To Marina with Love

Marina Marina
my angel
the sun shines in your eyes...

Marina was my first friend in San Fransico.

She rented me my tiny second story studio on O'Farrel Street in the infamous Tenderloin.

She was working for the Realtor, working her first "big girl job" in that crazy colorful seven by seven mile city by the sea.

She was wearing a velour sea green blazer, flowered flats and a liguid light smile.

Her long blond hair got tangled in the sunlight.

I knew immediately I wanted to be her friend.

I had known her not 10 minutes, but after we signed the paperwork I couldn't help but give her a hug. And she hugged me back so graciously.

We went downstairs while my lover pulled the truck around the block to park, and she helped me fight off the cab and the crazy California drivers that flocked like sharks to the fresh kill of a open parking spot.

We were definitely friends then.


I cemented the deal a few days later when I wrote her a note.

"Application For Friendship"

It read,

and listed the terms.

I don't remember now what it said, but suffice to say she signed on the dotted line.

We went out to Thai food after word and ate fat noodles and kind of fell in love.

We were pretty much inseparable after that.

That was before Bobbie Sue moved from Seattle with Ben and the accompanying full cast of dark romantic comedy drama that became our life.

Via La Boheme.

At any rate, she was the only living soul besides my Jason that I knew in the Frisco Bay.

One day she showed me a little spot off the real Marina, right next to the Country Club on a little rocky outcroppig of the beach where the grass grew high and there was a stone bench with concrete tubes all around it that amplified the sounds of the surf.

We used to sit there and talk , sometimes laughing and swearing and drinking wine, and once late at night after the fog rolled in talking about lost love and her grandfather. We were both single again then.

And we drove away into the foggy night probably laughing again.
We sung a lot too, once she parked her car in front of the room I was renting on Potrero Hill. It was such a safe neighborhood, and I was drunk on whatever adventure we had just returned from, all dressed up and ready to crash,and I didn't think to lock.

She slept on my air mattress like an angel.

The next morning when it was time to go, after our cigarette looking out at the view of the tower on Telegraph hill which looked like a cathedral in the clouds from my balcony...


we went to the car. And it was broken into.

The stereo was gone.

I felt so sorry. But she wasn't angry.

And we drove from then on singing Bobby Magee instead, windows cracked with the rain beating on the windshield, keeping the beat.

We were partners in crime then, secret compatriots against the backdrop of the rest of the world. We had a following. We always knew where the party was At. We were the party.


Our crowing achievement was my 27th birthday party. We invited everyone, told everyone to dress in python skin, feather boas, big sunglasses, bring champagne, rock steady in the style of the all the dead rock stars that never saw the dawn of there 28th year.

And they came, at one point there was six people in my room, and as many bottles of champagne, feather boas and all.

There must have been 100 people there that night, and in the morning there was three whole garbage cans of empty bottles of bubbly, wine and beer...


A week later we had a much smaller party, just the two of us, our lovers, and my two house mates, a lovely young couple and two very dear friends I had met at Burning Man years before, and we split the ounce or so of pure MDMA that her tall dark and handsome had brought.

We all laid together on a mattress in the living room, covered in a plush tiger stripe blanket and pillows. There was a Buddha on the table, bedecked and surrounds entirely by candlelight and half empty wine glasses...

We laid in the light and languished...

We carried on like that merrily, taken by Ecstasy and the immediacy and transience of each glorious moment until, it was suddenly all to much, and I left them there, and stepped out alone.

There was a truth I had just come to. I hated to tell her. I was't sure if I could.

She found me sitting on the porch alone.

She asked me what was wrong, and I told her.

"I have to leave San Fransico" I said, and as soon as I did there were tears in her eyes. We cried.


She took me to the airport a few weeks of that...

Me in my suede trench with lambswool trim coat, a crocheted flower on my orange and green knit hat just over my ear, me with six or eight mismatched vintage suitcases, my easel in one hand and my heart in the other.

We sung "leaving on a jet plane" and cried some more.

And then she smiled for me, that liquid sunshine smile, hugged me close and let me go.


I 30 now,in Albuquerque now, with a different lover, now my husband. She is back in San Fransisco after various adventures a sunlit soul like her could conjure.

She is like Alice, creating wonderland wherever she steps.
The sound of ocean follows her.

Marina Marina

some day I hope to wash back on your shore shore.

America the Brave.

A note to the reader: A year and some change ago, before we had purchased our house, I was in the active process of looking for one when I came up with a house sweepstakes.
No, not the HGTV dreamhouse of recent fame, but a small, renovated authentic Spanish hacienda in the charming little town of Gallup,New Mexico. The owners, both lawyers, had outgrown it and only had a measly $3,000 left of the mortgage to pay. They both being also literary/creative types decided that the most interesting way to unload their house would be to raffle it of in an essay contest, may the best writer win.

I wish I could say that I won, but clearly I didn't. I did however enter. The terms were simple. Enter your essay entitled "America the Great" and submit a check for $100 dollars. They posted it on a blog much like this one, and they said that if they received enough entry money to pay off the mortgage, the winner got the house free and clear. If they didn't get enough all money would be returned.

So I wrote and rewrote my essay, plead and re-plead my case with my husband as to how I knew this was not a scam and perhaps a good investment, and sent of my stuff.I turned in my envelope, registered mail on the first snowy day of the winter in our new town of Albuquerque.
I stepped carefully between snowflakes, prayed, waited, prayed.

A couple weeks later I received a check in the mail. The one I had sent the owners.

Oh well. What can you do? At least I was right that it was wasn't a scam. A month or two later we closed on our house. Ces' la vie. At any rate, dear imaginary readers, this is the text of my essay, short and bittersweet.

America the Great. America the brave, the restless. Jazz was born here. Be-Bop spoken here. America the beautiful. There is only one Grand Canyon, one Mississippi. Our redwoods and tall buildings scrape the sky and salute the sea. We are lulled to sleep by the Pacific, and the sun rises golden over our gilded Atlantic coastlines. We built the mother road, that tarnished silver ribbon that still runs in fragments across The Land of Enchantment to the Windy City due east and west across our great land. Route 66, come get your kicks. You can drive all night to Graceland. Ride the trolley in San Francisco, drink bourbon in the Bayou. Ride a horse as your great grandfather did over the Rocky Mountains ridges. Hear some sweet old timey blue grass melody in the Appalachians. Come drink your weight in moonshine. Build your own speakeasy. We still believe in Manifest Destiny.
There is room for everyone here.
Sure we have had our fair share of wars, and not all of them noble. But our boys barely 18 died for world freedom and peace, whether or not they returned to a hero's welcome. There was not always a parade. But their sweethearts still wore their red lipstick and did their hair up just the same. We invented baseball and perfected the hamburger. You'll never have fried chicken like our Kentuky Gold. We do it bigger, better, faster. We burn the midnight oil, and the candle at both ends here. We still believe in Santa Claus. And the juke box still can be heard playing deep in the dixie darkness.
Ours is a a land of long plains, yellow cornfields, wide azure shimmering lakes, raging rivers, painted deserts, a land of purple mountains and majesty. The buffalo still roam here, the antelope play at twilight. The mountain goats guard the peaks and the elk roam the valleys. The wild horses run free. Their are still bears in our woods, and wolfs in the hills. The eagle and condor screech and soar across the mesas. We have cactus and wetland, old growth and metropolis, both with interesting wildlife. You can wear whatever you want here, ten gallon hat and cowboy boots in Austin or in Manhattan, or in Seattle sweatpants to the opera. You can feel at ease here, and for the most part do as you please. You can change your name to Sir and salute the flag, or mutter to yourself in irreverent indifference. Coffee is religion here, and Coca Cola flows in every soda fountain on either side of every town. You can order them in six different sizes, and 31 flavors. What ever you want we have it in build to suite, made to order, for sale by owner and your way right away.
From Hollywood to Rosewood, the Oregon Coast to Cape Cod, across the Vast expanses of Texas and the short walk across the top of Delaware, we are almost never to busy to talk to a friendly stranger. We love our country and our freedom and our simple way of life, no matter how complex. We still believe in the Dream. Both Martin Luther's and the Great American. And the Sante Fe Northern Railroad still huffs and blows across the night.

My Trip to Hell

I went to hell last night. Well heaven also. And I didn't even have to die.

I didn't realize it was a dream until I woke up.


So I think the dream begins at my parents house, where many of my dreams do, which is funny because I moved out when I was eighteen. Admittedly, I have moved back in a couple hard times since then, haven't lived there in years. In fact I don't even live in the same state as them, not even close. But many of my dreams begin or take place there. I guess we all begin where we come from. Especially in our consciousness of our self. Especially our subconscious self
( My therapist would love this.)

So here I was, walking into my parent's house, I think it was at Christmas time for some reason, and the little ranch rambler was all lit up and looking pretty with sparkling tree in the window. Or what I assumed was sparkly tree in the window. What it really was the reflection in the window of fire and brimstone, presided over by a squatty red headed ogre and and accompanied by a gray haired old crone who, come to think of it, did bear certain resemblances to my parents.

Each of them was lording over a hole in the floor where the fire place should have been. The ogre's hole was full of what you would expect to find in hell, fire and brimstone, red hot chillies, corrupt politicians, that sort of thing. The crone's portal looked more like the entrance to a slide at a water park, or one of those kiddy rides that takes you on a little train around a backdrop and all you have to do is strap yourself in. and each of them like a carny at the state fair was trying to get me to jump in. Actually that is not entirely true. I think the ogre actually said something in a huge, dragon's voice something like "CHOOSE YOUR OWN PERSONAL HELL" which really doesn't sound that appealing.

At first I was under the impression at first that they were both my own personal hell, and I had to choose one. Well that's crappy odds I thought. But what is a girl to do? Then I guess I figured out that one of them was Hell, and by default the other one was Heaven. Or maybe I asked the crone, by far the more reasonable looking of the two.

The crone, who like any carny is not supposed to reveal the tricks of the trade, leaned closer to me and explained in her crotchety voice, "They aren't both Hell honey, only one is Hell. You have to choose which one is."

While the one without the fire and smoke coming out of it seemed like it might be the obvious choice, I have seen the movie the Labyrinth before and know that things like this aren't always what they seem. Besides I kind of like hot firey places and people. I live in Albuquerque for crepe's sake.

Anyway I was starting to get a little stressed and as I usually do in these situations, started waffling and analyzing and finally had to beg for more information. "How will I know which one is which?" I asked in desperation.

To my surprise she replied with a question. "Are you the sort of person who can't be happy when others are unhappy or are you the kind of person who can?". I am not sure I entirely understood the question because I certainly did not know the answer until the image of my old friend Bobbie Sue, ever the give-it-to-me-straight realist, popped up and said a definitive "NO"!

Well that didn't help me decide which one was which. Bobbie Sue's apparition disappeared as quickly as it came, and I again was alone with the ogre and the crone to make my fated decision.

So because I couldn't decide I went for the obvious choice, and sat down in the fiberglass chute and held on to the rafters that appeared within while I looked up the crone for one last confirmation. She noticed my hesitation and asked, what's the matter honey, change your mind?" And I asked something like "No, just trying to make sure this is the right one"
"Well if you are the sort of person who can be happy without others and really doesn't care, go over there." It didn't take me long this time, I smiled at her and turned around and said "Oh then I am sure this is the right one!"

A moment later I was down the chute.

And was shocked to see where it ended up.

It ended up not in some fluffy place that I assumed heaven would be, as I assumed people like me would go to heaven, it was actually kind of like a Walmart. This was definitely my conception of hell. The chute spit me out in the middle of the isles, and no one seemed perturbed at all at me suddenly emerging from a porthole in the ceiling. It was as if I had just come down the escalator. It was of course, only MY personal hell. The rest of them were just enjoying a regular shopping day.

Upon closer inspection I realized this wasn't necessarily Walmart, and so not necessarily hell. It was more like a cross between a Micheal's Craft store, TJMAXX and a thrift store, which anyone who knows me well knows is definitely heaven! There was endless isles of crafts and kitsch, seriously discounted designer handbags and other inexpensive and brightly colored novelties that I so adore. There were also many kinds of people of various ages and backgrounds mulling around, everyday people that didn't look like angels. I was still a little perplexed at this heaven and so wandered aimlessly around, until discovering the pet section.

Truth be told I am a died in the wool animal nut. My husband has instated a "no new un-agreed upon animal" rule in the house. The "un-agreed upon" clause being because it keeps me from bringing any more roosters, sparrows, porcupines or god knows what in our humble home. Usually seeing animals in place like Walmart seeks to undo me, as I waffle between feeling the need to liberate the animal from it's cooperate confines and not wanting to support a puppy mill juggernaut.

Being heavenly discount thrift Walmart, unlike any other Walmarts that might have animals, this one had exclusively homeless and abandoned animals, the kind you didn't have to feel guilty about buying from a puppy mill, and all with big needful doe eyes that looked at you like you might be their salvation. There was puppies and kitties, a big old doleful golden retriever lab mix, little terriers and even a tiny day old kitten a women was feeding from a bottle. I guess I assumed this being heaven and all I could just take whatever I wanted, so I took all of them but the kitten who seemed to be adopted. All eight or so of them, Old Yeller, Benji, the shitzu,a breed I usually cannot stand, and all.

I walked right out the door of the store into the snowy alley on a bright blue day and lined them all up so I could evaluate my new brood. Just as I was looking into Yeller's loyal brown eyes the pet store attendant came spilling out.

He looked as if he had just been taking a smoke break and was definitely stoned and not too passionately told me I couldn't just take all the dogs. "Oh, ok, how about I just take a few of them?" He said something about paying, and I looked at them all lined up there, and struggled to decide which one...not that I had any money or anything, I didn't expect I would have to PAY for a puppy in heaven. So I had to leave them all there in the snow with the neglectful, though friendly, and very stoned attendant.

I was crushed. At this point I think I might have even gone back up the chute, sure I had in fact chosen wrong and this Crafty-Thrifty-Animal-Shelter was in fact Walmart and therefore hell.

So I jumped through the Ogre's hole, or maybe I just took the bus, but at any rate I was suddenly in what I expected to be the real authentic heaven.

And it most certainly was not. I arrived suddenly as if falling into a pile of clutter of toys and objects that looked like they belonged to a nursery school. Working part time in a preschool myself, I know how this clutter can almost instantaneously begin to accumulate the minute a toddler walks in the room. To be sure, the room was full of the sound of baby cries, and kids milled aimlessly around the rubble. I immediately began to try and pick this stuff up, try and make order of the chaos and attend to the crying and disorderly children.

As I was frantically doing this, forgetting entirely this was supposed to be my heaven, or my hell for that matter, I noticed that two my left the eyes of a henpecking bureaucracy of supervisors and secretaries looked at me through the class and clucked at me disapprovingly.

This was surely hell.

The moment I realized this I was instantly transported, not back to crafty Walmart, but to the real world. Awake.

I opened my eyes slowly still caught in the dream to the sounds of singer Hope Sandoval playing on the cd alarm clock. There was a soft brightness in the room and a hush outside that could only mean one thing, and sure enough the snow fell sweet and slow to the ground out the window.

Next to me, bed, the dogs, cat and husband slept soundly. Hope sang like an angel.

And I realized. This really WAS heaven.

Here in this house, with its own clutter and early crowing rooster, with the unpaid bills and the trashy magazines, but also the wide front porch, inviting kitchen, aforementioned creatures and plenty of love was simply...

heaven.

Letter ToThe Future, 1/1/2010

It is the earliest of morning on this first day of January in Plainswell, Michigan.
I awoke before dawn & realized I couldn't sleep.

It is not that it would have been impossible to go back to sleep so much as that it seemed a fitting time to be awake, to watch this dawn on the first morning in January, the first day of a new decade that still sounds like life in the distant space age future.

I think the whole world thought we would be further along by now. There was definitely something about space travel and flying cars planned for now. There have been many technological advancements this last decade,we apparently now have cell phones that can project a picture show on the wall. But I am less interested in those just now than the great expanse of the frozen lake just outside the double paned glass doors right before me.
The world is not so different today that it was yesterday, despite yesterday being claim to the rise of a new decade, a full moon, a blue moon and, at least in Australia a partial lunar eclipse.

No,today feels like any other morning, any other day except at this hour it is quiet and my mind is for once quiet, and I could hear myself think so clearly it seemed a good time to write.

It occurs to me someday my children might read this.

Someday they might ask me what it feels like to be alive in this time.

What will I tell them?

I will tell them it was good to start off New here in the pure white of Michigan on this first morning of 2010.

Because the "00's",the "oughts", were an UNdecade. Everyone was so exited and anxious about what would happen when the ball fell in time square in 2000, people were afraid of the dreaded Y2k bug which was supposed to shut down computers and computer systems world wide and banks too and it turned out to be a non entity just like the rest of the decade. Not that nothing important happened. At least one thing really important happened right here in the US of A.

Yes folks, right here in the good old US of a black man was elected president for the first time in a country so racist and classist it seemed remarkable that there was even a black professional GOLFER in the decade before. This is especially remarkable considering the fact that black folks were free sovereign souls deserving of freedom was considered remarkable some 14 decades before that.

These things aren't considered so remarkable now.


What is remarkable to me at least is that we are are still HERE together. That no one has gone for the red button and nuked ourselves and our neighbors into oblivion yet, that I am laying peaceably by my new husband right now, that there are sounds of a baby upstairs that isn't mine but is much like the one that someday will be. That I am now 30 and a grad student destined to be a crazy Art Teacher and hopefully next year I will also be mastering in Painting, an art I so dearly love...

Back to the present, there are scented geraniums in from the cold weathering the winter on the warm side of the glass. I too hope to weather the winter on the warm side, and though its lovely here am looking forward to going back to sunny Albuquerque. I am exited to see the puppies and the chickens, the brunchies and our lovely house, the cactus under just a dusting of snow, and lovely brash and blushing Sandia mountains at sunset.

I love where I live. I love my life. I am looking forward to living it in a new and healthier way. To make it a year to remember. A remarkable one.
Even if there isn't any flying cars.

The Whole Enchilada

 

I had another harrowing experience the other day. So far this blog has been documenting tragedies and I guess this is no exception.

A dog ate my chicken the other day. Huey Lewis the Chicken died of her wounds (with a little help from my compassionate husband Ryan) on December 13, 2009.

She was a good chicken. One of our better layers. She was the only black chicken of six in the coop, it sounds funny, but it's true. Unlike the other chickens, three fairly tame white Wynandotes and two semi feral Rhode Island reds, Huey was an Black Austraulorp, and everything on her was black. Her glossy feathers (iridescent in certain lights) were black, her beak was black, everything on her was black but her pernicious little red comb, sticking up defiantly from the top of her head. We used to joke that she was our Radical Black Separatist chicken, named by Ryan after Huey of the Boondocks, who himself was named debatebly after Huey Lewis and the News. Like her namesake, she stood out from the rest of the flock, that Huey. But the most striking thing about her was her eyes.

Again, unlike the other chickens, Huey's eyes were BLACK. Not only black at the pupil like the amber eyed other chickens, but at the iris. They were like huge liquid pools of obsidian, and she would blink them at you in such a wild eyed way you were forced to check yourself before just nudging her away with your foot when it came to be feeding time. She looked back at you. This bird was not the bird the guilty omnivore would be the most likely to eat. And yet I just such an omnivore, did eat her. After the dog got a crack that is.

It sounds terrible I know. But what were we supposed to do?

Before those righteous vegetarians among you dismiss us as barbarians, eating their dead pet, let me explain.

The back story:

December 13, 2009 started out like any other December day in Albuquerque, sunny and cold. I went as I did many mornings, approximately every other one, to go check on, feed, water, get the eggs from and let out the chickens. These mornings though literally freezing cold (the chicken water, the fish pond, and the dogs water all covered with a thin layer of ice)I got up, took my one egg, and let out the chickens. This was not an unusual day. In summer the I would wake up to up to five eggs, one from each of the layers, but perhaps because of the cold weather we had been reduced to getting only one. Maybe it was Huey's...

At any rate I let them out and went back in the house. Ordinarily at that time I would have been cleaning the house and preparing for the communal brunch we have been hosting every Sunday morning with only two exceptions since May. But on this day, December the 13, for the third time ever, brunch was canceled. Or at least postponed. The week prior, a normal brunch where as usual everyone descended after 11 am with various things, vegetables, berries, leftovers and the like, we had planned to have this day, December 13, be our first annual non-denominational Holiday Linner. (Linner or course being a cross between lunch and dinner as opposed to breakfast and lunch)

So that cold bright morning I woke up early and sent the text canceling brunch and inviting everyone to Linner that was to be held graciously by fellow brunchie Sammo at his lovely Nob Hill house. As of yet, I had no idea what I was going to bring to this meal, and haven't even thought of it.

An hour or two later, I was awoken from luxurious Sunday morning sleep it (a rare occasion) by the first of the brunch guests who didn't get the text. Travis, another brunch regular, doesn't even have a phone and showed up as he usually does empty handed but ready to cut and cook whatever showed up that day (he is a great sou chef and cook and often is the one doing the preparing). We were just sitting down to coffe when the doorbell rang again, and Krista and Kevin and their dog Pondi arrive, (K and K HAVE a phone but with their new Christmas Iphones did not receive the text on their old outmoded phones.)

There we are, all having coffee and laughing at the decently well attended canceled brunch, when one of the usually happily playing dogs makes a tremendously aggressive sounding sound in the backyard. We all startle but I jump to my feet, " Shit! I forgot to put in the chickens!" I say as I sprint out the door followed by all of the guests and my trusty new husband Ryan who probably already knows what is about to happen next.

Heart sinking, I run around into the back yard. I am stopped dead in my tracks not by death but little Huey, mauled and unable to stand, in a blizzard of black feathers and blood, still living and looking up at my painfully with her big black eyes. What happens next is hazy for me, as I my eyes are immediately covered by first my own and then Ryan's big soft hands, as I involuntarily wail in horror and sadness right in front of my horrified guests.

Pondi is a young dog, a happy go lucky Mutt with questionable heritage, saved as our dogs are from the pound by Krista and Kevin when he was just a few months old. But unlike our dogs, Pondi was not raised with chickens, moreover he was not raised with stern reprimands every time he so much looked at the chickens, and as this was the first chicken he had ever seen, the results were predictable and terrible.

Krista, a vegetarian, was especially, perhaps equally horrified, and as Kevin and Travis blocked our view as Ryan broke Huey's neck, Krista and I held each other and as I cried the terrific sobs of a woman who had not yet managed to handle the death of any and all animals.

And then Kevin held Krista as she cried, and Ryan held me, petting my head exactly as you would the a little girl who lost her pet.

After this we all sat on the porch in stunned near silence. Though we are mostly quit I asked for a cigarette, and K, neither of which who smoke bought me a whole pack.

So as Ryan and Travis set to work plucking her and gutting her, Krista and Kevin and I sat and bonded. We talked not about death but about life, about energy and the cycle of life, the way that things come and go and are set in motion even before they happen, and how ironic it was that this was to happen now, the day of the canceled brunch and the Linner I had not yet begun to cook for. And there I had it, I would cook Huey for Linner. It seemed the only fitting thing to do, to not waste this small death.

I wasn't mad, just sad. It could have happened with our own dogs at some point, and it did happen and there was nothing that could be done. It was no more their negligence than my own. I think we are all closer after that experience.

Anyway, later that afternoon, the two Ks and newly initiated Pondi had left, and I stood by the kitchen table, mixing my own almond quinoa stuffing, stuffing the bird and getting her ready to roast. Later still I put on my cocktail attire, brought the freshly dressed bird to Sammo's and put her in the oven to roast.

She was delicious, exactly as you would expect a homegrown chicken raised cage free and with love to taste. Except for her thighs, which unlike hens raised without access to exercise or even sunlight in battery cages were tough, muscular and virtually inedible.

I still miss seeing my little black chicken. The coop looks different now with out timid little Huey pecking away, a tiny black shadow in spite of herself and all of the other chickens. But come Spring, if K&K don't buy me a new chicken first, Ryan says I get to break the "no more animals" rule (we already had these five, now four hens, one rooster, two dogs, two goldfish, two parakeets and one cat on this unhuge urban Albuquerque property) and breed out some chicks!

So there you have it folks, life, death and rebirth. It's all part of the whole (chicken?) enchilada.

Thank you Huey. You were a good chicken. And delicious.

Cave of the Clan Bear: On Fate and Fragility

My father in law had an aneurysm the other day.
A sub arachnoid hemorrhage to be exact (as he described it, he's a Psychiatrist himself and knows these things, even still)

I say new father in law because my husband and I had just got married two days prior. And he was there, in costume no less. With the rest of the entire clan. Their side of the family is as much a tribe or perhaps a joyous cult as anything else. Anyway they were all there, some of them literally in tails. It was a Halloween wedding,but more on this later. That is story for a different blog. Ken. This one is for you.


Let me say a few things I wouldn't say to your face, but hope some day you will read them. And maybe weep.

When I first met you I wasn't sure what to think of you. You didn't smile and seemed to look at me sometimes down your nose in such a way I imagine you examine your patients when you think they're not looking or are trying to pretend to reserve judgment.

I could tell you were are smart man. A powerful man. But I had and still have some issues with MEN and authority so I too perhaps sized you up. And was vigilant.

I can imagine what you must have thought, who is this wild red haired woman who came to seize the heart of your youngest son, your cub, the scatterbrained rascal, your golden boy away from you? What harlot harpy is this?

Perhaps it wasn't all that bad. But you weren't pleased when I told you the lovely green garnish of herbs on your Christmas lamb roast was in fact cilantro and not the Italian parsley you swore it was, and later claimed the grocer had mislabeled.

You didn't fool me. But I don't think I fooled you either. My attempts to suck up were viewed under the same downward but even gaze as my obvious foibles, nervous and LOUD talking, over emotionality, sometimes self aggrandizement, other times painful self deprecation. A wild vacillation between extremes in contrast to your well cultivated composure.

You to the world say I AM A ROCK and the world listens. But I have seen you cry when describing the difficulty of transitioning into this, your fortieth year of marriage and also and the brunch before the wedding of your youngest son, now my husband, at the fact that after 30 years you finally realized your little rascal had become a man.

And I see you now, as today, with an eye patch to cover your newly soured eye, struggling to sit up or lie down or get to the bathroom, reliant on the help you used to seem to abhor, having your son shave you and not being the master of your own and perhaps some other peoples destiny. But still with some mystical air of authority, and sometimes that winning wry grin and attendent bit of wit or sarcasm that lets me think that you're gonna be ok. That you are ok. That you are still Ken.

I have caught your blood children look at you gingerly like you would great wounded bear, and seem to be surprised that on closer inspection that you are only human, not the monolith you but weeks ago appeared. You are more humble now, vulnerable, more grateful than I have ever seen you. And I like it.

I feel closer to you than I ever have. And this event, this life changing moment that has forced all of us to confront and reconsider the strong thin twines of FATE and human fragility,for all its pain, discomfort, loneliness, loss of control, short distance between you and the long hall of death, the abject fear, the hallucinations and delusions that have haunted let me say that already I think I have seen something change in you, bloom perhaps. The seeds of a greater humanity.

You were a great man before this Ken. You are perhaps a greater man now. I hope you will begin to see it too.

Your wife and children adore you, you bear of a man.

Your blood children as well as others.

I to, great one, am grateful to be a part of your clan.

And I hope you enjoyed those cillantro enchiladas I made for you.

California Dreamer

It was around ten o clock in Albuquerque when I got the news. My Best Friend Bobbie told me on Facebook chat. She said she had news. Ben Spurgin died the other day. Her bittersweet ex-boyfriend. Boy genius. Idiot Savant. Chuck Norris Enthusiast. Heavy metal guitarist.Composer.Video Gamer. Visionary. Drug Addict.

When Bobbie game me the news it didn't seem real. How I had all but forgotten the man. Oh But how can you forget a name like Spurgin? Or a man like that?

I guess we had just lost touch, spent 3 years lost in our separate little lives, no even any more occasional blips on Myspace. I think I wished him happy birthday last time. He was thirty one years young.

And suddenly, he is gone.

Heroin. The white pony? The dark horse. He rode this seductive beast for who knows how long, rode and fell off, got trampled under the hooves. A tragedy. Especially for a man who dreamed as big as him. Larger than life. He wrote rock operas. Where is he now? Do the angels play Iron Maiden?


When Ben left he took with him a tiny thread stuck to his shoe that I didn't realize was unraveling the screen between me and a whole section of my life. The life we shared in San Francisco that is only half shod memories now.

Bobbie Sue was my best friend. I remember when she first met Ben. I was living in Seattle at the time with my lover Jason. Bobbie and I had been single and fancy free and used to go to Linda's on Pine and drink Black Labels and look at men, but I was suddenly out of the market and Bobbie was lonely. It had all happened pretty fast and she had begun to get bitter and loose hope when she met him. She was so proud of herself because she had talked to stranger on the bus as I often did and the stranger was Ben. He wound up getting off at her stop and walking her home I think and it was not long before the two were pretty inseparable.

I remember when I first met him too, he was lanky and tall with a little paunch and a died black mop of hair with sandy red roots. He was less handsome than charming but he sweet long face with heavy black glasses perched over milky blue eyes and light eyelashes. He has a funny, easy way about him and seemed crazy about her. He dressed like buddy holly in funny old sweaters and button up shirts and cords and sneakers but dressed like a rock star when he played with his goth band. He read exclusively old pulp novels like the kind you get at garage sales except they were all Post Apocalyptic. He could quote the Wrath of Kahn like the bible. She was a goner. It wasn't long before he moved in. We would go over there a lot, Jason and I, two couples in love and it was great most of the time until he started doing drugs again...It was meth at first, he said it helped him think.

He would stay up all night making music and doing his flash animation or playing video games and then would sleep all day. We didn't come over much anymore, and I hardly saw him awake. When he was awake he was always talking about the next big gig, the next dream, the next city they would live in, the next business they would start.

So when Jason and I had finally saved enough to move to Cali on a lark and a whim to live La Vie Boheme in San Fransisco she and Ben weren't far behind. They had been involved in some hard times and needed somewhere to start over, to be free again. And where is better to be free than San Fran? Even if it was the Tenderloin...Oh the Tenderloin.

We had found a little apartment there in an old building not to far from Civic Center and the trolley turn around on Polk street. It was small all had old pipes but it was San Fransisco and it
was ours. We had a futon and an overstuffed chair with an ottoman and we were broke but we were happy and in love. It was the spark of spring in San Fran and Seattle was still in the grey drudges of Winter. Bobbie sue was miserable. The SpeakEasy she worked in got busted up and
So they moved in with us that April. Just months after we got there ourselves. And we lived all together in a tiny dingy studio apartment on O'Farrell street, in a sea of convenience stores, delicious and cheap ethnic eateries, Peep Show Parlours, crack dens and broken dreamers.

Ben wasn't working, but he was off the drugs and determined to be a famous musician and flash artist. Every day he had a new idea that was going to be the big one. Every week a new job lead that would really pull him through this time. It was going to be "SWEEEEETTTTT..." as he would always say.

In the mean time the four of us were very nearly starving. We had two jobs between the four of us and three cats. We once all went through all of our pockets purses and couches to get enough money to buy two boxes of generic macaroni and cheese to share amongst us. We shared cat litter and treasured every cigarette, often splitting one four ways.

Bobbie and him weren't working out. None of us were after a while. Living four people in a studio does things to you. Especially in that neighborhood. At night the hotel across the streets fire alarm would go off almost every night. But during the day the sun poured in the big old windows and you could hear the sounds of children playing in the community center lot down below. And there had been good times too. For a little while we were all California dreamin'. We used to dress up in crazy costumes go out on the town or cook extravagant meals made of leftovers and drink Miller High Life out of crystal goblets Bobbie got at a thrift store. We laughed a lot and Jason and Ben would jam together on the guitar.


After two weeks of this though, or was it two months? It all blends together...it is so like a dream now...things started to go sour. Bobbie and Ben started snipping at each other. So did Jason and I. No one had any space. Bobbie was depressed and Ben was despondent. Jason was restless and I was pulling out my hair trying to keep the peace. Eventually we got enough money together to get them their own department. I think I paid half their deposit in exchange for a painting of Bobbies. For a while there things looked to be looking up.

Their new apartment was beautiful, just down the hall, apartment 205. They had a bay window looking down on the neighbors courtyard. Ben had his guitar and Bobbie had her old record player that used to belong to her dad.

They seemed ok for a while. We were all better for it. But they broke up anyway. And Jason and I shortly thereafter. All the poverty and stress and scraping by and clamoring for space had already sunk in to deep. No one was happy. And then we had this crazy idea. It was probably mine. And so I moved into 204 with Bobbie, and Ben moved into 202 with Jason.

And things got a little better again. Bobbie and me would do art long into the night and dance to Neutral Milk Hotel on the record player. The boys would play video games in their dirty socks and record songs together. Ben found a freelance job and got in a band.

He lost weight and looked happy. And we had some good talks sometimes, and sometimes it was fun to go over and hang out with the boys. And sometimes we wouldn't go over there for days and there just wasn't enough room in the world for the four of us.

And finally Bobbie Sue got tired of it. She packed the van and left for Sonorra to go live with her mother. Ben moved somewhere else with Jason and I moved to Portrero hill, a nice suburban family neighborhood on a hill overlooking the twinkling city, far away from the crack and the sounds of the city that would howl and honk and murmur around the complex all night long.

And we all kind of lost touch then for awhile. I hardly ever saw Jason or Ben. Six months later I moved back to Seattle and it was suddenly hard to believe that we all used to sit together and share two servings of mashed potatoes with them and it would be the first meal they'd eaten all day.

And Ben met a new girl and seemed like he was doing great. I ran into him once at the Mission Goodwill and he looked happy and was wearing a Vintage suit jacket and a grin all full of his next get rich scheme. He said he was moving back to Seattle, or Boulder or the moon and I believed him.

Ben could sell you anything. He was a "wild and crazy guy".I can just hear him say this perfectly.He was great with voices and celebrity impersonations.
And now he's gone.

Your mother misses you Ben.
So do lots of people.

Come back next time when you can stay a little longer.

And stay off the dark horse.