Death and Cats

photo by Zero86.

A guy at work recently experienced the unfortunate loss of his mom, who died of cancer after a year-long series of misdiagnoses, chemotherapy, and pain management. “Pain management” sounds so abstract and antiseptic. We are not in the doctor’s office now, so let’s drop this façade of decorum and speak truly. It is more accurate to say “…a year of doctors making mistakes, of injecting poison into her body, of puking out her guts and watching herself slowly waste away in the mirror until becoming unrecognizable.” In the end, we greedily take the pills that deliver us from pain, even at the cost of losing our awareness. For most of us, it is even better to lose that awareness, because all thoughts are focused on the fact that death is real and it has finally arrived. It is no longer a concept, and we can’t stop wondering what is going to happen the moment the lights go out.

Westerners don’t deal with death gracefully, as we know. Our culture is wired more towards the here and now, and any thoughts about when we are gone gravitate immediately to the lives of our children, and often times for some odd reason, to how high their taxes are going to be. Spirituality is left to the mysterious meetings my neighbors and coworkers attend in dark, musty churches around the metro. I don’t know what they talk about in there--aside from the odd Christmas service, I have never attended church--but whatever is said, it doesn’t appear to prepare us to confront, or better yet “embrace,” our mortality.

Anyway, this is getting way heavier than I intended. I meant to tell you about the more curious episode of my coworker’s Mom and her pet cats. It was her wish that when she dies, her cats get put down. Upon hearing this, my first thought flashed to the ancient Hindu practice of the recently widowed wife leaping into her husband’s funeral pyre to accompany him into the afterlife. Yeah, that was a real thing, and you can read up about Sati on Wikipedia.

Why did his Mom want the cats put down? Probably to bring something loved and familiar with her into the unknown. If she didn’t believe in the afterlife, then maybe she was afraid nobody would take care of the cats and they would suffer. She knew that her surviving husband never liked cats.

During her last days, the kids tried to talk her out of it. There were other options, like the humane society and pet adoption. It raised ethical questions, particularly for those of us who consider an animal’s life as precious as human life. They were unable to change her mind.

The mom died. Debates started among the family. Emails shot back and forth about honoring their mother’s wish or finding a home for the cats.

The story gets fuzzy here, but there was some kind of miscommunication among the family members that voted to save the cats versus those that wanted to carry out their mother’s wish. My coworker’s brother was particularly passionate about honoring his mother’s memory. I think a decision had been reached to save the cats, but my coworker and his brother had not yet heard on the day they showed up at her house to gather up the cats. When they get to the house, the smarter of the two cats is tucked away behind the furnace. The dumber of the two was lying on the floor, watching these two men trying to catch the other cat. The brothers knew that if they put the dumber cat into a carrier first, the other cat would know something was up and would never come out. But like I said, it was a smart cat and already seemed to know what was going on.

So they caught the cats, brought them to the vet, and had them put down. I know, it is a sad ending. I was rooting for the cats too. I think it is wrong to proclaim a death sentence to a loved pet when we die, but I also know there’s enough fuel here to debate either side. Debates about right and wrong are not my thing. Instead what intrigues me about this is the parallel with Cancer coming out of nowhere, chasing after the mother during the months of her treatment, and finally putting her down. Maybe the brother that was passionate about honoring her memory found some kind of comfort in assuming the role of grim reaper and reenacting the ruthlessness of mortality.

Get It In Writing

photo by Lazzuri.

Writing creates a world totally within my control. There is something comforting in that, even though I never considered myself a control freak. As I write, the pace of life slows down and falls into a rhythm, each word moving in concert with that which it describes. Sometimes I think I am more wholly in the world of my imagination than in the world around us. If I was not describing it with these words, how much would I have noticed the sound of the wind outside, the smell of mellon coming from the kitchen, or the stillness of all the objects in my den except for the movement of my fingers and my thoughts? Get it in writing, they say. How true.

Dear Mignon

Dear Mignon,

How could you grant a mere boy of fifteen a fantasy for two weeks at the end of summer, and then leave him for school in California? You were eighteen and had all of the big men on campus after you; the jock down the street, the man with a handlebar mustache at the club, and even my twenty-two year old brother who asked you to go away to a cabin with him for a weekend. But you picked me. I was so naïve I didn’t even consider that you were coming on to me; I thought you were just being nice. When did we first kiss? I remember it took a long time to get to that point, and you must have been wondering what I was waiting for, how I could be so dumb to miss all of the signals. You were house sitting for your uncle across the street from me, and invited me in when he was away on a trip. We sat on the large puffy sofa in the dark cool of his basement. You offered me a beer. I said yes. I had never drunk a beer before that, only sips of my Dad’s when I would get him another can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Then you gave me a massage. I laugh now, thinking about that. How did you maneuver us from sitting on the sofa to a massage? I wonder what you thought when I didn’t kiss you, or offer to return the massage, or anything beyond my thanking you for the beer, and the massage, and crossing back over the street to my house.

We played tennis. Some boys from a baseball tournament sat along the fence to watch you running for the ball and the way your breasts bounced when you ran. They asked if you were my girlfriend, and I said no. They started catcalling, but I didn’t know what to do about it. You glowered and turned red. They eventually went away.

I remember now the first time you finally broke through to me and left no doubt as to whether you were interested in me as more than a friend. We were at the movie “Fright Night”, and you leaned your leg against mine. You held my hand for a while, and pulled my hand closer to you so the back of my hand rested against your bare thigh. I wasn’t watching the movie at all anymore, only your thigh and my hand. Then there in the dark you let go of my hand and slid your palm across my leg, and felt me getting hard. I remember walking out of the movie theater with a raging erection and thinking everybody could see it, but I couldn’t stop smiling.

You taught me to always open a door for a girl, and to always be gentle. You used to press your nose against mine and look right into my eyes; you were just a blur except for your eyes and smile, and you would flutter your eyelids like butterflies. Your uncle’s red Camero and a church parking lot. I didn’t have a clue where kids went to park and that seemed as good a place as any.

That last night we were to spend together before you moved out to LA to chase your dreams of becoming an actress, you told me that a person never forgets their first. As you drove me home the radio was playing Phil Collins “Against All Odds,” a very fitting soundtrack to my night. I remember thinking how every time I would hear that song, I’d think of this night. Phil Collins. Jesus.

Then you were gone. I remember feeling how lucky I was to have spent those last two weeks of summer with you, and that’s what made me angriest later, after it hurt to read your letters about your part-time job in a shoe store while you waited for callbacks from your latest auditions, and then letters asking why I wasn’t writing you back. I had to convince myself that I didn’t feel anything at all. Another lesson you taught me.

The Sacrosanct Flamingo of Christmas Past - 2003

photo by psmphotography.

Christmas day in the year of our lord, what’s his name, 2003. December 25th marks the Birth of the Unconquered Sun, Sol Invictus, per Aurelius the Greek, heralding the first day upon which the sun hangs in the sky a little bit longer than the day before. What better place to celebrate the sun than in Florida, in my mother’s villa in her gated retirement community in Lake Wales? Her back yard butts up to the ninth tee of their country club golf course. The day rang in with the ping of fat-headed titanium drivers and Titleist golf balls soaring towards the immaculate green.

Leave it up to a mother to take in her wayward son on Christmas, so soon after my divorce and I have no place to go.

I sit in the sunroom waiting for sunset, palm trees silhouetted against a pink sky. For twenty minutes I watch the shifting reflections on the windows, revealing a sallow middle-aged man from the north. Despite the tropical surroundings, I know just where I’m from. But reflections can be deceptive in the shifting light of sunset. The glass reflects what is happening here and now, but I choose not to see it clearly. Instead I see what might have been; Christmas by the fireside with the wife and child that never were. I don’t blame myself for filling the vacancy in the glass with imaginary things.

Reflections are not limited by time or place. This dayroom is now an atrium in a Roman hall, and I see in the glass a woman reclined against my arm. She smells like Gardenias. Dark hair falls in ringlets down her back. Face pale, lips like ripe plums. We lean comfortably into each other, eyes heavy, smiles of contentment just starting to creep into our faces when the sun dips a little further below the horizon, and she’s gone. The window shows the dark outside.

Time for a walk. I pass down Tumescent Lane, dodging the mass exodus of golfers in their cavalry of golf carts, beating a retreat from the fairways to their homes, barbarians of social security waving their clubs, drug induced disciples of the goddess Medica. I walk long and far, out to the edges of Phase 2 waiting to be transformed from swampland into villas, out where the sky opens up like a great black cavern and stars ricochet off the road. This swamp is my church, these stars my epistolary, far more so than the dismal Lutheran church we attended earlier in the evening for Christmas service. The congregation sang boastful praise of the strength and awe of Jesus. I didn’t know the words to sing along, but they sounded too much like rap music, a cocky gang banger adorned with gold and bling, slinging rhymes of his fame, strength, power, and riches.

I turn back towards my mother’s house. How can I question where He is leading me when I don’t believe in Him? But I do believe in something. Something expansive. Something all knowing. Something that scattered the stars into the sky, that programmed the cells of the human body, that molded the brain and left it as vast and unknown as the ocean floor. Maybe I believe in the Roman’s Saturnalia and a topsy-turvy world where I’m 36 and sleeping in a pull out cot in my mother’s spare bedroom. Maybe I believe in the imaginary characters I cast as understudies for the people I’ve chased off the stage, and maybe I care more for reflections of the sun rather than staring directly into it.

I do believe in fairies. I do believe in fairies. I do believe in fairies. I do . . .

We are Little Worlds

photo by wili_hybrid.

I can’t decide if I want to be alone, or with somebody. I don’t even mean whether I want to be single or in a relationship; I mean do I want to isolate myself from other people, or do I want to engage myself in conversation at the tea shop, do I want to small talk with people at work. It is so strongly tempting to draw back, to still be among others but separate, quiet, observing. Why would I want to do that to myself? Why would I deny myself the enjoyment of friends, of getting to know what somebody did that weekend or what they thought of the movie “Dan in Real Life?” I could still listen in on their conversations with other people, but I wouldn’t have to share myself. I wouldn’t have to share myself. Interesting choice of words.

Becoming a solitarian carries with it a kind of romance, something that …this no longer interests me. Now I’m thinking about going for morning walks down Theodore Wirth Parkway, the crisp mornings, the stillness of the trees. I suppose there would be birds singing, and squirrels bouncing over the wet grass. Would it inspire me? Would it become one of my favorite moments of the day? Nothing is stopping me from getting up, putting on my shoes and my coat and heading out. Yeah, let’s do it!

I’m still sitting here, drinking tea and talking to myself. I keep wishing to discover something here, in the solitude of my living room with the sunrise cresting the rooflines and trees in my east-facing windows, and seeing the Others walking their dogs, jogging, pushing strollers. Watching the others. Another interesting choice of words. They are like me, but separate. Maybe that’s what I find so terrifying about other people. To know that they dreamt last night of being late for class or about the last argument they had at work, to know that they went shopping with a friend to buy that pink windbreaker and now they pull it on each morning as they go jogging to hopefully lose some of that weight that makes them loath themselves, or makes them realize their body is aging and they don’t want to succumb to the inevitability of growing old, that’s what frightens and thrills me. We are little worlds orbiting each other. We can’t all possibly carry these inner lives, fears, loves, can we? What if I had ended up being one of them? But I landed in this body, in this house, in front of this laptop and drinking a cup of Nilgiri Woodlands Estate and wearing the old flannel shirt of my dead dad and wondering, do I want to be among others, or do I just want to be by myself? Do I want to go for a walk, or do I want to stay in this chair, waiting for something to happen?

Tea for One

I sit in my favorite teashop but look around as though I don’t recognize it. Somebody came in and changed everything. The old orange walls that looked as though a drunk had experimented with sponge painting have been painted over in soothing green. Covering the dirty brown Berber carpet are oriental area rugs. The taupe chairs have been replaced with bright red ones hollowed out like cracked nutshells. I’m in one of these red chairs now, by the window, drinking smoky Russian Caravan tea. It’s my second steeping because I want to prolong my stay in the tea shop, so I make-do with this tepid second steeping and sip slowly.

I read a book on Midwest perennials in anticipation of spring. What should I plant? I picture an English garden alongside a path of paving stones winding its way to the front entrance, or maybe a secret garden at the side by the chimney, with figurines of sprites hidden among the flora. I just moved into this picturesque brick home in the Fall, on Manor Drive, in a town called Golden Valley; it even sounds like an imagined place. The prior owner covered the grounds in gardens, so maybe I won’t need to plant anything. It is now early Spring and the first few signs of growth have broken soil; all of these pockets of gardens are ready to wake up. I feel a bit like a parent with a dozen infants stirring in their cribs, about to wake up screaming and demanding attention. Maybe I should make a run for it.

I get distracted by the sounds of a mother and young daughter that take a table beside me. The little girl has a whispery voice, like the daughter Zuzu in “It’s A Wonderful Life,” who says to her father, “But I’m not sleepy.”

“Mommy, want me to do a magic trick?” Brilliant smile of baby teeth and dimpled cheeks, and she makes her hands disappear inside her mittens. The mother looks under the table, under the chair, inside her teacup while the little girl giggles like mad.

I take another sip of cold tea and think of gardens.

Grasping

photo by Vesuviano.

I should never have waited this long to write here. Yeah, I had a number of excuses, what with buying a new home and work getting crazy. But the longer I wait to post something, the more pressure builds up. On this long of a hiatus, he better come up with something good. But I haven’t. I’ve barely written a thing during these last six months. When I try to write, I stumble around, get all clammed up and frustrated and tight inside, and then I just go blow my time on the internet or channel surfing. But now I feel like I better throw something against this wall, or it could get archived, and I’m not ready to let the Life of Brettanicus slip into oblivion. So here you have it, the first post in six months, and it’s about nothing really. Which is probably for the best. I get blocked when I put high demands on myself. I’m not even sure I want to write still, but since the age of fifteen I have believed that writing is the only thing that gives me a sense of purpose, and that feeling—when inspiration gets into my bloodstream—it’s one of the best feelings in the world. It makes you want to experience it, again and again, and you chase it but never quite get there again. But the chase is the next best thing.

Mighty Mississippi and Pink Lawn Chair

I spent an hour this weekend in the sun by the river in Saint Paul. I’m not even sure which river it is, Mississippi or Minnesota. Seems a little too narrow to be the great Mississippi, but it probably is. I brought my little pink lawn chair; I really need to get a more manly one, something from Coleman with armrests that hold beercans. I packed a lunch of smoked turkey and gouda with a tomato, mayo, and country mustard, and a lime yogurt whip, and a bottle of water. It was kind of nice eating my lunch there in the sun and watching boats fight or coast with the current. Then I carried my chair down right to the waters edge to better hear the waves and let my vision skip across the water’s surface like a perfect skipping stone. Across the river on the far bank, dogs chased sticks into the water or chased each other along the beach. After the sun ducked behind clouds, I pulled out David Copperfield and read a few pages; it’s around the time his mother has died, and he is driven back home from the boys school to attend the funeral.

Keys to Life

funciona! photo by corbata1982.

The Backspace key is my nemesis. All of these words spill out of me, and just as quickly slip into oblivion as I hold down the Backspace key. Really, these keys hold such warm or bleek possibilities if they could be applied to life. Home. Pause/Break. Delete. End. When I was in Budapeste huddled on a bench in a train station platform, I could have pressed the Home key. During my marriage troubles, I wanted to Pause all of the arguing, but then came the realization that we need to make a clean Break of things. But there are no clean breaks in a divorce. For years afterward, I still thought about her. I imagined I could return to the home we had lived in, and she would be in the kitchen cooking up something, and the dogs would come running and lick me to death as I came through the door. But all of that was gone. A different family lived there now, and it would be so much easier if I could just forget it all. Delete, and it would be like we had never met.

Is life worth all of this struggle? Finding happiness, going to work, paying the bills? Sometimes it seems like it would be easier to press the End key. But I’ve never figured out what happens when you press the End key. An end will come soon enough, so I might as well enjoy myself while I’m here. Insert myself back into the dating world. Now it’s all about making some kind of Shift. Taking Ctrl. Stop watching life pass me by and get the courage to Enter.

Enter.

Enter.

There, now I have some space to work with. It’s time to make use of these twenty-six keys that aren’t so easy. Got to find the right combination of them to find my way, but they also hold infinite possibility. Find the right sequence and you’ve got the complete works of Shakespeare, the Declaration of Independence, and the diary of Anne Frank . Lose your way, and you’ve got the Life of Brettanicus.

Rainy Florida Christmas

Kept Indoors photo by stumblintrucker.

I sit here in Florida listening to the dull rain drip outside the window. The bug screens are beaded with water. Water drips from the overhanging tree limbs. I lay on the cot in the guestroom, stretched out to my full length so that my feet dangle over the foot of the bed. I’m sleepy, listening to the rain, smelling turkey cooking in the kitchen and my mom bustling about, opening and closing cupboards and drawers. My step dad sleeps somewhere in the reading room or the on the living room sofa, short shallow breaths like a dying fish. I try reading but I keep falling asleep. Not all the way out, but that oppressive weight on my eyes, the slightest sounds causing a terrible clamor in my head, like beads of water striking a cymbal.

Blogfright

Battle of Britain Memorial 3 photo by ART NAHPRO.

I'm all seized up. I know I haven't posted in ages. I haven't written in ages, not even in my crap journal where I allow myself to type like mad for an hour without any pressure. I think about posting something here and I say, "I don't know what to write. It sounds like so much work." I get tight in the chest. Shallow breaths. An eel writhing in my stomach. Then tired, so tired. Maybe tomorrow.

Electrical Storm

Dangerous Beauty
photo by hugsRgood.

I was thinking of Rachel the other night, and that time we lived Eau Claire, Wisconsin. We were out for a walk when a lightning storm blew into town. Lightning bolts cracked only a few blocks away from us. I wanted to turn back to the house, but she wanted to walk straight into the storm. On her face, I could see excitement and fearlessness. In an open flat field, walking towards an iron train bridge, the rational side of me told her this was nuts. She said not everything is rational. I made her come home. She hated me for it, and I think I fell in her estimation that day. I wonder now what we would have found in the storm. What was it that I was too timid to experience? Something makes me think of how women have this spiritual connection to nature, and how she knew something I did not, and it was beyond explanation. I now wish I had had the courage to follow her down into the field towards the railroad bridge, into a ring of lightning strikes, like Orpheus and Eurydice walking down into the realm of the dead. What would we have found in the middle of the storm? I probably would have just been electrocuted. Maybe that was her intention all along.

Treading Water

I thought I would be able to handle growing old because my memories of childhood would always be there, and every detail could be recalled to take me back to the exact moment. But all of that was a lie; it was a hell of a long time ago, and the details grow fuzzy until they eventually disappear. I wonder if science will find a way to help me replay the exact events, along with the sounds and smells. I have faith that every detail is filed away somewhere deep in my brain, and that those buried events determine how I behave (or misbehave) today. If I could only tap into it. If I could only break free of my ignorance, ignore the distraction of my surroundings so that I could sharpen these sentiments of the past, skipping school, stumbling drunk down suburban streets on my first few cans of beer, hot humid days on the lake, treading water around the raft where my friend’s sister floated, golden, languid, unreachable. What did she say? Did I hold her hand when we climbed out of the water? Or is she still floating out on the raft somewhere in my brain, and I am treading water in endless circles around her?

Deathbed Lists

I’m reading a book called “Second Innocence”, that helps us regain that sense of wonder and joy that we experienced as a child. One passage describes how, when people get diagnosed with an illness, they think of all the things they wished they had done. If I was sitting in a hospital bed tomorrow and reflecting on the life I wished I had led, what would my answers be to these questions?

What do you regret not doing because of fear?
Having a wife and two kids. I’m afraid of losing my freedom to do what I want. If I had a wife and two kids, my response would have been to stay single, explore writing, and live in a condo in downtown Minneapolis.

What do you wish you had put more time and energy into?
My relationships with friends, family, and significant others.

What do you wish you had put a lot less time and energy into?
Work. I throw all of my energy and focus into work, and I know when I retire or quit, it’s like, “What was it all for?”

What was always on your someday list that you now wish you had done?
Learning to play guitar or piano. Joining a writers group at the Loft. Going camping and fishing. Buying a boat and a motorcycle. Own a small tea shop.

As you think about your daily experience of life, what qualities do you wish there were more of and what qualities do you wish there were less of (more time for self, more community, more kindness. . .)?
More quiet time, more calm, more laughter, more energy, more reading. Less chores, less worrying, less self-criticism, less tv.

What is your deepest regret in terms of the type of person you never became (a kind person, a generous person, a courageous person…)?
A self-confident person, a self-disciplined person, a more honest person (in terms of I say and do what people want from me, rather than what I really feel).

If I had more time or energy, I would love to learn to . . .
play guitar or piano, other languages, cooking and baking, lucid dreaming, meditation.

The Only Thing that is Real

Fishy Corona,
Photo by olivander.

The act of writing is the beginning; it does not matter if the writing is good. You first write from the heart, and then edit with the brain. You write without rereading, you write without thinking of the fantasy of your team of editors, your publicist, the public readings, the interviews attempting to pierce the veil of your brilliance. Forget the invitations to read at colleges and the likelihood that these very words will be the ones to seduce some young college thing into bed with you. None of that matters, none of that is real. The only thing that is real is this moment, this sublime isolation in which you can uncover emotions you didn’t know you had, recreate a sensation from the past with just the right words, then twist the truth into a shape perhaps more real than the one you had to begin with.

World Stage

Dylan
photo by mr_la_rue.

I have visions of my neighbors busting down the door and bashing my head in with baseball bats because I laugh too loudly while watching documentaries with the headphones on. The last one was “No Direction Home”, about Bob Dylan. Was it supposed to be funny? I hope so. Afterwards I go into the den and strum my guitar and do my best impression of a folk singer. What wonderful concerts I performed to an audience of books and lamps.

Why does Bob Dylan get press conferences about his opinions when he is only in the public forum because he knows how to strum a guitar, and some would day, sing? Why not invite the anonymous history major to share his message to mobilize a generation? But I cannot deny that Bob’s lyrics of the past flashed like lightning and blinded me. I almost prefer to hear someone else cover his songs, like an old gospel singer, because Bob sounds like he is parodying himself. I cannot hear the lyrics because Bob is in the way.