SAYING GOODBYE

giacometti

A few hours ago it came to me for the first time, of all my friends who have died, I've not had a conversation with any them at the end of their lives about glad-to-know-ya, or anything. It has stayed in my mind to the point I've almost come to tears a few times thinking about missed opportunities. At the same time, I can remember thinking about it, but feeling it presumptuous, or seeming so. I was with friend Jr Maxwell in his dying months. Even toward the end giving him tootsie-pop sponges on a stick soaked in water several times a day to keep his mouth wet and provide a bit of water. The times I thought about saying something like, I've held you the highest of anyone I've ever known, rationally more than emotionally, it felt presumptuous. It was saying, You're gonna die. I did not feel like he needed to be reminded. He knew it better than I did. He went with every day like this is what we're doing today. He had his own thoughts on his demise and needed no more. He didn't like anybody invading his mind. I never did with him like Hospice recommends, talk about death and God and Jesus, like nobody gets it about dying. The man was 87 years old. None of however many days he lived was spent in front of a television. He was baptized when he was 11. Grew up in Liberty church in Whitehead. We'd already talked about his belief. He said once he believed the Ten Commandments covered it all. Another time he said he prayed every day. Another time he said he prayed every day to be lifted out of this lifetime. 

giacometti

He didn't need a conversation about him dying. I went with the attitude that my behavior tells my meaning more clearly than talking. I felt like he spoke his version of the deathbed chat the day he said to me a few weeks before his mind went away, "We're more than friends. We're more like brothers." I felt his meaning. There was something to it. In one way of looking at it, close to his way at the time, all of his friends had betrayed him in one way or another in his last years. A niece shouted in his face one day, like louder is better, "Yer loosin yer MIND, Uncle Junior!" There wasn't much he could say. I said, "He doesn't need reminding." She was the same as the one who asked me on the day he died, "Where did Uncle Junior hide his money?" She'd already stolen so much from him, hidden money was all that was left of what she wanted. She wasn't the only one who believed he had hidden money. He had no money at all, lived as cheaply as I do. Every time she was in the house and he wasn't there, she'd find his liquor and pour it out. She thought she was stopping him from drinking, when she was only costing him a lot of money he didn't have much of. She, who lectured him about drinking as if from on high, was a pain-pill and "oxy-codeine" junkie. The ones who wanted money they believed he had hidden were suspecting me of being there to take advantage of him and get his money. They didn't notice their obvious motives were transparent. 

giacometti

Two half-great-nieces were the worst. Neither one of them knew him at all. I called them the Absentee Police. They dropped in for three minutes every month to inspect the house. One day they called Social Services and said there was shit in the bed. SS came to inspect. No shit in the bed. He knew they were there by, "Hello Uncle Junior," and, "Goodbye Uncle Junior." I'd see them drive up the driveway, go to my reading seat and pick up the book I was reading. They came in with such arrogant attitudes I learned to ignore them. They'd go all over the place inspecting while I sat and read. Going out the door, it was, "Don't work too hard TJ!" And I'd reply, "Don't worry about it." Calling them the Absentee Police was my PC way of calling them bitches. I saw one of them around five years later and was still so enraged I couldn't speak. I looked at the ground to say leave me alone, I don't have to put up with you anymore, and will not. Didn't have to put up with them then, though assessed it easier to let it go by than get more bitch-games going. I often remember what an aunt told me years ago, If you don't want it started, don't start it. In the time his mind was fading, a social worker said he seemed down that day. I told her he'd learned too many times who of his friends are not his friends. She looked at him for his assessment of what I'd said. He affirmed it with a nod. Then she turned sad. Every one of them had abandoned him or betrayed him. And then there were the surprises, the ones who showed they really cared about him, ones he had not known cared so much. 

giacometti

Toward the end, these were the ones I called to say if you want to see him one more time, come on today. One of the most moving moments for me was when I called his cousin, Richard Joines, the day before Jr's spirit left the body and told him today is your last chance to see Jr. He was there right away. He lived just over the hill, but two miles by road. They'd made music together, worked bulldozers on big projects together, known each other all the way along. That day, Jr was lying on the side of his bed farthest from the door, where he never slept. Jr was lying there, mind completely gone, body too weak to sit up, like a newborn baby aware of light and dark and not much else. Richard walked around the bed and Jr watched, puzzled by who this could be. He recognized him when Richard approached. Jr's arms went straight up toward Richard and I saw with my eyes two beams of light go from Jr's eyes to Richard's when Jr said, "Richard." The beams were like from a pocket flashlight. I left the room saying to self, this is for them, not me. Richard was moved deeply and thanked me from his heart later for calling. When Jr still had his mind and I had the radio show, I'd play his music from time to time and ask everyone who remembered him to give him a call or drop by. Those weekends he had phone calls all day and sometimes somebody from the past would drop in. Though I never spoke with him about how much I appreciated who he was/is, I was aware at the time of letting my behavior tell it. I asked people in the grocery store who knew him to call or stop by. Every call and visit gave a little light to every boring day waiting to die. He understood better than I did that dying is what we do.       

giacometti himself

*

BETWEEN HERE AND THERE

helen frankenthaler

A little bit ago, I was looking for somebody in the obituaries, faces and names, some familiar. The most interesting thing about it was noting that most of the people died younger than I am now. I'm in that zone where peers drop like leaves from a tree, one at a time, each one by surprise, an unpredictable sequence. In younger years, I dreaded this zone. Now that I'm in it, and have been in it at least a decade, I like it. I wouldn't be so casual about it if I were one to see death in the conventional way of the Peter Tosh song, Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. I remember hymns in church, Won't it be wonderful there, having no burdens to bear. Joy bells ringing. What could be better? And what do we fear most? What it takes to get there, dying. I have to confess to some apprehension about it. I think I've come to terms with it some time ago. I remember when it went away. I've come to see this side of the veil is consciousness, the other side of the veil is consciousness. The self called I, the conscious self that sees our dreams, the self that never sleeps, consciousness, remains the same this side of the veil and the other side, if it can be called another side. I suspect it will be different. The ones who have been there and come back say when we start the journey there's no looking back, like finding a secret door, opening it and seeing everything you've ever wanted and more than that. The light of unconditional love embraces like the mother holding her baby. Whatever. I don't project by imagination onto what it might be. I think I'll know it when it happens. I want cremation to be sure the soul doesn't have a body to cling to. Not that I have much question of soul wanting to stay with this body. I don't believe it will. I've an idea that no matter what is happening when it's time to go to the light, I won't look back. 

This side of the light, I feel like I am in light, too, having an earth experience, but not outside the light. I have the light of the sun, the light of life within, On earth, we live in light. We seldom give it much consideration. We have switches in our houses. Cars have headlights for night. Flashlights. Cities put out so much light their nimbus outshines the stars. I am consciousness in a human form at this moment. The mind distract's attention from the consciousness within that is too quiet for mind that rages like a tree full of monkeys. It's so quiet, it's like the sky. We don't pay it much attention, it's there, but we have other things to think about, unless we're operating a sailboat. I've come to a place in my own life, in my everyday life, that I don't care when that line from this side to that side is crossed. I don't want to leave my friends who are dear to my heart, but that's not my call. And I'm not really sure we leave anything. I'm looking into the unknown and see nothing, like the dark in a cave, absolute unknown. There are scriptures from all ages that tell what's on the other side, though it's in language you almost have to have the experience to understand what it means. How can we tell about any experience in a way that really conveys the experience? A young woman lawyer is driving through Winston-Salem on her way home to the mountains from visiting the prison in Raleigh. She's pregnant and locked down with her office, husband, parents, relatives, made her choices. Depressed that she doesn't have a life of her own. Only her car is her own. Drives by a dealership of a place that has just the car she'd like to drive, stops in, signs the papers, drives home in a new car. This is a brief outline of her experience, but nothing even close to her experience as she lived it within. 

brice marden

I can say I don't have fear of dying, but if a SWAT team broke down my door, big machine guns pointed at me, my hair would stand straight up from fright. I don't think I'd sit here calmly and say, "How you fellers a-doin?" Walking in the mud by the donkey den, I slipped and went down faster than thought. I know when falling not to put my arm straight out to catch the fall. I can be aware of that when the fall is slow enough I can think. When it's faster than thought, the automatic response is to put arm out. With time to think for a flash, I'll tuck arm in and roll. Maybe I can say when I have a split-second to think about it, I have no fear of death. Without that time for thought, I believe my automatic reaction would be fear. I don't know. Probably. Whether or not I'm afraid of dying is something I don't think I can know for a certainty about self. If I fell out of a helicopter, I'd probably yell all the way to the ground. Or maybe not. Might be too scared to yell. I think I'd more than likely at the same time be saying, "Oh shit, this is it," and start praying to open the door, here I come. From where I am now, death and dying is a big question. From the point of view of the ones who know the secrets of life and death, it's nothing, nothing at all, the blink of an eye. I think about it and I don't think about it. Going through the obituaries earlier, I was struck by mortality. I'll be featured there one day. Somebody will do like I did today, see somebody whose face I have known over several years, but never knew who it was, and say, "Oh, him. So that was his name." My neighbor, Allan, asked me one day to write out what I want done and said at my memorial. I said, "What? What do I give a shit? It's none of my business." I have not been able to get my mind around that. 

sol lewitt 

Come to think of it, there is one piece of music I've requested be played, Dvorak's String Quartet in E flat, Op. 58, by the Alban Berg Quartet. I keep the cd case attached to the will by a rubber band. the reason I chose this particular piece of music is it resonates with me, feels like I feel inside. I feel in touch with my inner self when I hear this thirty minutes of music. Everything I hear by Dvorak sounds just right to my ear. It's playing now. Pulls me into it like Prince. It's not background music. Puts itself right into my foreground. I may sit with it soon and do a visualization, see where it takes me. The few times I've done a visualization to classical music have been unforgettable. I start where I want to be. It's always sitting in the donkey meadow. Be still, hear the music, let something visual happen in the music, flow with it and see where it goes, not directing it, but following it like a leaf on a mountain stream. Good music, good humor keeps us going. Though I do very little physically, I have a full life going all the time. Even when I don't leave the house for days I never feel like I'm lacking experience. Too much experience is overwhelming. I get plenty of social experience on a trip to town. Today was one of the most beautiful days of my life. We had wet snow that stuck to the tree limbs that were cold, and melted on the ground and the road. Driving up the mountain, the leaves on the ground were wet reddish brown on the forest floor, and all the trees and branches, the pine needles were like spray-painted white. And a mild fog. Didn't have camera along. Had to remember it. I'll never see this again.    

robert mangold

*

AN HONORABLE ROGUE 2

vincent van gogh

This morning, having coffee, sitting at the desk with computer, I heard what sounded like mouse scratchings in the wall to my right. I saw this small table with a drawer I keep a lamp on, thought I'd open the drawer an inch or two if a mouse was maybe inside the drawer; I've heard mice won't stay in a drawer that is open. I pulled the drawer open about two inches and saw the business card of Lorne R. Campbell. It felt like he was speaking to me after the meditation on him last night writing. It wasn't spooky; I don't find such coincidences spooky, rather quite natural. Taking it for spooky comes from interpreting it from outside self, whereas I see it coming from inside self. Can't explain it, but I'm so used to it, I take no special note of such coincidences anymore. If it means his spirit came to visit me, I doubt it. His soul would be well established in a new body. He's been gone twenty-four years. I'd guess he's at least twenty, someplace unknown to me and anybody else. Last time, he was born in British Columbia to Scottish immigrant parents. They moved to San Diego, California, when he was eight. He grew up on Coronado Island the other end of a long bridge from the city, played tennis in high school. His senior year he represented his school for the city-wide tournament. For the final round, city champion, he was put up against a kid with some sort of physical impairment, and Campbell could not allow himself to beat the kid. Where's the honor in beating a cripple? He gave the game to the kid and let him be the champion. After school he took a merchant ship from San Diego to New York by way of the Panama Canal, late 1920s, was delayed in Panama for a six-month jail term, more than likely for something involving liquor and a woman. I forget the actual reason. I felt a sense of visitation when I saw the card, felt like he was thanking me for the consideration I'd given him writing about him, for the trust. I felt it almost as if he were in the room speaking to me.

 

vincent van gogh

 

I'm recalling something he passed to me leaving the body. He had spoken a few times of my weak self-confidence, something he saw I needed to work on. I heard him. By chance, I was staying a few weeks in Miami, painting, when he had his collapse in New Smyrna Beach, just south of Daytona. His wife was wheelchair bound, he called and asked me to drive up to take him to a doctor's office, a four hour drive. He asked me to stay with them. I saw two helpless people needed a hand. I drove to Miami, picked up my objects and returned to take care of things like going to the grocery store, whatever comes up, to have someone in the house who could function and drive the car, to pick him up from the floor if needed. It was pretty clear to both of us these were his last days. He needed rest, time to sleep. I helped to keep everyday life necessities out of his head while his mortal frame was waning fast. I knew this was his final days and knew just as well that the shit would start the moment of his demise and I'd be in it up to my eyeballs for at least a few days. It was one of those times I said I-can-handle-it with a fair certainty I could not. As long as I had my keys in my pocket, I was free. Pushed past my limit, all I needed to do was turn the key in the ignition. Having such a clearly defined exit I was able to handle it fairly well when the buzzards started flying in, two of her brothers, one a fraud of a chaplain in the Navy, the other one a vacancy with the television on and nobody home. It was obvious from the start they were there to be sure I did not confiscate the South African Krugerrands Lorne kept in a little safe in a closet anybody who wanted it could easily carry away, and it was never locked. I didn't give a shit about his damn Krugerrands. I didn't want anything, which nobody believed about me, because they, themselves, were there wanting. It was funny being under suspicion for what they were there to do. I could see it, they didn't know I could, and they kept me in stitches by simply being fake in everything they said and did, pretending sincerity like bad actors. Lorne's daughter arrived, who was my friend; we supported each other under the gaze of the buzzards. Her brother arrived and I left, given that she had support in him. They were the children of his second of three wives.  

 

vincent van gogh

 

The buzzards offered me Lorne's car, wanting rid of the nuisance of its negligible market value, which I declined, an old land yacht Lincoln with an excellent motor, in good physical condition, a good highway car, but I wasn't going to be driving about in Sparta in a Lincoln. The wrong people look. I didn't want to pay taxes on it. Didn't want to pay for repair parts, expensive tires. I just wanted what I had, a 78 Toyota pickup that stayed with me until the frame rusted away. I didn't want a land yacht. The time came very soon for me to get on up the road. My heart was heavy with grief after losing someone I respected way high up, and my reason for being involved was over. The buzzards were there to wrangle over money and things and a will. Not me. I was there to get the hell gone from there. I hit the road for Charleston, about half way to home, and visited my friend John a couple days on the way home. Next day we walked to a small movie theater that showed art films to see a film, I forget what it was. Walking back to the house, John was talking and my mind was reeling from recent experiences, deeply occupied. I really wanted silence. I let him talk while I noticed I felt something new in my walking. I felt something in the way I was walking I'd never felt before. I went within and felt the walking, asked self what was I feeling. Answer: self-confidence. I realized this was the mantle Lorne had passed to me, his student he had gifted his knowledge to and love for the people and culture of these mountains. I walked paying attention to the feeling in my gait, feeling the self-confidence in self that was conducting my subconsciously new manner of walking. The buzzards got their things; I was the one he gifted in his passing, a boost in the self-confidence he saw I needed. His thank you in spirit, for giving him the chance to rest when his energy was waning, came from the same place that called me to open the drawer this morning to see his name on a business card. The self-confidence never faded away. It continues. I drove home from Charleston in a new spirit, though in a state of sorrow, too. Nothing like the highway for processing a logjam in the head.  

  

vincent van gogh

 

I was grateful for the opportunity to be an assist to Lorne in a real way in his last days. My prayer for his passing had been that he would see it coming with enough time to come to terms with his life, the passing be painless, and that I be with him to perform prayer within. I drove home with the satisfaction that his soul had found its home in the light. He chose cremation, so there was no body left for the soul to cling to, though I knew his soul would cling to nothing this side of the veil. He'd reached a place in his life at age 80 where nothing was left for him here. His mind was on the verge of gone. His secretary, who was his mind and kept his law practice going, came down with cancer and died. The end of his practice. He knew he didn't have a lot of time left and moved to Florida to rest and get away from here, break all his habits, go out in peace, no funeral. He didn't want a funeral. He didn't want anybody at his funeral wanting to see him dead. He had a long list of people who wanted to see him dead. He wanted to trump them all and not allow them the satisfaction. I saw him dead, but didn't want him dead. He asked that his ashes be put in the New River, though I don't think any of them made it there. That was not my concern. The self-confidence was not the only gift he left me with. My fear of death fell away in that time. It just went away of its own, I noticed one day a little bit later that I wasn't afraid of dying anymore. I suddenly understood why, concerning the question to kill or be killed, Jesus would go with be killed. I believe if I were put into a kill or be killed no-way-out situation, I'd go with be killed. I also don't know that automatic self-preservation sees it that way. Do I really have that much rational control? I don't think so. I prefer not to test it. I doubt my mind has much influence on so basic an original instinct as self-preservation. Surprise doesn't allow time for rational thought. Like Peter Tosh sang, everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. My friend, Lorne, who just about everybody assessed to be bound for hell on account of general excess and never going to church, I saw go into the light.      

 

vincent van gogh himself

 

 

 

 

 

 

A FOOL IN THIS WORLD

masahisa fukase

It's been a lazy day, a couple of naps, no reading, nothing. I fed the donkeys, the birds, the cat and that was it. Anything remotely productive I don't want to do today. I allow myself such days, calling them days of rest. I believe in a day of rest as simply good sense. It's not like I do a whole lot, but mind runs all the time. On a day like today, even mind is at rest. I go around feeling blank like the home movie theater is closed for the day. It has only been in the last few years I've  been able to have time without mind front and center. I like that place of no-thought. I'm recalling when Jr Maxwell was in the time after his mind shut down. One night in his wheelchair rolling about the house, he said, "I need to go to the doctor!" emphatically. I asked why, "My mind isn't working. Something is wrong with my mind." This showed me for certain we are of two minds. His mind that did the active thinking shut down, but the mind that did the observing continued. In the time his mind was slipping away, I could still communicate with him. Allowed to flow of its own, he could carry on conversation, that is do the talking. When somebody else talked, he couldn't follow it. Asked a question, his mind fell down a dark hole he couldn't find his way out of. When somebody dropped by to see him, I advised them not to ask him any questions. First thing everybody did was ask him a question and shut him down. Once asked a question, there was no getting back with him for a while. He went out like snuffing a candle. I couldn't really talk to him, but I could listen when he talked. He was in dream mind, lived in dream reality. I thought that's a good place to be and I allowed it by not saying, "You really didn't fall through a hole in the roof." I'd say something like the roof is ok now and it settled his concern. He thought his car was still on the roof, when he stepped out of it he fell through a hole and landed in his bedroom. I assured him the car is now in its parking place, no longer on the roof. That was the end of it.

 

masahisa fukase

 

He had a niece who, fortunately, did not drop by very often. "Uncle Junior! Yer losin yer mind!" I'd say, "He knows that very well." She'd cook a big meal, pile mounds of food on a plate and put it on the table in front of him. "Ya gotta eat, Uncle Junior!" He couldn't eat that much. He said he couldn't eat it. She lectured him on the body's need for nutrition. He tried to please her. In a little bit, he was running to the bathroom to throw up. He'd hang over the toilet and heave in agony a long time. Then he was ruined for the rest of the day. Had to go to bed because he was ill. I allowed him his flow and went with it. When she came in the house, she shattered his flow every time, and mine. I had to come home a couple hours in the middle of the night while he was sleeping to take care of my own home life. She said, "I wish you wouldn't go off and leave Uncle Junior alone every day." I asked if she was offering to drop by a couple hours a day to sit with him while I'm out, "I don't like leaving him alone, either." No, she wasn't offering. End of subject. At his funeral, she said to me, "I know what you been through. I know how difficult Uncle Junior is to do anything for." I told her he was not the least bit difficult, "If he had been difficult, I could not have done it." She was the one difficult. First thing she said to me after he died, "Where'd Uncle Junior hide his money?" I haven't seen her since, and every time she comes to mind, I rejoice. I knew Jr awfully well, knew the story of his whole life, knew him well enough to find the wisdom I suspected in him was indeed there. He was a wise man. He never let it show, but he lived by it, understood by it. He called himself a fool, said his life is the life of a fool. He was right. I was also right. I think of him the wise fool. Later, I came to realize a wise man could only be a fool in this world.

 

masahisa fukase

 

Now, five years after his death date, my fondest memories are from the time his mind was gone. It makes me smile to remember him rolling the wheelchair around the house, getting stuck in doorways. The adventures in that time were unpredictable, except that they would happen. Many of them were funny, like the time he went into the bathroom and never came out. Eventually, I went to look. He had sat on the toilet with the seat up and was down inside the bowl, stuck. I was unable to pull him out. I called the hospice office, a nurse was there in five minutes. She eased him up out of there, cleaning him as she went while I looked on in awe that she had raised him up out of there without any effort, and when he was out he was clean. I felt I had a front row seat to the show that is the human mind. It helped me a great deal realizing he had fallen into dream reality. I could deal with that, because I suspect dreams are the closest we are able to come to "reality." In hindsight, the only thing I can think of that I'd do differently, I'd hold his hand more. At the time, I did not realize the immense importance of that small act. In the time his mind was fading, he was self-conscious about it and did not like to be seen so vacant. I learned to cover for him. When somebody was visiting and he was talking, he'd go blank mid sentence, I'd toss him a key word the moment I saw he'd drawn a blank, and it brought him back every time. It became so automatic nobody could even see what we were doing. Toward the end I felt a great deal of stress, down to soaking a popsicle sponge in water to get water to him and to keep his mouth wet. No matter how much sorrow I was feeling, a joy accompanied the sorrow until they became one, like a two-sided coin flipping in the air, a blur.

 

masahisa fukase

 

Looking back at the time in the past and other friends in the past, I see the time of looking after Jr the very best time of my life. No close second. I did not realize it at the time. I took care of him as I would the Master, as though he were the Master himself. In that light, it became devotion. The nurses at hospice would tell me from time to time what a good job I'm doing with him, and I never said it, but would think, I'm serving my Master. This is the opportunity of my lifetime. That was how I felt about it, how I thought about it, how I believed it. And it was indeed the opportunity of my lifetime. I came home to my own momentum at home in stasis. I thought I'd relax and let things fall into place as they will. I found an inner peace afterward that I never had before. It continues. I find my mind can fall blank and I enjoy the peace. Observer mind continues. My memories of Jr in that time when his mind was going and gone have a golden glow about them. I believe he was a gift to me as much as I was a gift to him. The time he said, I wish I could pay you for what you've done for me, I could only think, money would ruin it. I had what I wanted. He wanted to die at home in his own bed and I wanted that for him. He was too honorable a man in my way of seeing to end his life treated like lumber with nothing but a television. I did not want anybody messing with him who did not understand him. He was not of media mind in any way. Not many people in this time can understand somebody who is not of media mind. It's a different world. I was about to say I prefer it, but that's not so. I appreciate media mind to some degree too. Both in moderation. The  troubles I was going through then are as nothing now. Important now is that I earned his trust unto the very most vulnerable last breath. I never call what I did selfless. Looking at how deeply I've benefitted from the experience, I call it self-centered.    

 

masahisa fukase

 

 

*

 

FUNERAL RITES

alban berg quartet

I put on some Dvorak quartet music by the Alban Berg Quartet. I heard the ABQ driving home from town yesterday. They were coming on with a 30 minute piece just as I was driving up to park at home. In the house, I turned the radio on right away, and ABQ played for almost an hour. I have several ABQ cds, the ones I love most are the Dvorak quartets. While they were playing String Quartet in E flat, Op 51, I was sitting here just a few minutes ago thinking I'd like this to be played at my funeral. This and nothing else. If it plays out, play it again. No preacher. No singing. No announcements. My Bose sitting atop the closed cardboard casket on two sawhorses playing Dvorak by ABQ. Have a seat. Sit as long as you like. This is music I never tire of hearing. Dvorak by ABQ is some of the only music besides mountain music that can make me shed tears for the beauty of it. The song that made me weep the first time I heard it was Jascha Heifitz playing violin in Max Bruch's Scottish Fantasy. It threw me down onto the couch weeping. Only time that has ever happened. It's beauty wrung me out. Dvorak quartets bring tears of joy to my eyes. Especially with Alban Berg Quartet's crisp, clean edge. Back in the years discovering some classical music after high school, I found I was drawn to quartets way more than orchestras. A big bombast orchestra makes me want to go home. I like hearing the individual instruments, in ABQ's case, two violins, a viola and cello. Don't you love it when you buy a cd and the liner notes are in English, German and French.

 

alban berg quartet

 

I'm laughing at myself. Earlier, when the thought came about Dvorak at the funeral, I told myself with grandmotherly counsel, don't write about that. Then I did. The teenager that's going to do what he wants to do anyway. Arrested development. I don't have any problem thinking about such a thing as my own funeral. It's not important and it is important. It's not important to me unto totally nothing. I don't even think past my last day, because I don't want to entertain illusory notions that I can control circumstances after I'm gone. I don't want to control any circumstances but my own while living. Can't imagine wanting to control anything after I've left the body. The funeral is a ceremony in a quiet way over somebody who left the body. I don't worry over the cold grave or the crematory fire. Best to get rid of that old mortal frame before it gets nasty. I know for genealogists of the future a gravestone makes their research easier. But I'm thinking I'll let the death record in the courthouse be my tombstone. I'd like cremation and the remains thrown on the ground in the woods. Be done with it all. I do not agree with our Egyptian way of mummifying a corpse and keeping it in an underground vault. I always remember the time at the table with Jr Maxwell and Jean Phillips. Jean was making her case for why she wanted to be buried. I made my case for cremation with brevity, I want to be fertilizer. Jr said, Y'already are. How could I not miss somebody who could tell me that and not make me mad, but make me bend over laughing? I miss both of them every day.

 

lights

 

I don't like to make Thanksgiving pronouncements of what I'm thankful for. It's like asking me what my favorite song is. All I can say is, What? Like New Years resolutions. I quit that a long time ago. It's a fun thing to think about when you're young, and then you find out there is nothing to it. You can't keep a resolution a week. And so what? If I want to make a resolution, it will be any time of the year. New Years is probably the worst time to make a resolution, because it comes from outside self instead of inside self. Or it could go all the way back to Neolithic. I saw several different people on facebook told briefly what they were thankful for. I'm grateful, thankful, that the fires associated with global warming have not started in these mountains yet. Nobody wants to hear that sitting around the table at grandma's house when everybody is supposed to be happy and you're supposed to act like you're on tv and in church at the same time, only say happy things. Wha'd'ya gonna do? Watch football on tv. What else? I did all that with my friends. We didn't talk about global warming or boycotting Walmart. Justin had killed the black coyote. It hit the ground dead. He showed it to me in the back of his pickup. First coyote I've seen up close. A female. What a beautiful dog, was all I could say. We agreed we'd both like to have a dog that looked just like that coyote. We remarked at how they look like a cross between a fox and a wolf. I said a prayer for its soul inwardly. Whether anybody else thinks that's important, I don't care. I do. I was the one there. So the coyote got it's soul prayed for. It had such a beautiful face I wanted a dog with that face. Maybe in Gloryland she will be one of my pets.    

 

blue jays in the snow

 

I'm remembering Jr living up to his last day believing he was going to get better, recover and be ready to go again. To talk about dying was of no interest to him. I didn't do any of the hospice counseling about dying, nor any of the religious thing about God and hereafter. I knew Jr was in touch with God. He was like me in that he didn't like to talk about it, because there wasn't anything to talk about. Like me, he saw it in living your life every day. I didn't have to talk to him about making him see God the same way I do. He had his own vision. I don't recall that we ever had a conversation about him dying. He didn't feel like there was anything to say. I didn't either. He had his will in order and that was the only thing important. One time he said to me he didn't know if he was going to heaven or hell. I said, Hell wouldn't have ye. He looked at me for a moment with an eye that was looking to see if I was being smart with him, and he saw it. A smile came over his face. I meant he has too much light in him. I told him he'd bounce offa hell like spit off a hot skillet. I didn't feel like Jr needed any counseling on dying and everlasting life and making a drama of it. He wanted to slip on out and that was what I wanted for him. It's what I want for myself. I don't want a preacher asking me if I've received the Lord as my personal savior. I'd be laying there on my bed thinking, What the hell's it to you? Get out of my face. Let me be in peace. Very first thing upon Jr's soul vacating the body, I was asked by the ones who had come to the house if he was saved. I told them he was  baptized where the bridge is now in Whitehead by where the old mill once stood. Women on the phone. The one who kept the church record found the date he was baptized. All knew you had to be saved before you can be baptized. All were relieved for Jr. Everyone relaxed, the big question answered.

 

seen over alleghany county

 

 

 

*

 

ROLLIN DOWN THE RIVER

     oh

Hearing myself talk over the last couple days I hear old-time preacher Millard Pruitt in the pulpit. He lived in a place where he could die any day over several years, and kept on going, heart attack after heart attack; his doctor's medications kept him going. In the pulpit, he could set everybody in the house to crying when he talked about himself dying. He'd start talking, the people in their regular seats looking at him, waiting for the spirit to hit him, he talks about dying and tears run down everybody's faces. Then he had us where he wanted us, paying attention, and he went on with his preaching. I don't talk about dying in a way that makes people around me cry, or to get attention. Somebody asks how I'm doing, with meaning, and I give a brief outline of where I'm at in that regard. l don't pull tears or dwell on it. Yet, it's my theme of conversation in these days. I don't like to talk about it, because it's such a wierd thing to contemplate, passing of the ego with the body, all the physical and psychological and ego gone, self-identity goes poof, left with innermost spirit, the true self, the soul. I am curious to see how my innermost self operates in spirit form without ego. Will I recognize myself? Will I even be aware of self? About to take a look into the unknown some day, some time, whenever, I can't help but be curious. It's like getting ready to go to a party, imagining what it will be like, who will be there, assessing it beforehand. Get there and find out it is entirely different from anything I imagained.


I'm glad I don't see dying the way I was taught it in the Baptist religion. You don't know if you're going to heaven or hell, even if you're saved, aint got no assurance of nothing. You don't even know if God likes you. God the Judge on the throne slamming down the gavel: GUILTY! GUILTY! GUILTY! God the guilt provider. Better watch out, because God sees everything you do and is judging you as you go along, every detail, even your thoughts. There's no place to hide from God. Then there is the devil, worshipped by Baptists as a force right up there with God. Millard Pruitt, preacher above, told me that the devil created briars. I said, The devil is not a creator. That doesn't matter. He created briars. I hear baptists I know and they want to talk about the devil, the devil's power, the devil's influence. American Baptists are so focused on the devil in this time, I believe they're giving "him" power by focusing so much in that direction. Baptists are taking on the ways of the devil, approving shooting a doctor through his kitchen window because he performed abortions. Baptists believe that's right behavior. The devil believes it's right behavior, too.


I will not let a preacher or a belief system or anyone of any authority put guilt on me. Used to. Used to all the time. Then I learned better. It makes people mad who believe they have some sort of authority over me. They believe we need guilt to keep us from sin. I don't believe that at all. I believe guilt is used by the few to control the many. It's used by parents and teachers to control children and by preachers to control sheep. I believe it's a sin to attempt to make someone feel guilty over anything. I've been told by someone who embraces guilt for self and controlling others that we need guilt. It's good for us. Whatever. Going by the law of karma, everything we do comes back to us, the good, the bad, the indifferent. We almost never recognize when something comes back to us. For example, my doctor talks down to me, which automatically, without me even aware of it, makes me attempt to speak with authority in my voice to sound like I know what I'm talking about, to counter his projected belief that I do not. What came to him from talking down to me was me speaking up for myself. When somebody hurts you, what's your first thought? What you're going to do back. Can't stand to wait too long, so the return manifests fairly soon, if not immediately.


We get the payback right away from our expressions. We don't notice that the "debt" is paid in full, most often in just a few minutes, or a day or two. We go about feeling guilty over a debt already paid. Some people carry a lot of guilt and will carry it to the grave. Who, then is our judge? Not God. We judge ourselves, we punish ourselves, we demean ourselves in guilt, and for no reason. If you want to call the law of karma God, that's ok, put it all on God. God doesn't mind. But I have found an understanding of the law of karma, everything comes back, that for the first time I've learned what the word "sin" really means. Church told me a sin is "missing the mark," kind of like shooting an arrow at a target and missing. Rather vague, subject to interpretation. Taking away an objective way of looking at this theme, which is entirely subjective, I see that when the return is to our liking we call it good, good luck, good fortune. When it is not to our liking we call it bad; "If it wasn't for bad luck I wouldn't have any luck at all." There's no "luck" about it.


For duality sake, Christendom made "hell fire" the opposite of heaven. The Chinese saw the duality as heaven and earth. I'm more in line with that one, spirit and physical. Hell is an invention of the human mind. I can hear the baptist reaction; I better watch out, cause the devil already got his hooks in me for questioning authority. Baaa, baaa, black sheep! This is where I have the hardest time around Baptists, who like to keep me reminded of the devil. Yet, at the same time I know the Baptist religion well enough to see that it really does have a spiritual dimension available. I'm not able or willing to do the straight and narrow tightrope for any preacher. When I go to the liquor store, I park in front. I've also seen a lot of self-calling in the Baptist religion. Originally, in the Baptist way, God chose who would be a preacher. Since that old way is gone, now preachers call themselves and lay it on God. Self-called preachers I don't trust at all. That's not entirely true. Some have "it," the spirit, and some don't. I get it before very long getting acquainted with one. I have to say of the Baptist religion as I would say of the Catholic religion, or any other, it has it and doesn't have it, both. Just like me or any other human; has it and doesn't have it. Duality in action.


I don't believe in the "straight and narrow" way. I go with the meandering way, the way of water in a delta. The closer water in a river gets to its transcendence, the ocean, the land is flat and water meanders here and there into several small rivers to the sea. I don't know where I am in my flow from springs in the mountains, over waterfalls, through rivers, some places fast water, some places slow water, rough water, smooth water, then in the deltas it moves slowly and meanders this way and that, seeming to be without direction. Sometimes a delta is even a kind of labyrinth for the water flow. But the water flows and keeps on moving. This image pictures my own spiritual path a great deal better than a tightrope. Walking a tightrope is a clever trick, but it doesn't allow for the flow of the spirit as a metaphor. For me, the way of the spirit is something to relax into, not to intend into or will into or force into. It's about relaxing into the flow of the spirit (the Tao) like a leaf on the water in a mountain stream. And, like along a creek or a river, a tree has fallen into the river from one of the banks. Debris floating down the river gets caught in these places that stagnate and get nowhere, until a storm comes and unties the knots of stasis, setting everything free to continue on their journey. Maybe sometimes our emotional turmoils untie some of our interior knots.


That's my interpretation. A Baptist preacher would likely say I'm listening to the devil, which makes it all the better for me. "The devil," of course, is anything not Baptist doctrine. Though I throw off on the Baptists, it's like talking about family. It's from the inside, so it's ok. Nothing has ever struck me like some old-time Regular Baptist church meetings and Primitive Baptist, as well. They're the same, except Regular Baptists have notes in their song books and hold by doctrine predestination (Primitive) or free will (Regular). I've heard convincing arguments for each one, and just as convincing an argument for not-both. I do see "predestination" in my life, karma, and I do see free will. I have the power to do what I want to do. With free will we learn to control what we want to do until it's safe to self and others. In predestination, God picked me, I didn't pick God. That's how it worked out for me. I do both. I also don't worry over it. It's splitting hairs and it's getting too serious. I don't see that the spiritual path is about serious. I am seeing more as I get older that the spirit is light-hearted like a chickadee and flows like a kayak in a river with consciousness guiding it around and over rocks, making decisions along the course of the river, avoiding hang-up places and walking around waterfalls. I can't see it any way other than both. I can't join either one of the churches, because I cannot lock down to the doctrine. I don't believe the virgin birth either; another doctrine. Therefore, I stay on my own with my Master to guide my kayak, rolling on down the river's meandering course to the sea of love, transcendence, piercing the veil.


*

IN THE WORLD NOT OF IT

rebecca ward, electrical tape

It has been an odd day. It started at doctor's office being told that the Sunday afternoon incident was not a heart attack. It was something that happens in my heart regularly; it's just that this time it hit a glitch or something. I didn't quite get it. But I got it enough to not be alarmed. Not alarmed, but need to pay closer attention. Maybe. I don't know what pay closer attention means. If it means obsessing or becoming a hypochondriac about it, I'd prefer to go on. I'm not going to worry about dying. Like the day a character I know, in response to "How you doin?" had to answer with all the profundity he could put into it, "I'm dying." He was so profound about it I bit my lip not to say, "Oh no. That's never happened before to anybody. And it's happening to you? Wow! How special you are!" That was my inner bitch. I try to keep her under control. I don't want to get profound about it. I want to look at it in practical terms. The unknown makes it kind of spooky, but there's not really any unknown about it. We have scriptures from all over the world through all time that describe the same about afterlife. I don't pay attention to the Christian fantasies about Hell and Heaven that were compiled over the centuries from art and fiction. Like the Rapture is a 19th century invention. It is not scripture.


If it's said we have heaven on earth when we don't have any worries, desires or guilts clouding our consciousness, then it's within reach in this lifetime. It appears that consciousness itself might be that place we call heaven, or Home. In this time of my life, which in the traditional Hindu way is the time for a man to leave his family and devote the rest of his life to the Way, to the Pilgrim Way, with a guru or however one might do it. I understand why this time of the life is taken for a time of contemplation, understanding, moving inward. I feel in myself a need for quiet, for stillness, for acting on what I have learned from reading, seeing how scriptural guidelines are practical and have nothing to do with sacrifice. I've come to see scripture as explanations of the invisible world of spirit that is the world we live in. The scriptures give us the principles of the spirit world, possibly the ways of heaven in this world. I'm thinking that when I'm in the present moment, that's where the "kingdom of heaven" is. Jesus said it's in the heart. To be in the present moment is to have undistracted consciousness, consciousness so clear of concerns that one finds Home in the present moment. I don't even think about polishing the mirror so smoothly as to have no dust motes of concern on Home Sweet Home the soul. The point of clearing the mind of desires and fears is to come into the present moment of inner clarity. I'm not close enough to that to even think about it.


On the other side, I've an idea whatever dimension or "world" it might be has the same principles as scripture teaches is makes for a good life. Take it all the way, it can take you to enlightenment, ultimately. I imagine "dying" a kind of enlightenment. We've heard so many accounts of people who look up and see light and angels, their faces light up and their eyes close. I don't anticipate anything like that for self. I just imagine what happened Sunday, light-headedness, collapse to the floor, then overwhelmed by light like an abduction from above, following the ray of light upward. The other day I saw something about UFO aliens that we're looking for them in the macro. The suggestion is we'd have better luck looking in the micro. That opened up a new drawer. I've been seeing the same way of looking at the "spirit world" whatever that is. Maybe we can't find it because we're looking macro. Perhaps micro is a better direction to look. What's to say the proportion of our world is the same proportion of all other worlds. Once that opens up, it's a whole new way of seeing that is so expansive it's kind of intimidating. Back to Johannes Kepler. An interesting site: http://kepler.nasa.gov  The search for habitable planets.        


If the kingdom of heaven is in the heart, that indicates micro to me. It also indicates consciousness. Consciousness is nothing at the same time it is everything. If there is anything that cannot be grasped in this world, it is consciousness. I mean grasped by hand or by mind. Can't be done. Consciousness can only be experienced. It's with us all the time, but we're too distracted to have a look. It's like we're in an international girlie bar with flashing lights and techno that keep us dancing and looking. I think I'm closer to my own consciousness than ever in this lifetime, and see I am still quite a ways from it. Fortunately, Las Vegas is not between me and my consciousness. Thomas Merton and I agree that Las Vegas is the last place on earth I'd want to go to. Out here in the world, the madness for money is so crazy-making I stay out of it. There, the focus is money to the point of what I can't help but see is madness. I've had two chances to go to casinos, one in Atlantic City, one in Germany, and I could not walk in the door. It seemed to me a zone where money is the Only. It's that way enough out here in the world. It's suffocating enough out here. I don't want to go to the center of the universe of the god Mammon. Mammon is the god the world worships, which is why I focus my attention in the world not of the world. Las Vegas is the dancers around the fire before statues of their god Mammon. Spiritually, I see Las Vegas something on the order of the final scenes in Apocalypse Now of the people around Marlon Brando, General Kurtz.


I don't mean to preach, but that old testament god Mammon is the god America worships. They just call him Jesus and it works really well. Send us your checks and dollars, send us your credit card numbers, Jesus loves you, he wants your money for his ministry, hoodwinking more people for more money. Gold bathtub fixtures, gold-plated toilets, jewelry that would put an ox on its knees. Because God wants them to have it. God wants them to be prosperous. God wants them to drive a new cadillac every year. Positive thinking. Believe it so: it is so. Whatever. I'd not like to be the mortician assigned to fix up Tammy Faye Bakker for the casket with her makeup and getting the jewelry in place so it all shows. No false eyelashes in heaven, no crocodile tears. In heaven, gold is pavement, asphalt. St Peter might say, Why are you bringing asphalt? What god do you suppose hears the prayers of evangelists with gold toilets? Some of the prayers I've heard on television no god heard.


I'll go with God as consciousness, that nothing that is everything. Consciousness, the present moment, Home, answers the kingdom of heaven is within. It's in the heart (consciousness). The scriptures are about realizing consciousness, not about building churches, ruling people with guilt and asking for money in the name of God. Consciousness has nothing to do with gold, nor does it have anything to do with pavement. The animals are in the present. The birds, all of what we call nature is in the present. The difference between their consciousness in present is that it's unconscious. We are wanting to evolve spiritually to being consciously aware of consciousness. This is what is meant when it is said we are unconscious. Our consciousness is clouded over by mind, by ego, by desires, by what used to be called the 7 deadly sins, distractions. For me, the spiritual path has been a matter of transcending distractions. I still have plenty, but a dumptruck load less than before. As one who identifies with the spirit before the body, I would have a very different view of dying than someone who identifies with the material world. When I look at myself as the soul, I see I am immortal. I look at self as the body and I am quite mortal. Looking at self as soul, there is no dying, only changing bodies, like changing clothes.


*

DEPARTURE DATE UNKNOWN

william wegman

In my mind today the song is Ella Fitzgerald singing, "There's a boat that's leaving soon for New York." It tells how I feel, like I have a boat to catch some unknown date in the future. I have the ticket, just waiting for departure date. It concerns me and it does not. For myself, I'm looking at possibly changing location. That's all it means to me. But to my friends, I will have vanished never to be seen again. That part bothers me. I won't miss this body and all its wants and needs. Suddenly, I'm looking at mortality, again. First time, I looked mortality in the face and found no alarm. Now I'm looking mortality in the face a second time and feel no alarm. This time, however, I'm thinking about taking care of some details before I get on the boat for whatever adventure is next. You might say, this time got my attention. Not to alarm, but to practical reality. It's not fear of death that is bothering me, but missing my friends already. I feel like I want to see all my friends and be with them at least for awhile, a period of appreciation. There are people I need to see I've not seen in a long time, people I care about as much as I care about the people I see regularly.


I'm having a fair understanding of what Jesus meant about loving neighbor as self, which I translate into my language as treat other people right. It's that "in the end" we find that other people are the very most important parts of our lives. I like my solitude, but I also need others to break the solitude. I like both, the balance. Solitude recharges my batteries as interpersonal relationships take energy. It's like the computer. I have been advised to unplug it and let the battery run down, then charge it back up. The idea is that the computer battery lasts longer running up and down the scale instead of staying up all the time. For me, time with others and solitude are important. Time with others I expend energy. Time in solitude recharges batteries. I like to hear other people tell their stories, say what they have to say. Knowing somebody is the same for me as reading a Faulkner novel, a really good living story. In the time of looking into the other side, the people in my life take a new level of importance. Maybe, too, it's that my friends are my treasure. If money were my treasure, I'd be looking at missing my fortune. I'm glad I don't have that disease. Carrying a body that needs clothes everywhere I go is disease enough.


Sunday I had what I'll call an incident. Like going to the floor from light headedness and puking really bad. I took it for food poisoning from my coffee thermos. Tuesday the "device clinic" at Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem read my "device" (pacemaker/defibrillator) and Wednesday morning I have a call from doctor's office to schedule to see doctor first thing in the morning, upon his arrival at the office. This tells me the Sunday afternoon incident had to do with what we call a heart attack. I felt no pain in the heart region. Possibly the pacemaker took charge and walked the heart through the "attack." Maybe the heart just stopped. I don't know. I've an idea I'll be finding out before very long. Ever since the phone call from the doctor's office, I've been feeling mortal. I find that in my mind I tend to identify myself immortal, considering the evolution of the soul, and when this particular lifetime comes to its stop sign, mortality becomes an issue. Up until then, I feel like dying is not an issue. It's like the word rights. Our bill of rights lists our rights according to government. Inside myself, I feel like I have all rights. Everyone else does too. In like manner, because I (soul-self) am immortal it comes as a shock to learn the body's mortality is at hand. It doesn't mean soul (self) is coming to an end. Just changing horses. Chaning clothes. Changing.


I feel no urgency about leaving the body. The only urgency is my friends, leaving them like getting on a boat to someplace else. And there is Caterpillar. I'd prefer not to leave her alone. I'm thinking it probably is time to go on, because I find that this phase of my life is the best that I can recall. It's like I've learned how to live my life, so it's time to go. Finally come into appreciation and it's time to go on. That seems to be how it is. Like maybe it is that appreciation I need to feel before going on. Get there, feel it, and go. Strangely, I don't think of it as dying and don't think of it mortality. It doesn't seem to be anything. Just a transition from one state of being to another. It's like a ufo abduction, maybe abduction by angels---Up in the air, Jr Birdman. I find I feel a sense of loss for my friends I'll be leaving behind, and feel their loss for me, how, for a few, it will be painful, and for most just another obit. "Did you know him?" "Yeah, he was that crazy old shit lived up there at Air Bellows." "Which one?" "The one in the old schoolhouse."


Speaking of schoolhouse, did I learn anything worth carrying into future lifetimes? I think I learned quite a lot. This lifetime was a learning lifetime. Learning is the one thing I wanted to do in this lifetime more than anything else. I learned first hand, second hand, third hand, however experience could be found. I wanted to learn what was real, not just information. Information is one thing. Knowledge is another. Wisdom is yet another. All my life I'd wanted to meet a wise man, and found the wise man in Jr Maxwell, the only man I have known I can call wise without hesitation. I've enjoyed knowing a wide variety of people, a wide enough variety that I found my own place. By this time in my life I have found my people and my place. I know who I belong among and who I don't. In this period over the last 5 years, I have found that I am, indeed, stable in myself. Recalling a time 5 years ago a tough-guy set out to intimidate me by telling me about myself. I laughed, told him I am comfortable in myself, I know myself, and I know for a certainty he does not know me, because he had just proven it by telling me he doesn't know anything about me, going by what he said. I was struck when I heard myself say those words. It was like someone else speaking for me.  It was automatic. It surprised me that I knew what I heard myself say. Even if this isn't the last day, week, month or even year, it's still close. I do need to start making provisions for my vacancy.


*

JEAN IN THE GLOAMING

big country bluegrass, by tj worthington

At this moment is a near-perfect stillness outside. No breeze. Time of day the gloaming, after sunset when the light comes from the sky itself. Indirect lighting. It has an evenness about it, no distinct shadows. I hear what might be a katydid or tree frog, don't know which. Might be inside my head. That's where those critters sound like they're coming from. It has a certain shrillness that defies direction finding; sounds like it is coming from all directions at once. Smoke detectors are like that. I despise it when they go off. It's always in somebody else's house, because I won't have one. The shrill noise is an ice pick into my ears and I never can find them by following the sound. One day my friend Jean called, she had a shrill beeping noise in the house and she couldn't find what was making it. I went to help look. It seemed like it was coming from the bathtub area, but when I'd put my ears there, it sounded like it was coming from under the house. Under the house it sounded like it was in the house. That relentless shrill beeping sound makes me crazy. I've known water pipes to make sounds, but not like this one. It became a mystery because we could not find a source.

After awhile, I thought I'd run the bathtub water and see if that might stop the sound. A little plastic crate with grandchildren's plastic toys in it was sitting in the tub. I picked it up to have it out of the tub when I ran the water. The beeping noise went with the toy crate. I took the crate to Jean. She dumped it out. The noise was from a child's pretend cell phone with a beeper in it. Jean took the battery out and threw it in the trash. I love it that it's moments like this, hearing the night sounds of the forest, I remember moments with Jean. Many moments in the course of a day turn my mind to Jean. She was one of the people God gave to me to appreciate. In the last week or so a couple different people have posted on facebook a humorous saying such as this paraphrase: Before you jump off a bridge believing you're crazy, look around. Maybe it's the people around you that are crazy. I saw that right away after becoming acquainted with Jean. Her family, everybody around her had her believing she was crazy. What I saw as I came to know them, she was sane and they were the ones that were nuts.

Our relationship started when when she was experiencing an oppressive browbeating from her preacher daughter. We were at the table at Jr's house, the three of us sipping and talking. Jr and I drinking white liquor and Jean drinking coffee. She was telling what she was going through and I passed a note to her over the table, like in school, that said, Just say no. She said, I can't. I said, You can. It's the first word you learned, one syllable, easy to say. She did, and it worked. It worked the next time and the next time. Suddenly, she started finding her life. Of course, the ones around her that were controlling her, manipulating her, stealing from her, browbeating her, using her unmercifully, hated TJ. Grandma's differnt--it's that damn TJ. Jean stopped receiving their abuse. I let her know she didn't have to take it anymore, she had me to back her up.

They rebelled for a few weeks, getting mean and nasty. The kids don't like you any more. They don't want to see you again. Then Jean goes weeping to TJ she won't get see her babies any more. TJ says, don't worry about it. I said she's just pushing you by giving you a vacation from her, thinking you can't stand having your own life for a day---in this time she's finding how much she needs you to take care of the kids that she's taken totally for granted unto elder abuse. She'll call when she needs you. And sure enough, she called, with a whole new attitude of grudging respect. At least there was that little bit. What I was objecting to in the way the people around her treated Jean was the absence of respect, even from the grandkids. She was the hen at the bottom of the pecking order with no feathers on top of her head; the other hens kept her pecked bald. She gave me credit for her liberation from being beaten down by family around her. All I did was write on a slip of paper, Just Say No. When she took it, I said, by the authority of Nancy Reagan.

When she said she could not say no, I felt the enormity of the problem for her. She'd been trained for a lifetime that she doesn't say no to any of them, ever, for any reason. In the past, the pattern had been that when she said no, she was sent off to Dorothea Dix or one of the other mental institutions. The visits were her punishments for saying no. She came to regard them vacations, getting away from the crazy people in her life, a chance to draw a breath without being told that's not how you do it. At least, the people in the institutions were being treated for their mental illnesses. One evening at Jr's table she started a sentence, Next time they send me off.... I said, You're not going to be sent off any more. She believed me. She took it I had a knowing, when what I meant was I'll lay down in front of the bulldozer. That's a kind of knowing. They will have to get past me to get to you. Jean came into a time of her life where she was relaxed with who she was. The more she opened up to who she truly was within, the more interesting she became, and I found her already interesting. Then she was diagnosed with breast cancer past operable. Choice: die in 6 months or go through chemo treatments. She chose to die. I supported her in it. We'd already talked at length about neither of us wanting to go through a year of agony on less than a 50/50 chance of making it, and then no certainty  if you do make it. Heaven can't be that bad.

A month before her spirit rose from the body I wanted to take her to an all day bluegrass show at the Mountain Music Jamboree in Glendale Springs, a few miles down the Parkway south. She was so loopy on pain killers she was floating about a foot above the floor. It was Big Country Bluegrass, The Wildwood Valley Boys, Micheal Cleveland fiddler was with them, The Blue Ridge Travelers from MtAiry, another band I can't recall the name now. The show ended with Whitetop Mountain Band. Both Jean and I expected Whitetop to fade into nonexistence after 4 hours of staright-ahead bluegrass, but they ruled. Whitetop Mountain Band put all that went before in their dust. They tore it up. Jean's condition was delicate as a two-week old kitten. On the road there, I told her at any moment, from this moment on, you feel like you need to get back to the house, we're gone the moment you say it and I will feel no regrets. I'd seen all the bands before but the Wildwood Valley Boys. I wanted to give her the assurance that the music was not more important than the last month of her life. It's meant to enhance that last month, not be a burden. I asked her to pick the place she'd be comfortable sitting.

On the way in, we passed Jeff Michael and Ramona standing outside, Jeff smoking. I spoke with them a moment and Jean, in her psychedelic condition kept drifting on. She drifted through the doors and on to the auditorium. I said to Jeff I'd better go see where she's going; I don't want to lose her. And I really did not want to lose her. I wanted her to stay on at least through my lifetime. I figured she'd have several years after me. I cherished our time together that night. It was our last time together and it couldn't have been better. The evening of the morning her spirit left the body, driving down the mountain to Jr's, I swung around the curve below Jean's house and the full moon was sitting perfectly on the peak of the roof. Already, I had seen Jean's smiling face in brilliant white light, happy as a cat curled beside a fire, radiant, letting me know she was doing all right. It's in the gloaming that I feel Jean's peace.

* 

THE KEY

          hillbilly sculpture by tj worthington

A moment yesterday of internal panic. I had backed into a parking space by Lowe's grocery store. A woman sat in the car beside me on the right. I know my car well enough now that I can easily back into a spot. I was watching the car behind me, not wanting to touch bumpers, and stopped where I estimated would be about right. I touched the brake. Suddenly, I was going backwards fast--there's a car behind me--hit the brakes. My foot is on the brake! What's going on? The woman in the car beside me had been waiting for me to finish my maneuver, then she moved forward out of her parking spot the moment I stopped. Very unsettling feeling. I was looking over my right shoulder. The car beside me moving forward gave the illusion I was going backward, like I'd put my foot on the gas pedal by mistake. It was unsettling that I did not hit the car behind. After about a second, I saw it was the car beside me pulling out of its parking spot. Immediately, I thought of Tolstoy's story, The Death of Ivan Ilyich. At the moment Ivan's spirit starts leaving the body, he feels a sensation like he is sitting in a train, thinking he's facing the front of the train, and when its motion begins, he started going backwards expecting to go forward. In my moment, it was about a quarter second of fear I'd ruined the front end of the T-bird behind me; get a town cop, accident report, insurance, major bother, insurance rate goes up. No problem. Just another optical illusion.



Even though I had my car under control, the movement of the car on the right threw me into a swivet: Oh no! Messed up my day! And just as immediately: it was illusion. The shock of wondering if I'd put my foot on the gas pedal instead of the brake was very much in the realm of the possible, even though I knew I had not. But I've learned from experience that my perceptions are not necessarily true. I mean true like a well-focused telescope, or an arrow fletched well. Curiously, at the moment I recognized what had happened, at the very split second, Ivan Ilyich came to mind. My association with that kind of perceptual error is dying. My immediately next thought: does this mean I'm dying? Is this my warning like the way animals sense an earthquake before humans do? Next thought: No. Don't be so dramatic. It was just a perceptual switcheroo. Of course, I'm going to die. I don't need a "sign" to tell me. I'll love the rest of my life that my doctor, when he diagnosed heart issues said, "You're gonna die." I laugh about that every time I think about it. He grew up Polish catholic, so he wouldn't have much understanding that in the Baptist religion I grew up in, the first thing you're given to KNOW is you're gonna die. I've known that very well from early childhood. You're gonna die. You're gonna die. Yeah. So are you, I wish I'd been quick enough to say at the moment, instead of turning the key in the car's ignition in the parking lot.



Immediate next thought was Country Joe in the original Woodstock film singing, "Whoopee we're all gonna die!" Yeah. So what's the big deal? What's to be sad about it? I suppose it's the unknown that makes it sad to think of someone close dying, and frightening to think of self dying. Just about all the people in the world are informed by half a dozen major religions that are the same at the core, but culturally different from each other. Like we people are the same at the core--the reason parables about sheep and goats in the desert apply to us in the machine age--though with different personalities, different experience. The different religions are collective personality and experience differences. After hundreds and thousands of years of misinterpretation by the human mind, which becomes a kind of cancer over time, the religion is threatened, because the spiritual part of our lives that religion symbolizes cannot breathe with the python grip of dogma, and fantasy for truth, mind. Like I cannot join a church that requires me to attest that I believe the virgin birth. I don't, and I don't see why I should. Just because a lot of people believe it so they can be acceptable?



A lot of people still believe the earth is flat and square. A lot of people still believe God made a clay doll, breathed life into its nostrils and named it Adam. Whatever. A lot of people believe a lot of things. Me too. I believe God is everything and nothing. I like for what I believe to be a result of my experience. I don't need fantasy. I'm satisfied this world as it is around us qualifies for fantasy enough. Perhaps it's why I like having what we call nature all around where I live. A chickadee on a branch in the rhododendron, holding a sunflower seed with a foot that is also gripping the branch, pecking at the seed like a woodpecker, is much more interesting to me than sitting in the left turn lane at a green light in Sparta, watching a continuous line of cars go by on Friday afternoon, waiting for the light to turn red so I can make the turn. I'd rather watch my feathered friends than walk the aisles of the grocery store, except that sometimes I see someone I've not seen in awhile. Like in the grocery store after the incident parking the car, I saw James Caudill, someone I met probably 20 years ago and remembered. Remembered for his curious mind. His daughter was with him, granddaughter too. Both had curious minds. We talked for quite a while. The chance encounter was worth the dreariness of a stroll through the supermarket, pushing a grocery cart like the urban homeless.



 Getting down to what I believe, since I don't believe what's expected of me, I'm going to have to start with a general definition of believe. Seems that to believe something is to say I don't know by experience, but for one reason or another, or a host of reasons, believe it to be so. Belief is pretty powerful, nonetheless, because it takes believing God Is to get "saved." I don't mean by church, but by the way of the spirit. Scripture after scripture says you must believe first, then the spirit manifests in manifold ways that are invisible, inaudible, and you get it. It's like it took believing God Is to become aware of universal loving consciousness that is intimately personal and happening all the time. It's like believing is having God's cell phone number. It's not whether it's a creative aspect of believing that matters, it's a simple thing like a key to a door that opens to fullness of life, understanding experience, an attitude toward life that one can live with comfortably. Belief as the key to the unknown. I don't see that believing "in" the virgin birth does any good toward anything but a correct answer on a checklist of what you're required to believe if you want to belong.



That doesn't mean I haven't learned from experience that Jesus is, indeed, who he says he is. By now, I don't think of that as something I believe. It seems silly for me to say I believe Jesus is who he says he is. I believed it in the past. By now, I feel like it is experiential knowledge. Not just Jesus, but Rama, Zoroaster, Krishna, Buddha, Mohammed, Meher Baba. Each one is "different" from the others only in the way each color in the rainbow is the rainbow itself. They are light itself. They are darkness itself. They are everything in between, itself. They have brought us the secrets of life and death, taught us the way to have a good life. What does it come to? Oughta, should, needta, gotta, s'posed to, and the big one: Better Not. The God I know isn't like that at all. The God I know is a lot of fun and a really good friend, the best, most reliable, most loyal. But I've only found that by throwing off a heap of cultural beliefs I was trained to believe along my way from childhood to present.



I could, in good faith, practice any religion, because the God I know is the core in every one of them. Muslims pray several times a day. Ok, that's what we do. Christians go to church. Ok, that's what we do. In my association with Meher Baba, I find my path is experiencing everyday life paying attention, allowing Creater to spray WD40 on the hinges of my heart to pry it open gradually with a pipe wrench in each hand. It's in my own heart I find the "reward." The reward is actual peace. Very real peace, not just the idea of peace. Absence of conflict is what I mean by peace. Minimal conflict inside, minimal conflict outside. This peace is the subject of all scriptures, how to get to inner peace. Duh: absence of conflict. The parables and teachings concern getting through our lives here on earth at peace with neighbors, family, strangers.



We are social beings like horses. Solitary confinement destroys us. Through the playground of "this world" we get there, to heaven in the heart, inner peace, a little bit at a time. When I say I have peace within, I don't mean completely. I mean compared to what it used to be. Conflicts within, not much. I know a few people I'd prefer not to know, but don't let them bother me. We don't resonate. That's all there is to it. It's natural as a nuthatch and a titmouse not resonating. It's true certain people stir up potential for inner conflict if I'll allow it. It's all under my control. But some are like landmines, you don't see them, then they blow up in your face, or between your legs--Eek. I've got them and I know it. One event several years ago had me furious for a year, wishing I could allow myself to plot a murder. Then I realized it was to my favor, anyway. A little slow. But eventually got it.

                                                                                    *