delivering a shipload of slaves. And got them off. Every formal presentation was experienced when she got back to the hotel room by decompressing. Ah, I never thought of that … that word, by “decompressing.”
Before her concerts, she would always drink black coffee with lemon in it. It is the nastiest tasting stuff I have ever experienced in my life. They had to have that in the room. I mean Ohhh. And then, I decided once she died, I wanted to taste it. It is … now to her it was something like a contrast in terms of the sourness of the lemon, and I guess the strongness of the coffee. I don’t know but I imagine she needed that just like a …
I: Caffeine.
N: It had to have, but the lemons?
I: For her throat, maybe? It’s an interesting combination. I know a lot of people have tea or just honey and lemon in warm water before singing.
N: She had black coffee and lemon, and Llyn, at 80 years old, her voice… and Maya Angelou and I talked about it…. her voice was still as strong as it was at 19. At her memorial, Harry Belafonte talked about that voice that he discovered way back when he discovered Odetta … He talked about it. A lot of people have talked, since she’s died, since her death about how that girl kept that same voice. But I watched her breathing. Her breathing … her exhaling and inhaling was like something I had never experienced before in my life. She took long … oh, now I just thought of this … I really believe when Odetta got back to the hotel room. I really believe that what I experienced was a long-term experience of some degree of meditation that I didn’t know anything about. Because her breathing was just profound. She could actually breathe.
What killed her, I believe, was her inability to breath … this is stupid … when she got to the hospital because a lot of people talk about that’s all she tried to do. She said, “If I could just get a good strong breath.” She really believed in whatever the breathing was. Experiences. And somebody had … Her feet flat on the floor. She believed in that. That’s why she sat on the edge. She always sat with a stool, a round stool, and she sat on the edge of that stool with feet on the floor when she sang. It’s almost like a sitting/standing position. I don’t know whether you can …
I: I do understand what you’re saying.
N: Well, she kept her spine … Her singing was from her heart, her mouth and her spine. I have heard her even say that. I’ve got to keep my spine straight. She walked like a horse, you know. She walked like a horse. She took long steps, long … walking with her in New York was a very painful thing for me because I’m looking in the stores and everything, and she’s saying, “Come on.” And I’m, you know, I took five steps to her one. She walked like a thoroughbred, I mean, a horse.
I: She was tall.
N: Yeah, but she stretched her legs.
I: She stretched out when she walked.
N: She stretched out when she walked. And she could stretch out notes too. I didn’t know that very much about the spine, but I have heard her talk, you know. Her sitting was always exaggerated to me. But she made a big deal out of sitting tall and singing tall. She talked about singing tall and singing straight and singing from the heart, singing from the spine, and singing … I don’t think I have ever heard Odetta talk about singing from the diaphragm. I thought maybe she learned something about the spine, and I thought we did not have a diaphragm because everyone I knew talked about singing from the diaphragm and breathing … she talked about her spine. I don’t know where that came from other than she believed … I believe that the sound came from back here and in through here or something, and she always kept herself expansive. I don’t know that much … I never could get that much.
It took her a long time to cook because she … I remember one time, she said she was going to fix me a dinner. I’ll never do that again. I have never done it since then. She went to the store. She loved going to the store, but she bought stuff that she really didn’t use. She just … because it was pretty. “Look at that beautifu,l beautiful squash.” And beside the squash would be a big gorgeous purple something, and she’d say. “Oh, I want to get that. Isn’t that beautiful?” And she’d put the two things together, the yellow squash and the purple something and then a cabbage and that, and she saw the beauty of that. She didn’t use it. She just bought it. She told me. She said, “I want to fix you … “ Oh God, Llyn, she said, “I want to fix you … Oh, I am going to get a Cornish game hen, and I’m going to …”
Well, a Cornish game hen is small, and she seasoned that thing in the kitchen with a little piece of garlic this and a little piece of purple that and green this. I think she told me at 10 that morning. She wanted to make sure that I had something beautiful. It was 8, 9 ‘o clock in the evening before she put that Cornish game hen in the stove. After she had petted it and decorated it and talked about its wonderful skin and apologized to it for having been killed for us to gobble up.
When she finished, I could have ordered a pizza and been through with it and everything. And to have meal with her was like going to a … to have a meal with her was like touring a foreign country. She went down each item on the menu and talked about its coloration. You know, what structure the spinach salad had, how the eggs were scraped or where the eggs were sliced. Whether the eggs were whipped with a fork or whipped with a beater. Never, ever allow your eggs to be whipped just with a beater. Always use a fork. Don’t ask me why, but we would go through this. So ordering breakfast was an experience.
Everything with Odetta was an experience, not just a something. You know what I am saying. You go to breakfast. You’re going to be there until lunch, not with eating, but just with talking about the menu, each category. When the food got there, she would spend time talking about where the rice came from, the brown rice out of this part of China. All levels of China didn’t have the same kind of brown rice. Odetta was folk music, if I can put it like that. Odetta was opera. Odetta was not the singer of these. She was it. Believe you me, Llyn, she was it. She could tire you out because her brilliance in terms of her craft, if I can use that word, was so intimate and profound. I will use Amazing Grace. One time we were in Canada, in a very small town up in Nova Scotia? Am I right? (Ed. Note: Maxine said Newfoundland here, but later corrected it.)
I: Um hum.
N: Way up, and there was a church, historic church, a little town where people didn’t drive for the concert. They kind of walked, and it was extremely wonderful. I was … my limited knowledge, I just felt like I was in the chalet. Okay? Odetta went in, and she just … everybody in there was white, except the two of us, and she came out, Llyn, and all of these white white white people … I’m sure they were the 1960s type because the women had allowed their hair to grow. Nobody manicured like grass. Nobody. Everybody looked … and the hospitality was extreme.
You know what I mean. It was a welcoming, which put Odetta into her world that she likes to go into. So she became a part of that 1960s type reunion, you know. And she just sang, and I’ll never forget, Amazing Grace. She slowed it down. Everybody in the audience … and she said, “Sing with me.” They sang with her, and she wanted to do, in her head, I could just cry thinking about this. What she did, Llyn. Here’s an audience women, men, all remembering something of whatever they were remembering, Amazing Grace. They harmonized. This is just … with nothing but the guitar and this crowd of people, with this gorgeous looking queen type woman, sitting on this stool.
And Llyn, at the end, she … the room just went silent. Nobody was directing. The room went silent, and Odetta just … um … hit that final note like a benediction. We must have stayed in there after the close of the concert for umpteen hours. It was the most releasing experience that I have ever experienced in my life, and I looked up, and she couldn’t move. Nobody in the audience could move. I didn’t move because I didn’t know whether to throw up or cry. I didn’t know what to do because you don’t. The emotions are so great.
Her intimate concerts were the greatest you could see. The large auditorium concerts obviously were not as intimate. She did things with her voice when the crowd was two hundred to five hundred very different than she did with three thousand and ten thousand. On the three thousand and ten thousand type audience, she was on the stage, and she carried it, but you could hear her having to carry it. The two hundred to five hundred, she sang to each individual.
I: Hmm.
N: Now that’s stupid, isn’t it?
I: No. Nothing is stupid. (Short silence) Do you need a glass of water?
N: No, I’m just trying to think of how to give you that language. The smaller the crowd, the more intimate the story. And she did things. I’ve heard her … I heard 26 million versions of Amazing Grace.
I: Yeah. Depending upon …
N: The audience. The size. The size. Her music was about intimacy. Her delivery was about, “How intimate can I get with you with the story? Can I get you to see the people with the potatoes? By the way, can I get you to help me peel this potato?” Llyn, that’s how close it was. And you could feel the potato farmers. You could feel the miners in West Virginia. You actually went in the mine with them, and you got so pissed because you didn’t want another mine explosion when she finished. And when she did On Top of Old Smoky, “all covered with snow,” you actually could see the scene the sex scene, the way she handled it. Home on the Range, I’ve heard her do many versions of that. When she did Home on the Range, “where the buffalo roam” and when she would get to “buffalo,” something she would do with the guitar to let you know, with global warming, the buffalo is disappearing, and she’d “Ha ha ha ha.” And when you finished, you’d gotten, you’d want to sign up to do something with the people that didn’t understand climate change or she made you understand the ignorance in the society when they didn’t understand Home on the Range.
Rock-a-Bye Baby on the Treetop. I’ve heard one thousand versions of that. “When the wind blows, the cradle will rock. When the bough breaks”… and she would look around, “the cradle will fall. Down will come baby, cradle and all.” The collapse of all of our images that we have held artificially, and now that I’ve been talking to you, including the concept of retirement, what Rock-a-by Baby on the Treetop, she would take our nursery rhymes and make us see what we had bought into, and how lots of them would cause us to be unkind to each other and be judgmental, and the disappearance of these things through a vocabulary of inexperience.
Folk music to her was a way of life. I mean it wasn’t the stage, and she went home, and she wasn’t on the stage. She stayed permanently on the stage, 24 hours a day. She was always with the vocabulary. Is that right? Yes. She was always with the language of her craft. Day in and day out. And it was only through breathing that she would pull herself away from a previous … Isn’t that interesting?
I: Let’s take a pause. Take a little pause.
N: Isn’t that interesting. Just talking about her. She was a wonderful person.
I: I know. Let’s just take a little pause. Let me make sure. I am taking a lot of notes because I do not trust …
N: Well, talk to me because, is my vocabulary okay because I’m trying to describe her?
I: Your vocabulary is splendid. No, it’s everything you’re saying is absolutely splendid. It’s wonderful.
N: It’s hard to talk about her because she was something. Just being with her …
I: Now we are recording again. Yes.
N: Do you want to turn it off or do you want to do now?
I: Oh, no I want to keep going if you’re okay with keeping going? Did you want to take a drink or anything?
N: Yeah, why don’t we … No, we can keep going. You want to ask me something?
I: Well, yeah. Now I’d like to because it was kind of right where you left off. I mean you talked about living with her, being there in the hotel when she comes back from a performance, traveling with her. Maybe you could start a little bit in the beginning. How you got to know her, where you first met each other? You know, what period? What time periods we are talking about?
N: I met her long before she came to Evergreen, but I didn’t know her. I met her at … where was it? Somewhere in San Francisco at some sort of coffee house. I just went to see her. She and Nina Simone were doing something. I went down with Marie Fielder, and I went down to some little coffee houses. Marie lived in Berkeley.
I: That’s right. I remember where Marie lived.
N: Marie lived in Berkeley, and she said, “You’ve got to come over and see Nina Simone.” Well, Odetta was the lead for Nina, and we were back to the Berkley-San Francisco time. That period was a period when you were just getting ready to … Maybe I’m … I hope I am right about this … when you had … coffee houses were just becoming popular, the introduction of different kinds …
I: Are we in the 1960s or ’70s?
N: 60’s.
I: We’re talking about the 1960s. Sometime in the 1960s. Coffee house. Well, that’s the period when the first Berkeley Folk Festivals are late ‘50s and early ’60s.
N: Well, Marie … I went down … Marie and I were consulting a great deal at that time, and Marie would come up here, and I would go down there. And we went over, and we were introduced to her. And she was gracious but distant. And that’s fine. Marie was a real gorgeous … Marie looked just like Lena Horne, and a very outgoing type person. I just … I wasn’t paying that much attention to anything but education at that time. (Ed. Note: that was 1967 according to later comments.)
And then, Evergreen wanted her. Evergreen State College in Olympia wanted her. And I can’t remember the year, but Betsy (Elizabeth Diffendal, faculty at Evergreen) said … Betsy loved her music from the ’60s.
I: I know that.
N: She said, “Would you pick her up at the airport?” I said, “I’d be glad to.” And the rest is history. (Ed. Note: that was 1982)
I: So this was before The Color Purple because I remember you went to some hotel with Odetta and a whole bunch of women to give support … to Walker. That was after …
N: Odetta, Toni Morrison … The movie came out (Ed. Note: 1985), and there was a lot of …
I: Yeah. Backlash.
N: Backlash. And we were invited to support Alice Walker. And that’s how I met all of them.
I. So she came to Evergreen…
N: Yes, and Maya (Angelou) was in town.
I: Maya was in town.
N: And we brought Odetta to Olympia. Maya was staying in a Tacoma hotel. I think it was the Sheraton, at that time.
I: So you all knew each other at that point?
N: Yeah. And we brought Odetta down here. And then …
I: Here, meaning to Olympia or to your house?
N: No. Odetta came to a hotel in Olympia. And Maya was speaking on the Tacoma campus. I picked Odetta up to come from here to hear Maya at the Tacoma campus. (long pause) And we went to Betsy’s house afterwards, and then Maya stayed for a couple more days in Tacoma, while Odetta negotiated her contract and space here. Evergreen had already gotten a house for her. I think when I think about it, I believe it was … I know Byron Youtz had a lot to do with negotiating the money, the house, the rental car and everything. He wanted to hear her badly, Odetta. Byron.
I: How long? Was she here the whole time? I wasn’t here that year, so she was …
N: A year.
I: She was here for a year? And that’s when Evergreen had “visiting artist” contracts that they put out, and I don’t know if anybody else was here on a visit that year. (Ed. Note: see below. There were two Artists in Residence at Evergreen in 1981-82, perhaps with very different contractual arrangements.)
N: She was the last one. She was the first and the last.
I: She was the first and the last?
N: She taught, and she gave a concert. A big concert in Washington Center. And while she was here, she was allowed to do her performances. That was one of the best contracts that anyone has ever done. We brought her in as an academic, and that’s when other faculty discovered that they could do their work and perform. And Odetta would do … would go away on Friday, do a concert Saturday, and be back for her class on Monday. The other people, by the way, that imitated that model in terms of artists in the United States was Sweet Honey in the Rock. All those women were academicians, and Odetta taught them how to do that by the way. Perform on Friday, perform on Saturday, catch a red eye special and be back on your job, wherever you had to be on Monday. That’s how women in the modern day could do their career jobs as well as remain performers. So now you see built into many many, many art departments, a performance piece as well as the academic
I have known her since about 1967.
I: That’s what I thought. So about ’67 would have been the coffee shop thing, and you had some kind of … Did you see her occasionally during that period?
N: … I would go to New York alone, and I would see Odetta at maybe a thing, but I never became close to her until the Evergreen piece.
I: Not close until after Evergreen.
N: I never … I always had a formal piece, and she always considered me her West Coast friend, but we never became the person that you travel with … I began to travel with her after Evergreen. I took some time off. I traveled with her, and I stayed …
I: So where did you go?
N: Canada …
I: That was … now you said “Newfoundland,” and I said, “Yes, but was it Nova Scotia?”
N: Nova Scotia.
I: It was Nova Scotia, wasn’t it, not Newfoundland?
N: Yeah. Nova Scotia. I went everywhere with her, California, all over Washington, wherever she performed, she would get a ticket for me, and I’d meet her. And then I would stay with her in her apartment in New York, and let’s see, I’m trying to think …
I: And she was … Tell me a little bit about her apartment. So she had a …
N: She lived across from Central Park on … I can’t even think of the avenue now.
I That doesn’t matter.
N: Anyway, 5th Avenue, I believe it was. All the way down to Central Park. And she was one of the few that bought an apartment in that place from a coop point of view. Whatever that meant in the New York area. I think Cicily Tyson and Miles Davis also bought because they didn’t live very from her … down the street from what I understand. She lived across from a park, and you could wake up in the morning and hear the children playing on the swings. And she stayed there until she died.
I: So, she had that when you first met her.
N: Yes.
I: She had that for a long time.
N: Forever. She was totally (pause) an activist. She was born that way, I believe. She came out of Alabama, but her life was New York. I mean her life was California and then New York. She loved New York. She was a private public person.
I: What do you mean by that?
N: Well, after the concerts, she would lock herself up and be in her house until three o’clock in the afternoon.
I: So she … It took her all that time to decompress, and then she slept until
N: She slept or sat and looked out the window. And her equipment check was always at four o’clock wherever she went. She would go to wherever the space was. She would be strong enough at three to get herself ready to go check at four, if she was going to perform that night. And in New York, she performed a lot at St. John’s.
I: How did she … Did she ever talk to you about how she met Alberta Hunter?
N: No, she didn’t, but back in the day, she …
I: That was an interesting thing because it sounds like she did some mentoring for …
N: Alberta Hunter did a lot of mentoring of a lot of the artists in that period, and she was … Oh, when we went to see … when Alberta came back on the scene in New York, Odetta and I went a number of times, and she would … Alberta would invite her up to sing with her, and they would do a duet or something. But Alberta was standing herself. She kept her feet flat on the floor from what I understand from Odetta, and so a lot of the artists imitated her in terms of being able to sing from their spines.
I: Yeah, her story is incredible, isn’t it?
N: Alberta’s. I’ve never known her story.
I: Well, she worked as a nurse for years. You know that story.
N: Go ahead.
I: Well, she … How was that? She sang. I should get that … I’ve got a book about her. My recollection is that she, of course, sang in the ’20s, and she was really well known, and she did all kinds of performance. Then at some point, she stopped and became, I think, a nurse and lied about her age so that she could get qualified or go back to school. I’ll work it out for you. So that’s when you talk about … when she came back on the scene. It was kind of like she was discovered doing this other work, and somebody said, “Alberta Hunter, why aren’t you singing?” So …
N: And brought her back.
I: Yeah, but for years, she was not in the musical world. She was doing …
N: Well, we went to see her, and she was a charming, charming person.
I: Oh, I love her. I had a bunch of her records.
N: Well, she influenced Odetta a lot.
I: I bet. Well she was incredible. She was … I mean she is just … I love her voice, and I love her music, and her voice changed considerably from the ’20s and ’30s. It was mainly richer and more robust in many ways.
N: Odetta’s voice stayed quite robust.
I: Yes, I agree.
N: I was shocked when she came here for my 80th that it was still as robust. I just couldn’t believe she could still do that level of Amazing Grace.
I: Now she came out of Alabama. Do you know about her? No you don’t know anything prior …
N: No. I know her sister very well. I will show you what her sister knitted for me, Jerilee. Her sister came to live with her. Just two of them. I never met the mother. I talked with the mother quite a bit on the phone.
I: When did she come to live with her?
N: The first part of the ’80s. Somewhere in the ’80s, and she died there. Jerilee, Odetta’s sister. About the ’80s, the ’70s or ’80s.
I: Oh, so she was living there in the Central Park apartment.
N: With Odetta.
I: With Odetta?
N: Uh huh, and she died there. It was just the two of them. And then when we went on that cruise, Odetta and I were roommates. Maya’s 75th. There’s a picture in there if you want to take a look at a copy of that.
I: Where?
N: On my piano.
I: Oh, good. Roommates on … that was Maya’s 75th.
N: Uh huh.
I: I remember because you had a little sign up on your door with your names on it. So, she … so you were traveling around, probably mostly through the ’80s and ’90s going to …
N: Well actually the ’80s. Heavy, heavy, heavy in the ’80s.
I: So, did she … you were traveling … sometimes in cars, or you were in the apartment or what have you? Did she like hum and sing to herself or as she’s walking around or was she looking at vegetables and cooking a chicken … Was she always kind of humming or singing, or was that …?
N: She had a spiritual outlet of a scream. It was the excitement of a child.
Oh ooo ah (slightly loud), like that. It could be in a store. It could be anywhere.
I: Oh, interesting.
N: Uh huh. She just … the excitement of discovery with Odetta was just something to behold, and it just so happened that with me being in education, it was never … it was always thrilling to see because I recognized what it was. It could have been disturbing to many other people.
I: (Laughter) Kind of like when you said that she’d say, “Stop the car.” She’s very …
N: I knew it was her discovery experience. She needed that outlet.
I: But she didn’t go around the house going (hums a few bars)? Not so much?
N: She may not have gone around the house doing it, but you could hear her in the middle of the night break into one of the songs that she hadn’t completed at her concert.
I: Ohhh!
N: And when you first heard it, you knew that there was … you thought … you didn’t know what it was. But if she hadn’t completed … or if she had … Okay, she never was concerned about her voice, but she was a fanatic about her equipment. She carried … I am exaggerating. She carried a suitcase of extra strings.
I: I understand that. Okay. Good. This is good. Extra strings. Did she use a pick, do you remember?
N: She used a pick.
I: Did she have like favorites or do you know anything about that?
N: She used a pick, and she used her favorites. It depended … Now that I am thinking about it, I really believe that I saw the larger the audience, the more the pick, the smaller the audience, the more use of the fingers.
I: Ah. That makes very good sense.
N: Now, I’ve been … now that’s me. I’m not … but I observed her so much, and the larger the audience, the more she could remove herself from the participation, and she picked. She stayed much more structured with the larger audience than she did with the intimate audience. The flexibility, the curtain calls, the response to the curtain calls. In the smaller audience, the response was many, many times for brand new songs. The larger audience many times, it was just a repeat or extension of the last song.
I: Okay. That’s interesting. Well, what about, so … Do you remember anything about her guitar, or anything she ever said about it, or how she treated it or whether it … ?
N: It was her baby. It was her child. She treated it like a … I mean, she cleaned it, and she was very protective of the way it traveled. She asked for special protection on airplanes…She always did a blessing over it. She always did a blessing over it. Let’s see if I remember her not ever …
I: Yeah. Think about, if you can picture where that guitar was like when you were traveling or in Nova Scotia in a car. Where was that guitar? Was it in a hard case?
N: A hard case.
I: Must have been in a hard case.
N: Hard traveling case.
I: Hard traveling case.
N: And I remember her babying it but not over babying it. It went in the back. It went in the trunk. It went on the back seat. But it was stood up. It was laid down in the trunk or stood up on the back seat on the floor. She did not allow other people to handle it… she did not allow other people to handle it. She handled it all the way up to … She handled everything with her guitar. And she always said, she can take anything but a technical malfunction. She couldn’t tolerate a technical malfunction.
I: Oh, yeah.
N: Strings broken or equipment going out. She would go crazy. Her own voice … I think she must have just … I think she trusted her voice tremendously because I never heard her saying, “Oh my God, I feel a cold coming on, and therefore I can’t.”
I: She could do anything with her voice.
N: I think she was just a fanatic when it came to technical … that’s what I am saying. She had 50,000 strings stored in her purse, her suitcase, overhead suitcase. I imagine in her bra, but she had her strings.
I: Yeah. Always ready with the strings. Yeah.
N: Oh gosh, yes. And I remember the microphone … Let’s see … she was sitting on the … she sits on the stool, and the microphone had to come right up to where the guitar was, and she very seldom readjusted the equipment. She would have an equipment check at four, and she never …
I: She didn’t need to do anything …
N: She didn’t do anything to the technical setup, but if it wasn’t right, she would not come out. They would have to get it right.
She never touched anything but her guitar. Once she got ready, once she got out of the car and got to her dressing room and went into her meditative state, which you couldn’t talk to her or nothing, and she knew where I was going to be seated, she went into another world, and she stayed in that world. I mean she stayed in … now her … she … Odetta is nothing like Maya. Maya can just talk to you … She could talk to you right up to the time and right after, but Odetta wouldn’t. She went into … she tranced out, and once I got to know her, I then knew why people said she was a distant person. She wasn’t distant, she just … It took her a long time to decompress, and when I found out she became what she was singing.
I: Yes, very clear.
N: I … You’re telling me.
I: What did … so she was living alone for a long time. Her sister died?
N: I don’t know when Jerilee died. I can’t remember. She’s always lived alone.
I: So, she was either alone or with her sister, or when you were visiting?
N: Yeah. That’s how she lived.
I: What did she have in this apartment? Can you remember?
N: It was a museum.
I: Her apartment was a museum? So …
N: Very delicate. Very spiritual museum. You don’t touch a pot, a plant, a bowl, a spoon. You just were there with the stories and history. She was deeply distant and deeply loved through that distance.
I So. Pictures on the wall? Paintings?
N: Paintings on the wall.
I: Can you remember any specific items that …
N: Baskets.
I: Baskets? Native American baskets.
N: Native American, African, Turkish, wherever she went or wherever she … People just sent stuff.
I: So, these are things that either people have given her, or when she was traveling, she would … and then she would just have them around. You are surrounded by really …
… A museum, and she knew where everything was. Everything [last word said in an emphatic whisper] Ev erything.
I: Did you ever hear her talk about her favorite singers or artists or …
N: Harry Belafonte. Abbey Lincoln. Abbey Lincoln and Harry Belafonte and … Nina Simone….… and Paul Robeson.
………
N: Those were her favorites.
Notes:
Linda Thornburg, filmmaker, was teaching at Evergreen State College while Odetta was a visiting artist. Odetta asked her to record one of her regional concerts. You can view Thornburg’s Odetta film at https://vimeo.com/139046240. The piece is called, 2 Odetta: Encore at Evergreen, 1982.
Note: Dale Soules, award-winning actor of stage and television, known for, among other recent works, Orange is the New Black, and filmmaker Bruce Baillie, launched an Artist-in-Residence Program at Evergreen during the 1981-82 academic year.
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They are foxed and grimy, so much so that they stick to my hands. Their creases and bent corners make them nearly impossible to shuffle. I manage. With my eyes closed, I slip my fingers into the middle of the pile and pull the Knight of Cups. Nothing surprising. The Knight slides out every morning except during the month of August. A familiar visitor now, I’d miss him if someone else were to show up. He is dressed in not-so-shiny armor, erect and peering at the golden goblet in his hand. There is a hint of a smirk on his face. The horse is not sleek but stout and thick-legged like an Irish Cob or Gypsy Tracker. One leg is lifted as if in mid-stride. Together, horse and rider present an elegant duo, capable and handsome. Getting the same card every day isn’t a magic trick. I know the feel of this deck so well I can be fairly certain I’ll draw the reading I want. Today, however, the card is reversed. An upside-down Knight of Cups represents a person who has trouble discerning truth from lies. I can’t think who’d be lying to me.
Dogs and cats and turtles don’t lie. I’m not gullible so even if someone tried to keep something from me, I’d see through the smokescreen. I wouldn’t be easily taken in. Most days I draw the card right side up. It means change is coming. When isn’t it? I’m always preparing. I exercise my body so I’ll be fit no matter what. I keep myself organized so I’ll know where everything is when it’s needed. I stay busy but am never mindlessly occupied. I choose activities that enhance my independence and chances of survival and over time I have created an autopoietic system. I possess what is required to live comfortably and all the elements in my environment cooperate in recreating themselves and maintaining a happy equilibrium. Brightly colored images of flowers and trees and sinuous vines and fairy tale villages adorn both the interior and exterior of my house. The eastern wall, the most expansive unbroken surface in the house, depicts the village and surrounding landscape of Saint-Marc de Cournoyer in Quebec. Only I would know that. There are seldom visitors so the mural is there to please me. The wizened, weather-worn boards of the building soaked up paint so quickly I had to apply several coats and sometimes altered the images as I worked. Thus the walls are as pentimenti. Some clever psychiatrist could peel back the layers and read my changing moods. Even the spigots, useless to me after the well was exhausted, and the sinks and work benches and chairs and tables are painted. My ceramic pots, made of the argillaceous earth from exposed banks on the nearest purple-grey massif, are glazed to resemble the work of the potters in Faenza. Some of the clay veins I dig are micaceous and the vessels I build and fire glitter in the sun without further treatment. To enhance the sparkle, I coat them with bright white quartz gathered from arroyos that criss-cross the flatlands below the mountains. I grind the quartz to a fine powder, apply that to the pots, then heat them in the kiln until the pulverized crystal vitrifies. Many of my first pots were meant to contain and store water, but now they are offered for sale in the nearest village or filled with long-stemmed dried weeds the color of scorched tree bark and set about the house as decoration. My handmade mugs and dinner plates are painted with care and style so when I dine, I see something exquisite. I take care in preparing my food and it is attractive in its own right, of course. But the thing upon which it is placed and from which it is eaten is handsome as well. What’s it like living here? It’s rather like passing the days on a carefully contrived stage set for a play called something like, “Eccentric Desert Rat: The Life of Bonny Bloom.” The production would star me, of course, dressed in blue jeans, faded and ripped at the knee and butt, and sporting a red-brown cracking face with hound dog jowls and topped off with a pile of frowzy grey hair. After tinkering with the deck and thinking a bit about my card, I swallow my daily immunity boosting Lion’s Mane and Turkey Tail capsules (produced from my coddled and productive mushroom farm fruiting out of sight in a darkened shed off the back door) and then use an eye dropper to drizzle water into the tiny pots of Eucalyptus standing at attention, a platoon of tin soldiers, on a windowsill. The trees sprout from the seeds I extracted from blackened pods I harvested and dried long ago. The pods hold their seeds deep in the cavities of their dark five-pointed stars. One day, I’ll walk out of my door and into a sweet-smelling forest full of birds and mosses and the long-absent moldy odor of damp leaves and rotting bark. I’ve already planted some seventy trees outside. They are of different ages and heights and claim most of my mornings as I deliver scant but sufficient water to each. It keeps them alive and growing slowly. I am careful with water. As I said, the well gave out in a sudden sputter of grit and mud that exploded from the kitchen tap. I knew this was coming. The town added thirty or forty houses a decade ago and each of these sunk wells into the aquifer. That and twelve years of almost no rain drained it dry. I haul my water from this ragged settlement in five-gallon carboys once a month. A local co-op tanks it from a distant reservoir and offers it for $10 a quart. Water is my greatest expense. I can’t live without it so I scrape for money. Town is fifteen miles to the east and I am perpetually concerned for the life of my chattering, droopy and sun-faded Ford Pinto, fearing it might not make it there and back. The car’s original finish was a bright bronze. It’s a pebbled grey and brown now. The tires are devoid of tread and the windshield is so pitted that if I didn’t know my way blindfolded, I’d be soon lost. I’ve thought about knocking the sand-blasted glass out altogether. But the dust would come straight at me and I’d really end up sightless. The dust storms have also scrubbed all the enameled letters and numbers from the front license plate, though no law enforcement has been seen in this region for a decade so I don’t care. The brakes, thankfully, are responsive, at least on the flatland, and I budget for oil and grease and belts. Of course, I do all the maintenance myself. Still, gas costs real money, when it is available, and water is expensive so when I take the empty carboys for water, I bring a stack or box of paintings and pots I can live without to sell on consignment at Polly’s store. She sells groceries and camping gear and socks and ball caps and even toys. She has one wall devoted to displaying the work of local artists. I count on tourists or wanderers passing through town, chancing on Polly’s and going down the row where the matches and mops and candles are, seeing my work on the wall above the shelving, and liking something well enough to want to take it home. Otherwise I can’t afford gas or water or corn meal or flour or canned goods or anything else. It’s all okay, as my friend Chandler used to say. I’m never short of what I require and never go wanting. So much so that I often find I’ve put too much in the cook pot or on my plate. No leftover is tossed. I keep a compost bin a-brewing and use the soil I produce to dig in under the Eucalyptus trees and mix into the soil in the roof garden raised beds. A fair amount of moisture accumulates up there. The dew of the morning condenses onto sizeable sheets of black plastic that line a dozen large, lipped pans. I bottle the dew-drop water before the sun hits the roof. I have enough, over a few days, to water the chard and spinach. The plants love the sun, though I protect them from the intense noon heat with immense panels of scrap cardboard stapled onto a lathe framework. The frames are hinged and can easily cover the two deep, about six by ten feet boxes. These are planted with greens that I harvest and replant throughout the year. I mulch them well with shredded newspaper and just about anything else I can find so that their roots stay warm on freezing nights and moisture is preserved. I eat well. Wild foods complement my diet. Prickly pear is delicious. I gather eggs from wild birds; I take only a few and never more than one from a nest. I don’t keep animals for food but have two half-wild dun-colored dogs named Flee and Erica and a jumbo tiger striped mouser named Mr. Sandy Paws. They’ve been with me as long as I’ve been here, them or predecessor four-leggeds, and they are good companions. I don’t feel alone with them here because they are exquisite listeners and don’t demand much from me. My favorite pal, though, is my turtle Saint Jerome, named after the hermit mystic who lived in the wilderness. There is a reproduction of da Vinci’s painting of the saint with his companion lion on Jerome’s private box. Beautiful though it is, Jerome eschews his lair during the day. He is a social beast. He goes to the box to sleep or when the cat gets too playful. Jerome eats lettuce from my garden for dinner. I tried kale and chard but he turned up his nose…well really his whole face… at the slight bitterness of them. He actually spit the kale across the room. The work. The work! I had to attend to the work every day. For so many years, my work was my painting. That was all. That was enough. Sometimes I could find discarded siding or rafters or paneling in dumpsters in town, all free for the taking. I hauled my finds back with the carboys and made things of them. I constructed fences and walkways. All painted. I built a little shower and a latrine. I found scrap metal, old propane tanks, fenders, bumpers. I pounded and welded them together, then painted them and made fabulous beings to guard my house. And I made things to sell. But then they came. ….. They swarmed like termites. Not angry, just born anew and looking for a foothold. I was more isolated than I had been in some ways because I didn’t venture far afield with them about. I missed my regular climbs for clay and rock herbs and flowers. I missed my midnight strolls to watch the meteor showers or listen to coyote pups. It was a hard time for me. When it began, I was vexed and bothered by the passing parades of fanatics and vulgar people, pathetic rabble with pet monkeys and filthy children all shouting slogans, waving banners, and driving coughing, oil-spewing trucks and campers along the road in front of my house. True, there are not so many now as there were during the height of the movement. In fact, there are only a few who come by to lay flowers by one of the towers or take photographs. I don’t want to see them or for them to see me and try to talk with me. But I can go out again. And my nights aren’t interrupted by noise from their encampment. Movement people, at the beginning of their insanity, came as regularly as the tides. They seemed to float on a river of uninterrupted laughs and banter and often stopped to beg for water or to use the outhouse. Or just to sit for a while. I must have been on the maps they sent out to would-be pilgrims. I spent more time picking up gum wrappers and cigarette butts than painting. And I was distracted by my curiosity about them. Before the people came the giants. Pylons. Towers. They popped up like skeletal mutant cacti all around me. They were composed of steel latticework and supported miles and miles of power lines that transmitted electricity. The suspended cables were made of some kind of aluminum alloy. The shimmering wires buzzed and crackled and birds, the innocents and the unknowing, flew into and under and around them and died. I found crows with their beaks burned off and pigeons missing wings. I noticed whole colonies of beetles and ants carrying grain-sized eggs on the move in an effort to escape them. That must have been fifteen years ago. The beetles and many other animals have been gone for a long time. The structures stood over the land, great pairs of bony long-legged structures as far as I could see. My site line was broken by hills and dips, but if I looked closely, I could see tips of them rising ever further. Some of the towers were at least 1000 feet tall, defoliated crosses, axes of a doomed world, trees of no life. Their extended arms were hung at each end with beaded porcelain or glass disks, dangling whorish earrings, and through these passed the strands of wire that carried the power. The discs reflected the rays of the sun and coruscated nearly blinding flashes of light lashed across the desert. My dogs and cat and even Jerome seemed to have trouble sleeping after the towers came. The pylons were built to relay power generated from the turbines of a new dam built on the other side of the mountain to the east. It was an untimely, ill-managed project. It was to serve a million greedy households, the papers said, to run their blenders and air conditioners and up-to-date dryers and hot water heaters. Just three or four years after the transmission towers were built, the talk was that the river was way below level from the drought and the power wouldn’t last much longer. The lake that was formed behind the dam had dropped to 42 percent of its capacity. Snow and rainfall had been abnormally low for years. For now, the pylons were above and beside my bungalow and me and there was nothing left to do but paint them. I started on a leg of the nearest one and worked my way up it with greens and blues and every shade of red …up one leg…higher and higher…I strapped myself on to the metal struts and carried paint in small buckets that hung from a belt around my middle. I climbed every day and had finished four towers. Then, one day, sometime before the Movement, maybe five years ago, a battery of trucks and earthmoving equipment and cranes and tankers came out here and men and women in snappy bright yellow uniforms and hard hats climbed down and began to plunge a sharp auger deep into the earth. It hammered and drilled at the same time so that the earth shook with each of the machine’s violent lunges. The workers often withdrew and examined the bit on the tip of the thrusting rod. I was told that the tip was made of diamonds. After a careful, close inspection, the workers usually replaced the old tip with a sharper and brighter thing and readied it to thrust again. They poured water from a large tanker into the hole to cool the bit as it thrust and whirred and cut through million-year-old rock. I wondered if it would ever stop. Through the days and nights the machine thudded and thumped and made its way into my dreams, if I ever actually slept. Workers set up portable lamps so that the site was brilliantly lit even at midnight and the few rabbits and deer and antelope still around stayed away, frightened by the light and activity. No, I could not avoid the sound or escape the glare and neither could my dogs or cat. Or Jerome. I hung all my sheets on my cabin windows and then finally the blankets but still it was as if the sun had risen on us all night long. Finally, I nailed boards from my scrap pile across all the windows. After several weeks, I watched the workers inject something into the holes. Deliveries of boulder-sized dumpling-like shrink-wrapped packages stacked and secured on flatbed trucks came racing to the site. I tried one night to get close enough to see what it was. I couldn’t read the neatly printed Chinese characters on the labels. The workers tore into the packages and dumped the contents into the holes they’d dug. The earth trembled as the substance created cracks and fissures deep in the ancient rock and exposed crude oil deposits, the leavings of plants and animals and all the creatures and beings that once walked the earth. Another army of quick-moving laborers sucked it up with pumps and pipes like arteries carried it far away, life support for dying cities, transfusions for a hopeless world. The towers were left standing but they were only carrying a small amount of the energy, the little the dam’s turbines could still produce …… The trucks were moving out one day as I was making my regular drive to town to get water. I got the carboys filled and began a slow drive down the few blocks toward Polly’s with a few pots and paintings to put on consignment. Along the way I noticed a crowd gathered around a man standing on top of the cab of a 1983 rusty, pea green, Dodge pickup. The bed of the pickup was fitted up with two large speakers and a generator. A line ran from the generator to a microphone in the man’s hand. He looked like an old-time preacher man in his cheap off the rack grey suit, maroon tie, and black felt fedora. I slowed to a stop, then parked by the curb and got out to see what was going on. As I listened the man claimed he was a retired physicist and MIT professor and had a message. He said he had found God and that, “God is all around us and in us and moving through the cables and wires and phone lines and out of the ground and in the lightening and just really everywhere.” He said that, “We have been so intent on making God knowable that we have missed the obvious. God is energy, power, and all that animates each and everything in our world. It is an act of worship to turn on an electric lamp. It is the great pylons and towers that carry his being that we should be worshiping,” that and, “the sun and the plugs and sockets and fuse boxes that bring God into our homes.” He said physicists had, “known all this for some time. We don’t know anything about much more than 5% of our universe. The rest of it is energy, that is, God. It fills everything. There is no void, only God and a little bit of matter,” he said. “God,” he said, “causes the universe to expand and fly apart. This God bends light and zaps x-ray signals from star to star and galaxy to galaxy just for fun.” “This same God,” he said, “can be made to work on our behalf if only we believe and grasp this truth.” “Throw away your testaments, your bibles. These were written by people who did not understand the message of the burning bush. These books are distractions.” The banner that flew from the truck’s bed fluttered. It was printed on plastic and rigged upright on a two by two. The background of the flag was midnight blue and across the face of it was a bright, fluorescent streak of lightning against a muted rendition of the Andromeda galaxy. The physicist’s props and his patter moved the worn and weary who stood around stolidly though pelted regularly by swirling dust devils from the desert that moved up and down the streets as dense and frightening as a swarm of bees looking for their queen. “We must,” he shouted in a rapid rhythmic cadence so that the last word in each sentence was held for a beat or two, “study the words of Teilhard de Chardin who said that the universe is ripening within itself the fruit of a certain consciousness. That consciousness is the possibility that God and power have a will and intention that can be called upon to shape our world and us as it chooses. With our human concentration and meditation we can break through to this God and all its energy and that God can become manifest around us.” “Eckhart, the mystic, told us this,” he said. “‘The shell must be cracked,’” he told the crowd as he lowered his voice. Each word was drawn out. He returned to the former rhythm then. “In joining the flow of the energy, we can break through,” he said. “We have made a terrible mistake in thinking to electrocute murderers is to punish them. These people,” he said, “have gone straight to God and are with God. It is we who deserve such deaths, not the evil among us.” “Some have always known this secret, this great truth, he declared. Michelangelo knew. He put it into his Sistine Chapel painting of the creation of Adam. That spark, that fiery glint of life that is shown passing from God’s finger to Adam that was the secret made manifest. The Masons among the early leaders of the United States knew and put the floating eye of energy above the pyramid on our dollar bill. It’s been known by the few. Now we all know.” The preacher physicist climbed down from the truck, jumped up into the cab, turned the key, flattened the gas pedal against the floor, and sped in the direction of the next town. He was traveling alone and no one had caught his name if he had said it. People drifted away and talked among themselves in excited clusters. But just as I turned to get back to my business, there was a loud eerie cry and something like the odor of outdoor grilling was in the air. Ribs or T-bones. It had been a long time, but I recognized the stench of flesh. I nearly gagged. I looked back. The same group of lost souls I’d seen around the pickup was gathering around a tall tapered octagonal pillar, taller than any building in the town. It was slender pole and there were a row of them, placed about a block apart one from the other. At the top of each were two cross pieces each with four or five glass insulators that caught the sunlight and held high-voltage transmission wires in place. A little further down the pole were the step-down transformer buckets that looked very much like a couple of rusty pressure cookers. Single strands of wire tautly to service lines that led to streetlights and businesses along the street. A man had climbed up the pillar beyond the transformers and up to the high-voltage wires. He had made it to the highest wire, the one with the most power running through it. In the early days of television, guys putting up their own TV antennas were often electrocuted when their antennas toppled over on to these high-voltage wires. They were accidentally electrocuted. But this man’s death was no accident. He was in his early 40s I guessed. He had a scruffy thin black beard and wore a ball cap with a green and blue hawk icon on the front of it. He was dressed in a white v-necked tee shirt and a pair of jeans. His scuffed and grubby red wing work boots and socks were on the ground below, blasted off his feet. He knew what he was doing because he had to somehow have touched two opposing wires. He was still up there, grinning, hands blacked and crisp, arms spread eagle against the top cross piece, legs dangling below, supported by a couple of guy wires. He was smiling. Below him, a woman stood crying and yelling, “Praise God, the power and the glory.” “Praise God, the all-powerful.” The whole bunch that had been listening to the physicist was gathered round now and laying hands on her and one another. They could feel a tingle moving from hand to hand, they said. Their eyes were closed and they swayed slightly to some silent rhythm. I got in the Pinto and floored it. I drove out of town and home without taking time to drop off paintings or collect cash from last month’s sale. I couldn’t stay away forever. I wondered what happened next and needed to get some cash and other supplies, so I drove back in a couple of months. There were stacks of newsletters called “The Current” on the counters of stores I visited. I leafed through one. “The Current” was peppered with stories of people finding God by touching open light sockets or dumping “hot” radios into bathtubs while sitting in the water. It was the most bizarre thing I’d ever heard of. There were posters glued to the cement power poles in town that read, “You’ll get the shock of your life when you find God.” I didn’t know whether to take this seriously. I avoided speaking to anyone on the streets. I took my work to Polly. She suggested that I begin bringing in paintings of the giant poles. People were looking for symbols of energy for their homes. Polly was ever the one to see an opportunity to make a buck. “The tourism is bound to increase. We’ve had some national attention because the movement started here,” she said. “The movement?” “Oh yes,” she said. “That preacher there,” she tapped a photograph on the cover of “The Current,” with the long nail of her right-hand index finger. The nail had been enameled with a shiny replica of a power pole, “That preacher,” she said, “has been offered a national television show. It’s called ‘Power and Glory’. He’s on once a week. And it all started here.” I couldn’t get home fast enough. ….. One morning when I stepped outside my house, there was a very small Asian man using a rag to wipe the dust off the fenders and hood of his newish black Accord. The chrome on the bumpers was already spotless, so shiny his smooth, smiling face was reflected from the front one when he leaned over the hood to wipe the license tag. I don’t know how long he’d been there. He was five feet one or two at the most and wore a light-weight barong tagalog shirt and a straw hat with a snap-brim. He wadded the cloth up into a ball, opened the trunk of the car, and tossed it in when he saw me. “Do you know where the gathering is to be?” he asked me. Of course, I didn’t. I didn’t know there was a gathering. “Never mind,” he said, “I’ll find it.” During the day, dozens of vehicles passed my house. There were Airstreams and tear-drops and food trucks and cars that were barely running. They coughed and spluttered and left dark oil stains on the roadway. Large metal canisters of gas or water or both were strapped to their tops along with extra tires. I saw a couple of model-T trucks with the hoods removed and engines and radiators exposed. Then there were the RVs as big as Greyhound buses with solar panels and TV antennas and pop-out porches and poodle dogs peering out windows. By the evening, the traffic thinned out and I leashed my dogs and gingerly walked down the road so I could see where they had all been heading. I reached the outskirts of a large encampment in about twenty minutes. There were drummers in the middle of several concentric rings of people seated in folding chairs. Some people were dancing around but most just sat and stared up at the towers. Or at the sky. I had a couple of brief conversations and was told that they were all looking for a sign. This was the center of the Movement because it was from these posts that the electricity that joined the first believer to the power of God had come. Someone produced a map of the grid to show me. Sure enough. The tower they were under held a line that looped over the desert and a few hills and headed directly toward the town. What I didn’t realize was that many people had already begun their fast. They were preparing to climb the towers within the week, sometimes several at a time, and wanted to be “pure” when they touched God. Meanwhile, vendors set up to sell tee-shirts with “End of Time” slogans and the lightening image against a black background. There were ball caps and flags and books and brochures and palm readers and dog toys and cat beds, all with the same logo or with a picture of Michelangelo’s creation of Adam. The hottest seller showed the logo’s lightning strike as a representation of the spark of life that jumped from God’s finger to Adam’s. There were photographs being taken of the towers themselves, many with devotees of the new religion posed against the lattice and, incidentally, my paintings. Of course, if you preferred, there were vendors available to take photographs for a price and print them right on the spot. You could buy a button with a picture of yourself touching a tower strut and the statement “I touched God” printed over it. You could buy a chit to use the portable toilets and other chits for jugs of water available courtesy of the local Rotary Club. The county Democrats were selling hamburgers. Some said the smell of meat was in poor taste. The Demos switched to veggie burgers by the next morning. One night, the drums and chanting did not stop at the usual time and around one in the morning I heard some whistles and booms. I scraped a chair across the floor to my porch, and sat out to see the fireworks show. People applauded and cheered. Then the drums began again. I got back to sleep around 3. This was the morning, they had told me, that people would begin the climb. So I made a cup of coffee and sipped it as I watched the sunrise beyond the eastern mountains and strolled to the site. I had become a little blasé about all of this. From what I could gather from the chatter, not all were aiming for the tops of the towers and the high voltage. Some planned simply to tie themselves to the crossbars and stay there facing the blazing sun until they died. But the main show, of course, would be the people who made it all the way and joined hands with the source, the manifestation of God on earth. …… The climbs happened daily after that. The encampment became semi-permanent for some. Because we were at the peak of a sunspot cycle, odd disturbances to the geomagnetic field on earth caused the power grid to fluctuate and sometimes one had to hang on to the wires for a few minutes before being electrocuted. Northern lights could be seen even at our latitude. Lightning storms were frequent, especially in the distant mountains. Everything was taken as a sign. And still there was no rain and the river and dammed lake levels dropped lower. Nobody cared much because the whole world had gone to hell. I was fine. But the rumor was that there were wars being fought over water. I was told that several small Pacific Island nations had moved to the Northwest and established colonies in the national forests. Nobody could stop them. Nobody was bothered by much of anything anymore. Somebody passing by one day reported that humans had abandoned the whole of North Africa and Greenland, and Finland, though without machinery or power, were growing orchards full of peaches and apricots in Iceland. Somebody said Alaska native peoples had started vineyards. One day, a climber touched a wire and hung on. Time passed and nothing happened. Not even a little shock. Another followed her up and tried. Nothing. The people below were alarmed. Rumors started. “We’ve been abandoned,” they said, as one after another people climbed and lived. Slowly, they all packed up their tents and campers and moved out. A few come by still on their way to lay flowers or take photographs. All the charred body bits and picked, dried bones were long since collected by entrepreneurs who placed them in tiny beribboned reliquaries and sold them as one might sell the remains of a saint. ….. I am happy and living pretty much the way I was before the towers and the believers came. The people digging had already gone by the end of the Movement frenzy. That digging and drilling had been a last-ditch effort to produce power for the cities. They mucked up the land but though it was desecrated, I’m doing my best to restore it. I want the birds to return, the beetles to come back, the ants to bring their eggs home. I want to hear the crickets and the coyotes and the ravens. I will do what I can. Someday the rain will return and it will find a place free of hurt, a place prepared to accept it. I fill the holes, I bless the scars, and I speak to every sign of life. Jerome is with me when I do this work. Jerome is always with me.
When I was a small child, my family drove past an imposing brick building on our way home to Dayton , Ohio from Columbus.
This was called, when I was a child, The Ohio State Hospital. Earlier, it was called the Ohio Lunatic Asylum. The stigma lingered. Mother said as we drove by, “That’s where my cousin X is.” I don’t know if I ever met Cousin X. She was the daughter of my great uncle and great aunt whom I did know. Uncle L. spent most of his time staring at first generation television programs when we visited him in the 1950s. He was a rascal of a man who had traveled the world selling Marion Steam Shovels and taking liberties with women he met on these journeys. He had photographs to prove it and brought these out during family gatherings to show my little brother. Scandalous. I liked him when he was a bit younger and I was a toddler. He brought me a doll from Bolivia, a marble elephant from India, and a piece of rock salt from somewhere. He inculcated a desire to travel in me even as a two-year-old. Of Aunt B, his spouse, I remember only a large woman, gruffish and a bit intimidating. They had another daughter, one with dark, pompadoured 1940s hair. She wore a lot of red lipstick. Her husband was called “Mutt.”
Of Cousin X, no, I have no memories of meeting her.
I have only the scraps of what maybe I was told. Cousin X was in the hospital because she could not walk. She could not walk but there was nothing physically wrong with her. Somehow her mental state had caused her legs to atrophy. This may be entirely fiction. However, it made an impression on the child me. I thought about Cousin X often. Was it possible for the mind to deceive the body to such an extreme? Or was this Cousin X story another (like the tale told that my face would “stay that way” when I squinted or stuck my tongue out) another adult fib meant to keep me on the straight and narrow path.
TOE
The election was a colossal disappointment. The winner was a megalomaniac who kept Bonobos in his protected, multimillion-dollar retreat. These animals were outfitted with stylish coats and trousers and treated to the music of live string quartets. Fruit bowls for them were on every surface of the house and caretakers brushed their fur and teeth daily.
The new president was the size of a small elephant and wore leather jackets trimmed with fur collars. He hated women and would not have one near him or as employees even as cooks, housekeepers or clerks. Yet women voted for him. He was known to cheat and lie and launder money and steal from the poor. Yet the poor voted for him.
He was what is known as a populist. He told “the people” that only he understood them and that he and he alone could solve their many problems. And they had a multitude of problems.
The tyrant was elected to replace a hapless fellow who had driven the country into bankruptcy. Inflation rates were ridiculous. Nobody could afford food or gas (there was little to be had) or clothing (There was little to be had though there were a few remaining stores places where one might imagine one could buy them.) Hospitals were short of medicines and staff. The premature had no care, the recently born had better not be ill. Cancer was a death sentence, even those cancers curable in wealthy countries. Dissidents were in jails and because there was so little food, they starved.
Still, the new president would be even worse than the old one, so the reasonably sane and educated citizens feared and predicted. He lounged about, Bonobos at his side, IVs of mysterious infusions attached to various fleshy bits of himself, dripping life-giving somethings at all times. Each infusion was a different color thus the president resembled a kind of abominable Christmas tree as he blinked through the corridors of his mansion and appeared on television screens to deliver his unsavory assessments of the world and the country and self-serving assessments of his own prowess.
Priscilla blamed herself for all of this. She had not campaigned hard enough. She had not worked to persuade voters in small communities. She had not leafleted or doorbelled nearly as frequently as she should have. She had not put herself in harm’s way or strong-armed her friends to do more. She had failed.
Thus, the election of the great farce of a president, the old terror and his fleet of Bonobos, was her fault. His mission was to erase all but the most official history of the nation and to ensure that history told the story of a founding and greatness that was nonmalignable and supported only his own creation mythology…a creation fable that led inevitably to him. Imprisonment or death would follow any alternative telling. Teachers were packing up and leaving the country. Historians had gone underground. Memory sweeps were already happening, libraries stripped, and personal stashes of books found and burned on the streets. All Priscilla’s fault.
Priscilla didn’t know how to atone for her failing. She didn’t sleep well. Her assembly of supplements didn’t seem to help. Her electronic relaxation tapes didn’t help. She cried frequently. She lashed her back (in secret) with great thorny whips, inherited from her great aunt, a member of an order of flagellants. She threw her Scotch and chocolates into the garbage and vowed to buy no more.
And then one morning, she noticed that the second toe of her left foot was a bit bigger than the day before. That is to say, the second toe was now longer than the big toe and the third toe. Longer than both.
She thought she was imagining things. The next day, the toe looked a bit longer. Then the next, and so on. Watching it became a new obsession. As if she didn’t have enough to obsess over.
She needed to be sure that her eyes were not deceiving her. She put her bare foot flat upon a piece of graph paper and traced around it. There, she thought. I have a baseline.
And, sure enough, the next day when she placed her foot on the tracing, the second toe was incrementally longer.
And, each day, longer. And longer.
Eventually, she had trouble walking. The toe threw her off balance. It pinched. And the nail of it became bruised under the toe bed. There was nothing for it but to cut a hole in the tip of her walking shoe.
At first, just a bit of pink, bulbous flesh, peeked out from the rough cavity she carved into her expensive leather walking shoes. It hadn’t been easy. She used a pair of kitchen shears for the task. It took almost an hour to shape the leather. Her fingers were bloodied along the way.
When she tried a short trip around the block in her thus altered shoes, she was happy. The pain of the confinement of the toe was relieved.
The respite was short-lived. The toe pushed its way further forward every day. The hole was enlarged, and a bit of duct tape was wrapped around the exposed toe to help it avoid scrapes and bumps.
What can this be, she wondered? Something sent on her, she concluded. For her failures. The toe was relatively flexible. As it approached the four-inch mark, she found it could coil into itself and even grasp a pencil.
Her tango days were over.
At the five-inch mark, she decided to consult a doctor, though this was not something she felt she deserved to do. After all, she was responsible for wrecking so many lives that she thought any act that benefited her was selfish. But she could do nothing for anyone while this toe grew.
The doctor, at first, after ascertaining that she had not been bitten by a spider, announced that she had a variant of Morton’s Toe. This unusual and late-onset Morton’s Toe was rarely, if ever, seen. It was treatable, she said. Certainly, discomfort could be relieved with custom orthotics and ibuprofen. She could order special shoes that would enclose and accommodate the toe.
Priscilla was measured for new footwear. In order to contain the toe, she would wear a size 12 on her left foot and a size 7 ½ on the right. These custom shoes would set her back $456.97. It would take a while. Most shoe makers had left the country.
As she waited for the expensive shoes to arrive, the toe continued to grow. By the time package with the shoes appeared on her doorstep, they were useless. She would have required a size 15 for the left foot. No money back. All folly.
The first round of executions of the president’s political rivals was underway in the streets of the capital when she visited the doctor again.
This time, the doctor recommended a resection of the toe. It could be done in the office, thankfully: an outpatient procedure. Most hospitals were closed by this time. Most had been raided by the desperately ill and their relatives and stripped of anything of value or use. Medical personnel had fled the country on the heels of historians (no longer safe even underground) and college professors (who were regularly submitted to nasty interrogations by student dupes of the president).
Priscilla knew this was all her fault: the hospitals, the executions, the collapse of civil society, and her toe. She searched online for a less invasive cure. She managed to find lots of ideas through an illicit server that a deep-state fortune teller named Zarna had told her about. She looked and looked. Tried herbal packs and more supplements. The toe grew.
At last, she returned to the doctor for the procedure. The doctor was willing to operate, but now knew that this was not a case of Morton’s Toe. Morton’s Toe would not add growth every day. Morton’s Toe would never result in a toe as long as Priscilla’s. This toe was now a claw that stretched a full seven inches beyond Priscilla’s big toe. Wrapped in silver duct tape, it was an all too obvious anomaly and was noticed by everyone. The toe of shame.
She listened to the details of the proposed surgery, but decided to put it off for a bit. She could stay home, she thought, and have most everything she needed delivered. She had a bit of fun. She sharpened the nail of the long toe and trained the toe to stab olives and deliver them to her martini, for example. This actually gave her a laugh. The toe could scratch her back. The toe could punch out numbers on her phone.
But then….of course she had to go out sometimes. And….
The lengthy toe preceded her everywhere she went. It caused her footprints to be remarked upon long after she had passed. She had already discontinued her weekly yoga classes. The teacher and other students guffawed out loud and stared at her when she attempted lunges and downward dog. The toe got in the way. She could do most anything that required grabbing a foot because she could grab the toe. But the laughs! And Priscilla was not the kind of person who could laugh at herself. That, at least, would have helped. Furthermore, of course, Priscilla knew that the others blamed her for the election.
Her social circle was so small and the toe was so cold in rain and snow, sticking out of her shoe as it was, that she decided to have the surgery.
The doctor shortened the second metatarsal bone of the toe. It shortened so that it was slightly shorter than her big toe. Hardware held the ends of the bone together. It didn’t take long, this surgery. And Priscilla went home with a normal-seeming toe. The scars on it would always be a reminder of her neglect during the last election. She continued to self-flagellate and to deny herself the pleasure of chocolate and Scotch.
She wore closed-toe shoes again and found some small pleasure in walking without pain.
Then one day, not more than two months after the operation, she felt a pain in her right foot. The same day that the president called for the imprisonment of all journalists and the closure of all newspaper offices. Anyone who identified as something other than strictly normative, heterosexual, and traditionally gendered went into hiding or left the country. They could be shot on the street with no consequences.
She noticed that same pain each morning as she tread across the bedroom and into her kitchen for a morning coffee.
Then, the familiar feeling of pressure, the pressure of a toe pushing against the tip of her shoe. She drew an outline of the right foot on graph paper.
Day after day, she checked her flat right foot against the sketch. No particular toe was bigger than the others. No. The whole foot was on the move. Day by day, with imperial intentions, the foot grew. And on the left foot, a stub of a big toe appeared next to the fully grown one already in place.
Without going into the details and ideology of the birth chart, you must know, in order to understand Janine’s life, a few basics. Those who read the stars, sometimes for a living, determine one’s zodiac sign and the placement of planets at the exact time and place where one is born. Knowing this, one can see in advance the challenges that will be faced in life. One can also foresee one’s life’s meant-to- be partner, one’s hobbies, one’s likes and dislikes. All of this is based upon the belief that the motions of stars and planets influence or determine the life of a human. Would be astrologers study for years and some even take university degrees in order to deepen their knowledge of movement/i.e. orbits of planets and relative positions of them at the time of a birth. Janine’s parents were not adherents of any particular religion or belief. They certainly didn’t consult an astrologer when they decided to have sex and produce a child in October of 1942. If they had consulted any person schooled in the ways of planetary motion, they would have known that they should have waited until after WWII to reproduce. Janine was meant to have been born in April of 1947. Because she was born in 1942, her whole life was off kilter and she was always at odds with her own destiny. Not only was she born in the wrong year and the wrong month, she was born two weeks before the statistically normal end of her gestation period. It was no wonder to anyone who understood such things that everything in Janine’s life was a side-ways. There were major consequences for Janine. First, she met the person who would have been her life partner much too early. There was a ten-year difference in their ages. Thus, the attraction between them, built upon past lives together, came to nothing. Fizzled. They became friends but what would have been a predetermined life of bliss was not to be. Thereafter, Janine struggled with relationships and had periods of depression and deep sorrow. She could not understand this. She did the best she could and finally gave up trying. Janine was often only one number away from winning state-wide lotto combination. Just a bit off. She would have been a millionaire if she had been born on the correct day and under the correct sign. Janine was in an automobile that was hit by a train. She survived but was deeply shaken. Had she been at that crossing just a day later or an hour or two earlier, she would have missed the collision. One day, she was thrown from a horse. She was only five years old. Her lip was cut and her knees were scuffed. She was not supposed to be on that horse at that stable on that day. Thus, Janine’s life was a series of mess ups, and clumsy attempts to be what she perceived to be a “normal” human being. It is not possible to right oneself with one’s destiny once one has entered upon this earth under a sky that is completely wrong. …. Though Janine knew that something was amiss, she didn’t know quite what to do. As a young child, she suffered through winters of pneumonia and bronchial coughs and raging fevers. These were never meant for her. Nothing her attentive grandmothers and mothers did helped because there was no real help from the stars. Herbal salves and healing plasters applied to her small chest did nothing. She was made to lie on her back, head hanging down over the side of the bed, while vile drops were caused to flow into her nose and sinus cavities. She was taken to doctors. Tonsils were yanked. Shots were given. Various foods were declared bad for her. Of course, nothing worked. Her body was fighting against a terrible cosmic mistake. It was, that meek little body, too small and too weak to make a difference. She was said to have “grown out” of these afflictions when she was about five years old. What had really happened was that her spirit and soul had come aligned, for a day, with the day of her destined birth. Everything in her tried very hard for a rebirth. The strength of the alignment gave her a restart that was strong enough to heal childhood illnesses. However, nothing else was righted. She continued to “just miss” so many possibilities. She almost made As on her report cards. She was almost an excellent student. She nearly won a scholarship for her first year at college. She almost made the dean’s list. And this was the life she led. Food and the ingestion of it became an anathema later in life. She deplored eating out and thus had a very small circle of friends. Because, of course, she chose all the wrong friends. She didn’t like preparing food or sitting down to eat it. Most edibles caused her bowels to hold on. The bowels, of course, are the seat of destiny. Living in the security of a meant-to-be life will cause the bowels to flow freely and comfortably. If one is muddling through the wrong life, the bowels will be blocked and only deep spiritual work will allow a release. Janine didn’t know any of this. She purchased laxatives and ate a lot of fiber. This was not easy because she loathed most food, including the very fibrous varieties. Janine drove a car. But she was always about to have an accident or lose a fender or miss a turn. Had she been born at the correct time and day and year, she would have been free of all of these possibilities. She might even have been a race car driver. While shopping for clothing, she always seemed to choose and bring home the wrong sized garment. The colors and patterns she wore made her look freakish. On walks in the woods, she always took the wrong turn and became lost. She eventually carried a cellular phone and a compass and a GPS device with her. She learned to accommodate and move through her mysterious lack of direction. Her house was never clean and neat though she worked to make it so. Something was always missed or forgotten. Strange, basketball-sized dust bunnies appeared under chairs recently on recently mopped floors. How can that be. She tried and tried to get it right. For years. The question that any astrologer worth their salt might ask is who got Janine’s life? April 16, 1947 Absolutely no one of significance was born on this day. Janine’s absence left a very big hole. It wasn’t simply her life that was peculiarly tilted by several degrees off norm, it was the whole world that missed her. In the scheme of things, the void Janine left opened up a period of time called the “cold war.” In Texas City, a deadly industrial accident happened. This was the fault of Janine. And so much more. Janine was to have been born an Aries and, in Chinese reckoning, a Pig with associated element Fire. She would have been driven and passionate. Although it is not certain, it is likely Janine would have taken her passion and ambition into political activism. She would likely have risen to her full potential and even become a reigning figure, perhaps changing the landscape of American foreign and domestic policies for the good of justice. As it was, Janine lived in such a haphazard manner that she was barely able to cast ballots in local elections. …. No use wondering about what might have been. As it was, the Janine born on October 13, 1942 was no good at sports. She always the missed the thrown ball or the hammered serve or the ball set up on the tee. She struck out, was not asked to partner, and was left out. She tried playing goalie for her school’s field hockey team. but, of course, everyone scored off her. Her lurches and lunges were late and in the wrong direction. She hit the finger that held the nail. She was always bruised somewhere on her body. Dogs approached her from oblique angles and then, just as they neared Janine’s proffered treat, they veered away. Cats sat as far across the room from her as possible. She sang off pitch and was not encouraged to join vocal ensembles. Her sleep was interrupted by mysterious visitations. Doctors call this phenomenon sleep paralysis. She knew, however, that the visages present at the foot of her bed bore messages. If she could only understand! The messages certainly contained hints of what might have been, sent to allow her a peek at what she’d missed. They were cruel messages. Nobody wants to know what might have been. It was just as well she couldn’t understand or remember them the next morning. Things could have changed. Her slanted life was not inevitable. One well-placed asteroid could have thrown the earth’s orbit off and, thus, Janine’s destiny might have been rehabilitated. But then most of the world would have experienced yet another extinction event. She might have become an astronaut and spent some time circling the globe from outer space. Or just crawling about in her capsule for a few months. That might have reset things. On the bright side, her daily actions had no deadly ramifications. Yes, she returned from grocery shopping with all the wrong items. But she learned to eat whatever showed up in her cupboards. Yes, she missed appointments and or recorded them incorrectly on her calendar. Sometimes whole months passed without her notice. One can get used to almost anything. The most curious thing was that Janine 1942 died on exactly the same day that Janine 1947 was destined to die. Nobody really knew this unless they had read her birth chart. Still, how remarkable. She did not outlive herself. On the day of her death, the pictures on her wall stayed straight.
“The person retains the illusion of having a body, but that perception is no longer derived from the senses. The perceived world may resemble the world he or she generally inhabits while awake, but this perception does not come from the senses either.” ……
On the occasion of her 104th birthday, Mrs. Louisa Zig broke a record. She made the Guinness Book by being the oldest-ever certified skydiver. People who live in the purple zones of longevity, naturally aged, would have greater sense than to try such a stunt. Or to aspire to such a record. Or ever think about skydiving. Those people are happy to stay home in the bosom of family and eat locally grown beans and locally sourced honey and to ride their donkeys to their daily, muscle-wrenching hoeing of the fields. They do not skydive.
Mrs. Zig, however, had been a bit of a daredevil throughout her life. Born in 1919, she had been the first in her Ohio small-town block to see The Thief of Bagdad. She used her allowance to buy lipstick at Woolworths and applied it while hiding under a bush after leaving her house. Her auntie was a suffragette and she joined her in meetings when she could sneak away from the critical eyes of her mother and father.
1919. That was the year Queen Marie of Romania, bought a new, sexy gown, and seduced Woodrow Wilson into cutting a good deal for her country. A war the child, Mrs. Zig, knew nothing about had ended. A good year to start a life.
When she was 10, in 1929, she was aware there were problems. She looked forward to the Sunday funny papers and Popeye. Her father lost his job. The family moved to her grandparents farm and grew vegetables and raised chickens. She liked that. She packed her lipstick and hid it in her tiny room in the farmhouse.
When she was 20 in 1939. She was old enough and smart enough to take note of the world. But her personal life was more important. She moved from the farm to the city and took a job. She lived in a hotel for single career women. She took some flying lessons when she could afford them. She developed a desire to parachute. Someday, she thought, someday.
So her skydive was something she had put off but long thought about. 104. Not a bad life. Pretty long life. 104 is a kind of good number. A woman died at 104 just the other day, she had read. She’d been called “young lady” by patronizing store clerks for the past 30 years. Reason enough to let it all go. Things had been a string of boring repetitions for 40 years or so: Thanksgivings, Christmases, birthdays, the changing of the seasons. She’d seen it all. Wars. Please, can I just go now?
At the end of the “day of,” images of her wind-flattened face and swept-back, thin grey hair popped up all around the internet. Bored consumers of electronic media made a flicker of a note, looked at her for a nanosecond, then moved on. She was acclaimed in newspapers and by her family, members of which she had not told about this feat in advance. It was typical of her to play her cards close to the vest. Mrs. Zig landed, no broken bones, and seemed as healthy as she had been before her jump. Four days later she died in her sleep.
It was not from indigestion. It was not from heart failure. It was from something she had seen while falling.
Something caused her death….or made her eager to “pass over” or made that seem a very attractive option. Something took her will to live between its massive jaws and then spit her, violently, down to earth into an opening in a grove of Ash trees.
“An out-of-body experience (OBE or sometimes OOBE) is a phenomenon in which a person perceives the world from a location outside their physical body. An OBE is a form of autoscopy(literally “seeing self”), although this term is more commonly used to refer to the pathological condition of seeing a second self, or doppelgänger.”…..
She died before she could finish her manuscript, “A perfect guide to my second after life,” she had titled it. Like the jump itself, the family did not know about this work. It was found under a wedding band quilt, on her bed, next to her lifeless body, and beside her small, weeping dog. The dog had been there all through the night and was aware of her passing but didn’t quite know how to tell anyone. And though she had to urinate, she held it so as to continue to guard her mistress’s body.
The manuscript, more than 200 lined pages, was already book-length and had been written with a thick old-fashioned school child’s pencil in all caps and replete with misspellings. Mrs. Zig had made a few drawings in the margins of the pages. Some could be recognized as attempts at cows or some sort of bovines, flowers, and menacing devil-like creatures.
The last few pages, written in the few days left of her life after the free fall, was instructive. Thus, this report.
She had been instructed. She had been strapped into her chute. She had boarded the aircraft. All of her own free will. The aircraft zipped down the runway and its wheels left the ground without incident. Mrs. Zig spoke her good luck prayer aloud. “Holy Mary, Mother of God…” She wasn’t Catholic, but that was the only prayer she knew by rote. As she and the airplane rose to about 15,000 feet. She remembered the woman she had been seated next to once when her commercial flight captain decided to circle Mt. Rainier… just for the fun of it. It was a wonderfully clear day. The pilot showed the passengers the crevasses and glaciers from a close distance. It was a thrilling sight. But the woman next to Mrs. Zig pulled her headscarf over her eyes, raised her legs and feet up under herself on the seat, and began to finger her beads and weep. She did not see beauty, only death. There was no comforting her. Mrs. Zig let go of that thought and was aided to reach the open door of the craft and she prepared to jump. And jump she did.
The Jump
CUE IN: 50 seconds of John Cage’s 4’ 33”
Her first thought: this must be what crowd surfing feels like. She’d heard her great great-great-grandchildren talk about it. One simply throws oneself from a stage into a roaring, slightly drunken, pack of audience members and trusts that the frenzied crowd members will catch you. Unless they don’t. She was caught. She was just there, suspended maybe…maybe tonically immobile. She didn’t know. Her body was irrelevant. She was pure mind, sort of like how her time in a deprivation tank had felt. And then:
Her life began to unravel before her mind’s eye.
In the first 2 seconds:
Everything she had believed had been in error. Everyone she had believed IN had been an illusion. As her hair flew back, and she realized she was alone in the sky, albeit with an incredible view of fields and forests below, her eyes opened in a way they never had and she was shaken. This was the life she had had:
Lies and Frauds Lack of love Meanness Slippery morals The lack of ambition The everyday boredom of it and them all.
I have, she wrote later, outlived my naturally ordained demise and have, unfortunately, lived long enough to see through my misconceptions and delusions. “I don’t like what I have seen,” she noted in her manuscript.
She remembered and wrote a nearly second-by-second account of her free fall. Like a modern-day Nostredamus, she inscribed, in her childish hand, a scathing report of what was revealed to her as she fluttered downward. And she would not, she knew, even as she wrote, be around to explain herself. Or to elaborate. Or to justify.
How many of “my” memories are not my own? She wondered. How many friends were not at all who they said they were? Had she claimed a heritage and displayed a self that was complete fiction. Why? Was her remembered past also fiction? Probably. But if so, it was a fiction she had fully embraced. She couldn’t say for certain who she was, but only hang on to bits and pieces that seemed to be part of her. Part of her flesh, part of the nails she grew and the hair that she curled and fluffed every morning. …… The cigarette butts lay lifeless on the grate inside the hooded fire pit. They made a small jumble in a heap over the dead ashes of the last fire lit there. No warmth remained so the fire had long burned itself out. She could count the number of cigarettes smoked before the final decision to step up on a chair under a looped rope and then kick the chair away. The scene was all too clear.
And the body of the little girl on the shore of Lake Erie, Michigan side. A whole family gathered in a circle around that small, firm, barefooted thing that lay unmoving and barefooted on a colorful striped beach towel. A muscular, tanned male lifeguard was doing his darndest to breathe life back into her lungs. He’d spotted her, swam out to save her, and he just couldn’t let go now.
And, another day, the oh-so-white body, light blue veins showing through marbled fat, ….dead in the water how long? Long enough submerged that the gases had built up and the fleshy thing floated to the surface. Creatures had feasted on it. Things crawled around on it. She walked on. Nothing to do. The emergency people had been called but this person, this thing, once a person, was long gone and unrecognizable. There was no emergency, just a finality that could now be announced and published and talked about for days. Foolish death. He had jumped, he and his friend. A bet. A dare. Both dead. She walked on and had a crab sandwich. What had that crab eaten?
There was her old friend Madge. It was a burglary. Someone broke into her home while she was away for a night or two, a rare and foolhardy use of her small savings, but well-earned and needed. She opened the door of her little bungalow, tucked in between much larger and grander homes. It had been a hard-earned home, a refuge from a world she feared. She was welcomed by a broken hall table and raspberry-colored stains here and there on the carpet. Soda from her refrigerator. Her body raced through now unfamiliar territory as she moved further into the house. Furniture overturned, plates from an old sideboard smashed on the hardwood floor by the dining table, sofa fabric ripped, empty beer cans, crushed, scattered through the living room. She vomited,
387. Her patient number. She saw it in neon tubing, 5 feet high. Remember it, they had said. You’ll need it. For what she had wondered. It began to flash red. How am I to respond, she wondered.
A message. She saw the cheery greeting card, adorned on its cover with a pastel drawing of a Cocker Spaniel puppy wearing a red bow at its neck. Inside was a short message: “Sorry to hear you tangled with the flu. Hope you got well fast. We miss you. Alice and Cindy.” It took weeks of her time to track down Alice and Cindy. She didn’t know them. They didn’t know her. But here it was, a blessing (she hoped) from the universe. Other messages arrived. Often handwritten in envelopes that disclosed nothing of the sender. People who wrote to say they were thinking of her and that quoted passages from the Bible. Who were they?
In the next few seconds, she remembered a found journal. Someone had been traveling abroad and had lost her small, leather-bound journal. Mrs. Zig tried to find an address, a name, or anything that would allow her to return the journal. This had been an important trip, she gathered. But though she scanned it on occasion, year after year, she never found even a clue…a date of flight or name of an airline, the name of a friend, a telephone number or even a mention of a town or state. What was written in the journal were many adjectives arranged into paragraphs. Was it a code? She tried making words of the first letters of the adjectives. She tried reversing the order. Nothing. Another instance of a message from somewhere..goading her. Or goating her.
Several seconds on, she saw a series of men from her younger life. She was not interested. And she chose not to marry out of “convenience”..the convenience of a conventional life in which one could fit into the expectations of others in her life. She did, after about age 60, call herself Mrs. It was just easier. She wore an elaborate diamond ring on the correct finger. She attended tea parties and a couple of grief groups. She was an imposter and it suited her.
But to marry a man? Most she knew were reprehensible, hairy, selfish, and messy. No, life with such a person would not be much better than life with a billy goat. Imagine the smell, the grunts, the hair drifting over the furniture, the occasional need to rut. No. Still, she had some through the years and found herself regularly making excuses for them, found valid reasons for their indifference to her. She tried to, at least, love them as one would love a pet. But as she fell, in a second or two, she saw clearly that they were simply awful people and she could have saved her emotions for actual pets.
The next second.
One in 30,000 in the United States live to be 105. She would not be a member of that cohort. She knew that clearly in the sixth second of her free fall.
“A U.S. Air Force Captain, “jumped out of his open gondola, and began falling. By 90,000 feet, he had reached about 1,149 km/hr – faster than the speed of sound. He fell in free fall for about four-and-a-half minutes. His speed gradually reduced to around 200 km/hr as he dropped though the increasingly-thicker air. His parachute opened around 14,000 feet. There was a sudden jerk as his speed suddenly dropped to around 21 kph. He landed about 12 minutes later, with no permanent injuries. He still holds two records – the only person to break the sound barrier without being in a craft, and the highest parachute jump.”…..
Free falling does not kill you. It may scare you to death, but it doesn’t kill you.
Twenty seconds may have elapsed by this time.
A step-uncle required that his first wife sit on a street corner and sell apples. Year round. The old folks said she died because of it. He worked her to death, like an old mule. Mrs. Zig realized in that second that she had always wondered if this story were true.
A man walked the streets of her little town, the same streets, same route, for many years. He wore the yellow outfit of a firefighter yet he did not fight fires. He carried a lunch box. He walked and walked.
A man walked the streets of her little town wrapped in aluminum foil and hung about with parts of old kitchen appliances and battery-operated strings of Christmas lights. Then he wasn’t there any longer.
A woman walked the streets of her little town talking and laughing to herself. What did she hear? She wore very short skirts and tall leather boots and had very messy hair. Then one day, she wasn’t there. She was never seen again.
A man she knew had a stroke that rendered him unable to speak. He carried a pocketful of small red ceramic hearts. When he walked about, he gave a heart to each person he met.
She wondered why she had never taken the time to thank these people for how much they haad contributed to her imagination.
During the next second or two
She was hungry. Just for an instant. She wished she had eaten lots more in the days when she could really eat. When her stomach and guts were working properly and she had good teeth. She thought about New York pizza and T-bone steak and Wuhan noodles. She would eat a creamsicle right now if she had one. She would never have another one. Nor another frozen custard. Nor another foot-long hot dog. She regretted her self-denial and self-imposed deprivation for the sake of longevity. She thought about the time she wanted to form an anti-deprivation league and how she thought the name would offend.
Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail. Who were they and why are they jumping up and down in my brain?
“If you stop suddenly from 200 km/hr over a distance of a few centimetres, everything in your body effectively weighs 7,500 times more than normal. Your 1.5 kg brain briefly weighs 10 tonnes. In that brief instant, cells are burst open and blood vessels are torn asunder. The aorta (the huge main artery coming out of the heart) will usually rip loose from the heart. For a few beats, your heart continues to pump blood into the space around the heart and lungs, while no blood goes to your brain. But most of the blood vessels in your brain have also instantaneously torn loose. After that brief instant, your “weight” returns to normal – but blood is now eating its way through your irreparably damaged brain. This is what medical people mean to when they refer to “massive internal bleeding”.
Of course. The Brood, a “horror” film, imagines a woman with external organs outside her body, including her uterus, packed full with a completely formed child. Imagine that heart and all those blood vessels flying around inside the body like the tentacles of an infuriated octopus. blood everywhere. Spatter patterns not found in any forensic textbook. What would the police make of this? “Blood is eating its way through your irreparably damaged brain.” To think of blood eating, one has to imagine corpuscles equipped with teeth. And that each has a voracious will and appetite.
The next few seconds :
Mrs. Zig remained fully alert to the messages from her ancient mind. There were certain doors that had been closed to her, she mused. I could never have been a Rockette, she thought. I am much too short. Shorter now than when I was young. But always short. And short legs. How different life would have been with long legs. Or dark eyes. Or straight hair.
Could she have sung Panis Angelicus? She read that a 96 year old verismo soprano had. The bread of angels. She could scatter that now, like mana. She had not thought to bring bread on her trip back to her earth. Too late now. “The living bread from heaven.” Better to be remembered by that…be thought of as a miracle maker..than to be remembered as the oldest jumper. “Oh wondrous gift indeed!” This would remain a major regret of her life, one that she had four days during which the think about and to feel remorse. Imagine! She could have easily brought a box of breadcrumbs with her. Or salad cubes. Or a box of turkey stuffing. Yes, better cubes. Less likely to just fall away and disappear in the prevailing winds. End up on a beach as sand. No, cubes would be good. The “poor and lowly” would be able to find cubes and put them in a stew or a salad or just eat them as is. They are often seasoned.
No, she would not have a career as a verismo soprano. That was never in the cards. Sometimes you just have to face your limitations. She didn’t have the equipment to be a verismo soprano…..just as she didn’t have what it took to become a Rockette. Her legs were short, she thought again. She stood about as high as three ceramic gallon plant pots. Her neck was not swan-like…more Corgi-like. Her arms did not flutter like a butterfly; they flapped like elephant ears.
But such restricting features did not discourage. She could, still, be a verismo writer or speaker. Even after death, she would declaim, pronounce, and sermonize in her manuscript if not with her singing voice.
In the air. Continuing the momentum of the free fall, this dawned on her. Pay attention, she told herself.
In the next several moments, she had a good look around. She couldn’t move any part of her body, could not swivel her head about, but the view was, nevertheless, panoramic. The earth below was composed of solid patches of color, predominantly green. Some areas of what she supposed were forests looked like clumps of broccoli. Others were deep brown and still others bright yellow. She thought she could make a quilt of this design…with these colors. It would be beautiful. No one of her friends or family would appreciate it, but she would enjoy it as a “lieu de memoire,” as the French historian calls such objects and constructions. It would be a physical manifestation, a memorial, that would contain all that, for her, was worth remembering.
But, no, there would not be time for that. She would make sketches, and perhaps apply a little color to them with her box of pencils. These are the sketches that became marginalia in her manuscript.
In the next seconds, she realized that there would never be peace in her time. Long-simmering hates and greed for land and other resources had recently blossomed into wretched, deadly confrontations that were incredibly medieval in tactics and consequences. These full-out wars were not confined to one geographical area, but were raging here and there around the globe. They had become more extreme as land thirsted for rain, cities flooded, fires destroyed huge patches of forests, and animals, confused and terrified, were dying or refusing to reproduce. No, she would never see peace. This was a disappointment.
She had a sudden craving for Bailey’s Irish Cream. This was no surprise.
Would this never stop, this parade of thoughts? She wondered. Then a clear image of a lemon meringue pie appeared. It was her first successful meringue and she was still a kid. The family often called for these to be produced. Those and custard pies. She was the pie queen in the family. (Marilyn Monroe, she remembered, began her career as an artichoke queen.)
But bread, the family seldom requested. Her first loaf failed to rise. It was a flat slab of undercooked dough. It looked very much like an adobe brick from an ancient pueblo. Same color and shape. Perhaps the same texture. She fed it to the little boy she was babysitting. He had gas for days. No one, save her, knew why.
The Yule log. Another success. Every Christmas eve she produced one, ablaze with candles and solidly happy in a bed of holly and blue spruce branches.
Her father was sent out in the snow one year to search for cardamom and saffron, her baking essentials that year.
Mistletoe.
Images and memories were coming faster now.
She reflected upon her strange thoughts….the trivia that marched ceaselessly through her mind appalled her. Is this what people talk about when they talk about having your life pass before you at death? She had thought she might see high points or special events and important people.
She was getting pie and saffron. And cozy rabbit triplets.
In the end, she thought, it is all trivia. Here I am free falling above the earth and will be remembered as an old jumper, not to be confused with a raggedy sweater. I will not be remembered for my lemon meringue pie or my good housekeeping.
At life’s end, she thought, there is no applause or “well done.” No report card. No grading on a scale of 1-10. No A for achievement, C for conduct, B for decision making. Maybe an A for attendance, just showing up.
No blue ribbons. Texture: fine. Excellent fluff. Fully baked.
A boring exit with no curtain calls and no bouquets.
She wouldn’t be doing this show again, thank you.
The parachute opened with a suddenness that tingled her spine and caused her to be suddenly and fully present to her situation.
Fade out John Cage 4’33”
She must be at about 5000 feet above the earth she reckoned, from what she had been told in training.
All downhill from now on. She began to sing to herself:
“Isn’t it a lovely ride? Sliding down, gliding down Try not to try too hard It’s just a lovely ride Now the thing about time is that time isn’t really real It’s just your point of view How does it feel for you? Einstein said he could never understand it all Planets spinning through space The smile upon your face “…..
James Taylor. She remembered his name. She remembered the lyrics. Claim a small victory.