A GHOST VOICE

cat on a log

I walk slumped forward with head down on the way to the car. I feel the way I walk and it's like you see in newsreels of people down and out as far as down and out gets. Cannot hold the head up, living in the mind so deeply that visuals are shut out. Just look at the ground where you're walking. Sometimes I feel like I'm walking like old Chinese people I see in movies, walking in what looks like a kind of short-paced shuffle compared to our American long-gait way of walking. That's how I feel I walk now. Head down, shuffling along, uninterested in anything outside my head, my head dwelling in what I want that I can't have, like my closest friend back.

The netflix film for the day was Shine A Light, the Scorcese film of a Rolling Stones concert at the Beacon Theater in NY, 2008. With Tapo on my lap, it carried me out of my mind. I've loved the Stones since the first song I heard by them, Time Is On My Side. It had the same affect on me as the first time I heard James Brown's, Try Me, and Slim Harpo's King Bee. I lost touch with the Stones' new music over the last 30 years or so, since about the time of Some Girls. Most of the songs they played were familiar. My musical interests changed. When punk started in 75, it took my attention away from what they now call classic rock, which they didn't even play it on the radio in its day. But every time I hear something by the Stones, I listen with satisfaction.

It was the distraction I needed. I was constantly fascinated by what an abstract guitarist Keith Richard has become. He seemed to me to be doing something with his guitar like Monk did with a piano, looking for the chords and notes to play around the melody in a way that carries the melody by suggestion. I was thinking of Mick Jones of the Clash andTom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, how they took guitar playing to total abstraction. No melody, just sounds that can be made with electric guitar strings never heard before. Morello is more like a gymnast with a guitar than a picker. Richard is a picker. He and Ron Wood have played together so many years they've become one. The whole band. They work together perfectly from 50 years experience. Early on in the show, Keith Richard stepped up to the mic after a song. He said to the audience, "It's great to see everybody. It's great to see anybody." He's not much to look at, but his pickin makes up for it.

One moment in it I'll never forget. The Stones had Buddy Guy, blues singer and guitar picker, for a guest on one song. Guy and Richard played in and out of each other, Ron Wood in there jamming with them, Jagger wailing blues harp. They came into an incredible, very intimate jam of master guitarists / master musicians, nobody outdoing anybody, because they're all the best, and they took it all the way. The song over, Keith Richard took his guitar off and handed it to Buddy Guy saying, "It's yours," and Buddy walked off stage with it, meaning, I imagine, Richard gave it to him in memory of the jam. I'd guess from the looks of the guitar that it once belonged to somebody they both respect. Ron Wood looked at the guitar in Buddy's hand, recognizing it with a look of approval that said something like, Keith would do that. Charlie Watts, the drummer, looked on in visible approval too. Every one of the musicians fell into a zone during their jam only musicians know about and they sailed. It had the energy of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie together. I'll watch that jam again before it goes to the mailbox in the morning. It was a jam I believe every musician would appreciate, even ones that don't like rock or blues. It transcended genre and became universal.

You know what I know that I'm avoiding going into missing TarBaby like I did the day after Jr's funeral, went off completely away from it to give it a rest. After the BROC meeting yesterday, I was talking with Gary Joines in the parking lot before we went to the cars. I said at one point, I have so many people I love on the other side it makes me anxious to go over there. He said in his Gary Joines straight face when he has something to say that's not in fun, "Isn't that the way it's supposed to be?" I had never seen it like that. It fell into the drawer in my head of sayings I'll never forget. I saw what I already knew about Gary, that it has to be way high up there before it's over his head. He plays fiddle and bass in the band at the Jubilee.

I just now heard a faint "Mao," and ran to open the door, turned on the light and no one was there. I tell myself it was my own breathing. Today I was out in the meadow behind the house looking through the row of rhododendron along the fence, a place I didn't look yesterday. Twice out in the meadow I heard a faint Mao come from the direction of the house. I go look under the house and call his name, including El Gato, and nothing came back. I find myself looking for him all day. When I'm not searching with my eyes I'm searching in my mind. I want to allow for hope and don't dare.

Talked with a few people I know today and they told me their similar experiences, losing cats and small dogs to coyotes and neighbor dogs close to the house, and their grief. Every one of them recommended I cry as much as I feel like. It was comforting because I saw that these are just 4 people I talked with. It probably includes almost everybody else. I wasn't singled out. In this case, I don't think it's so much that misery loves company as misery loving understanding. The Regular Baptists showed me a man crying is nothing to be ashamed of or even think about. I've seen every one of the preachers cry openly at the pulpit as if they were at home--they were at home. During foot washings everyone cries. It's what we do in sorrow and joy when it's past containing.

I feel like the tears in grief are attempts to hang on to the beloved. I believe that's what I do. This morning I woke feeling good and then felt guilty for feeling good. I think that's when I got it that I'm using the sorrow of the grief to hold on to an illusory tether, pulling him back before he goes completely out of sight. It was the shock that knocked me down. It challenged everything I believed I understood about death and dying. It showed me my mind might think it gets it, but my heart does not. I've become so tender hearted in my old age I'm like a child too young to be taught that it's not ok to feel what I feel. I don't mind. I like it.

POP QUIZ

tarbaby first day home from hospital

Awake all night. Bawling overtook me and it hurt deep inside so much I got up from the bed and made myself stop it. I was squealing like a child begging, pleading with God, who knows all, to please help me find TarBaby so I can feed and water him and get him to the vet. Through the night I confessed to Tapo that I am afraid. When I started to say it, I held it a moment remembering that I thought I didn't have a great deal of fear in me. I have it. That may be why the crying hurt so much, it was coming from fear, fear TarBaby was dead or would not recover if found alive. I started to say to Tapo, I'm afraid TarBaby is not coming back. It came out, "I'm afraid," and realized I was. Very afraid. Afraid and bawling like a helpless child, no one to turn to but God, and God didn't give any sign of paying attention, as far as I could tell.

I heard myself making high-pitched squeals like a child, pleading, begging for any kind of help, just help me find, guide me to TarBaby. I knew I was calling on God, from the heart, to beg for something I want for myself, TarBaby back, the kind of prayer that doesn't carry a lot of importance, but at the same time I know God knows the fullness of my relationship with TarBaby as a cross-species friendship. "This is not a good time! I can't stand it!" Over the last 5 months since I've been home from looking after Jr, TarBaby and I grew closer that ever at a fast pace. We came to a place we automatically understood each other. I was seeing myself suffering over attachment, wanting, wanting TarBaby back. I wanted it for me. It's one thing to bemoan a cassette tape that slid off the seat of the truck into the space on the floor between the seat and the door. One day I opened the door, my Wade Mainer tape fell to the ground with The Cat Came Back on it and was gone forever. It's replaceable if I want to get another one. But TarBaby is a spirit, a soul, a being, a feline being.

I see myself going against what I believe that we go when it's our time. I didn't want this to be TarBaby's time. Still don't want it. I fell into a state of passionately going against a great deal I hold true, because I didn't want it to be so. Undo it, God. You can raise the dead. Then I get an image of a 6 year old child in Iraq whose entirely family was killed when a shell hit the house by mistake and she's the only one to survive. I was getting with myself, asking if I deserve to have my miracle prayer answered any more than she does? She's not getting hers answered, so why should I think I'm more deserving of God's special attention than this instant orphan. I said to myself, "When it comes to selflessness, you failed that test."

In first light, I was out getting my shoes wet in the dew searching, calling TarBaby's name, breaking down into tears, calling to Heaven for help, and kept on searching. I went to the different places I thought he might be and he was not at any of them. After an hour of some of the best exercise I've had in over a year or 2 I came back to the house and talked with Carole on the phone awhile. Then another walk to look at some new places I had not thought of before. At 10 Jolene turned up by herself. I yelled GIT at her, waving my arms. I picked up a stick and threw it in her direction, not to hit her, but to make her think I was trying to. I yelled at her, "I'm not your friend any more." That didn't feel good to say. I knew it was nothing but confusion for Jolene. Killing a cat is not cause for guilt in her. She looked at me confused like. When I pitched a long stick straight at her, though caught by a bush half way between us, she took off running and went back home. I felt bad doing that without being able to explain. I did her like she did Martha; one day I'm no longer her friend and turned aggressive.

I don't believe Martha was involved, because she wasn't here that day, but she and Jolene have become killers. They're not going to kill Caterpillar and Tapo. I don't like having to turn my back to Martha too, but I have to. She loves me so much, and I love her, it's going to hurt her again after Jolene's rejection when she gets mine too. I don't want them around here. Any time I see them here, I'll run them off. It won't be long before they run when they see me, which doesn't feel right either. But I don't know what else to do to keep them away. It's surely a confusion to them. Jolene looked at me puzzled the whole time I was acting so unpredictably. She kept watching me to see if it was temporary or would last. She'd back away and watch me. Back away again and watch me. At first she started running from me in play, like I was wanting to play. But it never became fun.

These dogs have been my friends for several months. I'd come to love them. Now it's all changed because I believe Jolene killed TarBaby. To him, that's nothing. To me, it's a very big deal. And in this relationship, like Jolene's with Martha, I'm dominant, not your friend any more, get away from me or I'll hit you. I don't like it, but can't find any other way to keep them away from Caterpillar and Tapo. Sitting down for a conversation won't do it. I have to stick with it. When I'm at their house, I'll be good to them and we can be friendly there. But not here. We'll settle into a new kind of friendship, only at their house. They are not welcome here. I don't feel at all good about it, but I have to protect Tapo and Caterpillar. That's more important to me than the relationship with the dogs, which, actually, is important too. The cats were here first by a dozen years. A line must be drawn to keep Caterpillar and Tapo safe. This is the only line I can see to work with self-willed dogs that have tasted blood.

The second search didn't find TarBaby either. I found myself walking in the woods repeating his name over and over, a casccade of tears running down my face. Giving up that search and accepting that he is more than likely dead in a secure hiding place, I drove to town to see Mary at the Hospice office. I had 20 minutes with Mary because our monthly BROC meeting was next. I went over this complexity of losing TarBaby suddenly to a dog I trusted, mixed with the overwhelming wave of missing Jr, that started with a simple urge to drive down to Whitehead to see him like I did for years. I explained to her how I found myself squealing like a child bawling. I'd never done that before. It sounded like a helpless child. I wasn't ashamed of it, because I'm ok with crying. It showed me I was struck deep to the core. It was a measure of how much I love TarBaby, Caterpillar and Tapo. Every one of them is worth a face full of tears. They've given me so much joy and love over so many years, a few days of sorrow mourning their loss is like nothing on a scale.

A DAY OF UNKNOWN SORROW

elgato tarbaby

I don't feel good today in a whole lot of ways, but don't feel bad either. I forced myself to get outside and do some work with a shovel and to cut up some big tree limbs on the ground and throw them on a brush pile I'll be working on until the next rain when I'll burn it. The right-of-way people have been through here cutting limbs away from powerlines, leaving the limbs on the ground. I'll be going around gathering their leavings to put on the brush pile too. It seems ridiculous to be thinking about a brush pile in a subdivision. Back when we were working farms, brush pile burning was done quite a lot, the leavings after cutting up some trees for firewood. Now it seems odd to be doing something like that around here with Christmas tree patches and exurban houses, new cars up and down the road, like going back to the 19th century for a day, something that doesn't require a computer.

I've had the blues the last few days. I've identified it missing Jr, missing his talking, his way of thinking, his way of seeing. Today I called Mary Lee, the grief counselor at Hospice to make an appointment to get with her and talk about what I'm feeling, to keep myself reminded this is as natural a process as water flowing downhill. I want to talk with somebody about Jr. In my mind's eye I see moments from the last few months, those moments I didn't like at the time, but look back at now as a blessed experience. The little sponges on sticks like tootsie-pops with water in them to keep his mouth moist when he was unable to drink from a cup. At the time, staying with him was my commitment to take care of him to the last breath.

At the time, it was what I was doing, keeping him as comfortable as possible, mind largely in the present. From 4 and a half months later, I look at those last days, weeks and months as an enormous commitment by one human being for another. I didn't then see it as now. Then, it was immediate. It was struggling against service agencies and nursing homes that were a serious threat. Without a stubborn bull like me, they'd have got him. Perhaps what has hit me the last couple days is the enormity of that, how major an act it was for a friend. When he told me with just a couple days left that we're closer than friends, more like brothers, it took hold of me. It was the magnitude of my respect that made me want to do whatever it takes to keep him out of a nursing home. When someone I respect that much says we're like brothers, it means something to me. It means more as time goes by.

At the same time as I'm feeling this surge of missing Jr, TarBaby is missing. He's been gone over 60 hours. He has gone off for 3 and 4 days at a time rambling. He also stayed away about 4 days after a serious cat fight where he hid someplace and licked himself back. I have a concern about a dog attacking him, Jolene in particular. She had blood on her face yesterday from a nick in her ear, which I took for a groundhog bite, but it could have been a cat claw. I suspect Jolene, because she attacks cats, even at home. I've had to run her off from TarBaby a couple of times.

This evening I couldn't get it out of my mind that TarBaby was hurt or maybe dead. Not knowing what to do, I called my friend Kay in Ohio, who can touch in with animals in a psychic way. I told her how long he'd been gone. She got off the phone right away and went to see if she could get in touch with him. A half hour or so later she called. She said she had a difficult time reaching him, but when she did, she knew it was TarBaby by the light she's seen from him before. She had the sense he was hurt and hiding someplace. She felt like he was licking himself. And he's trying to get back to me. I felt like she was right. She said she's convinced he's alive. So I wait til morning light.

This could be a real problem in my relationship with Jolene and Martha. If it turns out to be the case, which I feel like it is, that Jolene attacked TarBaby, I'll keep them away from the house and from me. When they come around, I'll run them off, and keep on running them off until they never come back. And I'll keep the cats in the house during the day, which is the rule from this minute on. Jolene and Martha have killed every possum on the mountain. My .45 can make a racket that will set them running down the road. I'd never shoot at them, but it's the loudest noise I can think of to scare them out of their wits. This is just fantasy. I don't know what's going on, though I'm inclined to believe what Kay found, because she's done it before with all my animals. She was accurate every time. I have such a close psychic connection with TarBaby, not the way Kay does, but closeness by feeling, I'm wondering if I've been picking up the last couple days from TarBaby, what he's feeling, hiding, in pain, healing himself, wanting to get home, unable to make it yet.

Could I have been feeling TarBaby's situation unable to connect with where the feeling is coming from, getting it mixed up with missing Jr, which I've not been quite certain of? It was an inner sorrow I felt, feel, that I couldn't find where it was coming from. Now I don't want to sleep. I want to go out with a flashlight and look for TarBaby. I'd say he's within a radius of 200 yards from the house in one of possibly 5 directions. First light in the morning, I'll be going to places I suspect as I search in my mind the places he might be hiding through probably a sleepless night. The best thing I think I can do right now is remember the drama I created around the sheriff, the helicopter and men in 2 pickups. Let it go as a drama and wait until morning, because there is nothing I can do in the night but pray.

NOT SO SURE

faithful dog

I'm at a place where I feel like I don't understand anything that's going on. Looking back, I see there was a time when I believed I had some understanding, but that has gone away. What I think happened is I never had understanding and am coming to realize it. Relativity of perception undermines all the understanding I ever believed I had. I can remember in the beginnings of college, it was very important to have opinions, self-identification by opinions. I remember wondering why. It seemed to me an opinion wasn't anything. It might be connected to something in a very remote way. Because I understood it the thing to do, evidence of higher education, a sign of intelligence, what's expected, I set to having opinions about politics, about rock stars, about what other people should be doing, especially in the realm of government where I really knew nothing at all. I didn't even know what was, let alone what ought to be. But I think we should (fill in the blank). That's right, I agree.

I have a friend who holds opinions up so high they're like truth. Sometimes his opinions make me shift my gaze to outside the window like there's something suddenly interesting I see out there. I've never heard of an opinion even approaching truth. Opinions kind of pretend they're looking in that direction, but they're not. It's not about truth. It's about only slightly informed individual perception, often allied with what one is expected to think to circulate in a certain crowd. "I'm definitely against the war." "I am too." I found I clung to my opinions like they were important. Somebody disagree and I'd get my back up and question whether I really liked that person. I found that opinions often ran along class lines. Working class men have very different opinions from middle class men, who also have very different opinions from ruling class men.

Gradually, having opinions became a way of thinking. I also think it has something to do with being male. It is very important that a man knows about things, knows what he's talking about, has answers to difficult questions. These are things I grew up believing about becoming a man, until I got there and found men don't necessarily know what they're talking about. And answers to difficult questions? I'm not so sure about that either. I've seen men get all blustery blabbing about some nonsense that makes me politely go on listening, but wishing I was somewhere else. A man is required to have a tone of voice that says I know what I'm talking about, by God. This necessity for a man to have opinions is absolute.

In my early years in the mountain, I knew elder Millard Pruitt about 14 years until he died. I found him a brilliant man and one so locked down in opinions, he was stuck in place. He was born a Regular Baptist and a Republican, and he died a Regular Baptist and a Republican. That was his evidence he did not change. Not changing was very important to him. It was being Godlike, as God doesn't change. Often in our conversations he would get me all wound up with his right wing political opinions. One night after knowing him several years, I was driving home from visiting with him one evening. I sat in the truck furious because he had such block-headed opinions that were different from mine, so different there was no reconciliation. I started the car, fumed a few minutes and drove on out of the driveway wondering about letting Millard go as somebody I used to know, because we didn't agree on practically everything, except what was real.

I drove most of the way home with steam spewing out my ears thinking about Millard's support of fascists, Ku Klux Klan, and so on. I can recall the exact spot I was on the road, driving up Brown Road just after I left the pavement heading up the mountain. About 2/3 of the way around the first big curve in the gravel road it came to me. Opinions are nothing. They're not even air I can breathe. They're nothing whatsoever, based in nothing and about nothing. It's nothing more than the workings of the subjective mind attempting to identify with collective mind with opinions. When that came to me, my brood lifted, I lightened up to something like helium inside when my former belief about opinions fell away and I saw there was nothing to it. After that, I could listen to Millard go on about Reagan like he was the greatest there ever was next to the One there's no greater than. After the realization, and I do think of it as a realization, I could listen to every kind of opinion there is. It got tested the few times I was exposed to Rush Limbaugh, aware of his destructive force. Whenever 2 or 3 men say the same thing to me about Obama in the same words, I know where it came from, don't even have to ask. RNC propaganda.

I have to confess that I continue to carry opinions. It seems like a natural part of adult life. Everyone around me talks their opinions on matters and I talk mine. The difference between now and before is that I don't take them seriously. I talk them freely, like above, RNC propaganda. Of course, I think it's an objective accusation, when in fact, it's subjective. It may be right. It may be wrong. I honestly don't know which, but I think I do. Somebody who pays no more attention to the news than I do, doesn't have a right to an opinion, if opinions mattered. But since they don't matter, I can have all the opinions I want. When somebody tells me Karl Rove is the man, I don't get mad inside. I don't stir and stew and edit everything I say, attempting not to let it show I think that person is full of shit. I do, but I don't let it bother me. Neither opinion carries any validity, so I'm not going to get excited. I can talk with somebody about these issues as if they matter, but within I know better. Opinions are fun to talk, like action movies are fun to watch. It's mind candy. Feels good. Tastes good. It's me. It's MY opinion. Mine is right and everybody else's is wrong. It doesn't matter that I'm not the least bit informed.

Sometimes I listen to the Diane Rehm radio interview show on NPR where she talks with some intelligent people who don't throw their minds away having opinions. When somebody calls in and speaks my opinion, it sounds so ridiculous, I project thought to whoever it is talking: shut up. Perhaps the one aspect of her show I like the most is that it batters my opinions with information. Nothing like information to undo opinions. I've often considered letting go of opinions altogether, but I live in the world with all the other people. Having opinions is one of the subjects we talk about when we talk. We try to talk opinions with people who agree with us only, but sometimes the opposition slips in and ends up saying something like, "I'm a Republican." Then I say, "I'm sorry for you." I've chosen a fairly complex way of dealing with it. I go on having opinions and talk about opinions with my friends, except they have no power over me. They are nothing. Just something to run the mouth about. I love what the Australian Aborigines have to say about talking. The Creator gave us our voices to sing His praise, not to talk chatter amongst ourselves.