May 31, 2005
May 30, 2005
By The Throat
The Phantom of the Opera, which we saw with Matt and Debbie, was a Christmas present to me from Diane. Desire Under The Elms was my gift to her. I highly recommend this kind of delayed gratification gift giving. You have all the hub bub of Christmas but then you get to “open” your present months later. I believe Susan pioneered this years ago (1997?) when she gave Diane and me Riverdance. Her under the tree treat that we didn’t “open” until maybe September.
We loved last night’s Desire Under The Elms.
The first row of seats at the American Repertory Theatre are almost part of the set. Stretch your legs and you can put your feet on the gravel which represents the hard scrabble farm fought over in the play. Our seats were third row, dead center.
The play ran an hour and fifty minutes with no intermission, and , as an Anthony Quinn/Zorba the Greek-looking man standing in the lobby said afterwards, “That O’Neill, he grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go for a second.”
I clapped hard at end but I was relieved to walk out into the fresh night’s air, away from the gritty set and away from the domineering father, his tortured wife and sons.
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I have two hundred of these to sort through...give me time and you won't be disappointed.
May 28, 2005
After The Funeral
Jennifer
We had the funeral for my aunt Beatrice . The funeral seemed to be exactly what a Catholic funeral ought to be.
After the funeral, one sister, one daughter, and I returned to the house to resume the sorting-and-taking-stock task. Around dinner time, a girl appeared who had just learned of Beatrice’s death that afternoon. She was very upset and kept saying how close they were. Did we need any help? We had her come in. It turned out that she was a junior in high school and lived a few blocks away. Moira met Beatrice last summer when Cranberry was loose in the evening so she brought Cranberry to the address on the tag. Beatrice was on the floor, and “was not well” or “had been drinking”. They became good friends.
Beatrice told her all about: growing up (Moira's grandmother grew up in the same place), her first marriage (but not more than we’d figured out already from the wedding album), all the schnausers (we had remembered them all, but Moira knew that Groucho was the one that they “adopted” – I vaguely remember that), the Frost work (and Moira's English teacher was going to have Mrs. Smith in when they did Frost in the spring; not yet because the teacher didn’t want the end of the year to be anticlimactic; yes, Moira does have a copy of her published book on Frost), the current book (Moira was glad the literary executor would try to publish it), St. Ignatius (Moira was relieved the funeral was there, Mrs. Smith loved it there), step-sons by name, and children thereto.
We kept expressing surprise that Beatrice had opened up to her so much, and Moira explained that she was pushy but had sometimes stayed away because she worried she was too pushy. She was extremely upset that she hadn’t been around since – well, obviously since late March. She had tried at some point(s?), but when Beatrice didn’t answer or something she didn’t go over and insist on going in as it sounded like she often had in the previous months, because she was busy getting ready for a trip. (School vacation trip?) Often when Beatrice didn’t answer the phone or told her not to come over she said she wasn’t well and Moira thought she had been drinking (and sometimes Moira visited anyway).
Just before Moira left, we asked her if there was anything we could do for her, and she said, “Don’t give away the coffee table, her husband made that, she told me all about that.” We assured her that we were not planning to get rid of it, it was one of our favorites, but what did she know about it? And she explained how “Bill – no, Mr. Smith” – had collected tile from demolition sites and he hadn’t glued the pieces down until Beatrice made him do so when they got married. (Another thing I once knew, but had forgotten.) She was quite amazing. I think she was the ONLY person who knew Beatrice both drinking and sober. And she liked all of her.
Beatrice's first wedding.
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There’s a sweet addendum to the Moira story. She responded to a card (on a copy of a pen-and-ink andwatercolor by my uncle) from me with (among other things) the comment, “I hope she could have considered me a friend.” I didn’t quite know how to answer that, not knowing why she seemed not to have mentioned Moira to anyone, and then Saturday I found a jewelry box in a drawer labeled “Moira, for her graduation” – that’s not until NEXT year, by the way.
May 27, 2005
Friday
Friday, late afternoon, after work.
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know, what do you want to do?” I decided earlier that we weren’t going out to dinner. Fun, yes, intimate, yes, but we can’t afford our Friday night ritual.
“I’m irritable. I woke up irritable, I took a nap and I’m still irritable. I want to go out.”
“I’ll be ready in five minutes.”
There were half hours waits at the Ninety-nine (Across the street from Concord Park. We’d left Flo watching a Hepburn, Spencer Tracy movie) and the Paparazzi, but plenty of room at the little bar at the Colonial Inn. Mercifully, there was no singer, just the Ric Maure Trio.
May 26, 2005
Secrets
Descent
My father drummed darkness
Through the underbrush
Until lightning struck
I take after him
Clouds crowd the sky
Around me as I run
Downhill on a high--
I am my mother’s son
Born long ago
In the storm’s eye
Samuel Menashe
I talked to my sister yesterday. The conversation’s theme the same as it has been for weeks - what to do with our parents. However, this time we ended with a tidy plan.
I said, “Let’s keep it a secret for now.”
Fifteen minutes later my brother, Brian, called. He told me his flight back from Evansville was flawless. “Greased” is the word he used. I told him it was payback given how difficult his visit had been. He continued, “But that’s not the real reason I called. Joan told me you had a secret plan... .”
Diane and I danced in the kitchen last night while we prepared dinner. We listened to Willie Nelson sing from his greatest hits album - songs like Remember Me and Georgia on my Mind.
“If only the music were better,” Diane whispered in my ear.
“I love this music.”
“I know. I’m afraid we’re going to end up in the South listening to Country and Western.”
“And Old Time Radio.”
Matt brought his tux home last night for his upcoming prom on the 28th. He has been pretty quiet about the event, but not Diane. Holy cow. You’da thought it was her prom. “When are you getting picked up in the limo? When can we take pictures? Will other parents be there? What are you doing afterwards? Are you staying out all night? When does the tux have to be returned.”
Peter leaves Evansville this morning for an almost two week conference in San Fransico.
May 25, 2005
Burro Books
The books from the burro train arrived today at the Miller black hole depository. Normally, this could be found written inside ever cover, but would you lookey here.------->
What could this mean?
May 23, 2005
Wheelchair Free
Flo up and about on her walker.
Brian has joined Peter in Evansville. He called me yesterday while struggling to find the parents' house on Bellemeade. I was outside cutting the grass. I would’ve told him getting lost is part of the arrival ritual. I usually drive down route 41, past their street, then I get trapped in traffic where I'm forced onto the bridge over the muddy Ohio River. Once on the Kentucky side, I’ll wander in the swampy area behind the race track until some homeless guy guides me back to the right state. That’s after I’ve traded a dollar for a swig of his Thunderbird. It might be a good thing Brian did not reach me.
Did I tell you Diane bought her new car with zero input from me? She researched it, had dealers bidding against one another, and sealed the deal without any help. Not that she needs help, I mean, she might have liked to have had help... .
A hundred pages into The Closers and not a glimpse of the killer.
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May 22, 2005
Patti's Quilt
Peter in red, Emma and Patti.
The friendly folks at the local library where Patti worked sewed her this bed-sized quilt. Pictured is the top left most square. For a look at the whole quilt, minus the yellow and polka-dot border, click right here .
May 21, 2005
The Closers
We clogged the Costco check out line today with three hundred dollars worth of essentials. In addition to the fifty-five gallon drum of olive oil, the too-heavy-to pickup box of soy milk, the left flank of Mt Washington turned into toilet paper and paper towels, we (okay, I) bought the new Michael Connelly book.
Priced at a buck or two above what the paperback version will sell for, I couldn’t resist. The young lad helping box our stuff said to Diane ( I was off using the facilities), “I’ve read only one of these, but I liked it. The main character’s name is Harry, but doesn’t he have a longer name?” Diane, not a fan or even a reader of the Harry Bosch series replied, “Hieronymus.”
Adam and rakkity, set your Barcoloungers to “easy reading.” I should be finished by next weekend.
May 19, 2005
Barcelona Bound
I guess everyone's kid will eventually end up in Spain.
FOR:MILLER/MATTHEW C
SERVICE DATE FROM TO DEPART ARRIVE
AIR FRANCE 22JUN BOSTON MA PARIS 535P 620A
AF 337 WEDNESDAY LOGAN INTL CHARLES DE GAU 23JUN
V ECONOMY AIRCRAFT: AIRBUS INDUSTRIE A340-300
SEAT 45B CONFIRMED
AIR FRANCE 23JUN PARIS BARCELONA 745A 930A
AF 1148 THURSDAY CHARLES DE GAU
V ECONOMY AIRCRAFT: AIRBUS INDUSTRIE A320-100/200
May 18, 2005
Friends
To paraphrase Matthew: "The blog is one happy place to be these days. Chest pains, dead bodies, depressing poems, and more dead people. Can't you ligthen up?"
Does it get any cheerier than these photos taken at dinner last night? Though it looks like a comic book illustation viewed with 3-D glasses, be sure to click on the last link.
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May 17, 2005
The Young Warhorse
Noland's brother,Noland, and friends.
May 16, 2005
Rest in Peace
I stopped by New England Life Care, a nursing home/rehab facility, not unlike Rivercrest, to see my buddy, Noland. This was my third visit. His bed was made, his chair, brought from home, empty. I had a present for him.
“I’m looking for Noland. Is he is at rehab?”
The nurse looked at me and hesitated.
“No he’s not. Who are you? Are you close to him, are you family?”
“I’m close family.”
“Let me look to see if you are on his list.”
“Okay, I’m not on the list. But...”
“He’s in the hospital.”
I called Emerson to see if he had a room. He did not. I visited with Flo, shopped for dinner and then called his wife, Shirley. She answered, distantly.
“What’s up Shirley?”
“Noland just died.”
“I’m sorry.”
“We were in the emergency room for most of the day. He was going to be transferred to Critical Care. I went home for a moment and Dr. Green called...“
May 15, 2005
Stray Elephants
Dr. Herson walked back to where I was sitting and opened his textbook to a page of black and used-to-be-white graphs. He angled his straight edge so that it would intersect my age with my treadmill results.
“See, this shows that you are in good shape for your age, even if not for you.”
“I’ve exercised all my life, but I’ve been fallow the last few months. And my diet - it’s the worst it has ever been.”
“But your chest pains are not due to any blockage. That’s what this stress test showed, and you were able to tolerate level four, which is good for your age.”
The treadmill is programed to respond to data input. It increases in speed and in elevation depending on heart rate. As I stepped along, Dr. Herson gabbed. I’d ask him a question and he’d drift into long, convoluted answers, as if I had an inkling of what he was talking about. The faster the treadmill spun, the longer the answers and the less sense they made.
While he scribbled pictures of my arteries with little mounds of plaque, I concentrated on not letting go of the handrails and appearing to have an easy walk-in-the-park. I’d dreaded this test, not only for what it might show inside my arteries, but for what it would reveal to the casual observer. A near bedridden slug.
“You know, that textbook looks like something I used in college.”
“Ah yes. It has sentimental value.”
“Sentimental value? But what about new information? I mean, think of what you learned in medical school that is worthless today?”
“These values don’t change. This book was published in 1973 and it would take a hundred thousand years of human evolution to change these values.”
It’s funny how this purported stress test really doesn’t show stress, which is what I had hoped to be the cause of my chest pains. When I first sat down, I told Dr. Herson as much, because I knew my symptoms veered from classic textbook descriptions. Still, elephants straying from the Serengeti to my sternum are hard to ignore.
“You should do something to lower your cholesterol levels, but you know, some people have high serum levels, but don’t deposit in on their arteries. Still, your LDL is too high.”
I could see the wrap-up coming in his eyes, but I had another topic to discuss.
“I’ve got one more thing.”
He paused. I assumed he was busy, so I tried to condense as best as possible , my little story. It came out in chunks.
“I worked here twenty-five years ago as a respiratory therapist. There was a resuscitation in the CCU which we worked together on. It was a man in his forties. He was admitted and right away, he arrested. I’d seen him sitting up, talking to his wife and son. As we worked on him, his son, who had been ushered out of the room, asked if he could come back in. You said, ‘Yes.’ ‘
“I do remember that, but the details are vague. You know, that’s what they are recommending these days, that family members participate more. It really depends on the age. Teenagers, I’d still say no to.”
“You were ahead of your time. I’d been part of two hundred or so resuscitations by then, and that was a first. No physician had ever let a family member watch. But, here was his son, barely twenty years old, whispering in his father’s ear, begging him to come back.
After it was over I complimented you for letting him into the room, and you said, ‘How could I say no?’ I was glad you didn’t say no, because I thought afterwards that his son would have no if-only’s. He came in and he did everything he could to bring his father back.“
May 14, 2005
The Character
I’d just gotten home from work. I was chillin’ in front of my computer, before my shower, before Diane arrived back from wherever she was, and before our trip to the bookstore, Borders. Diane’s Lebanese born car salesman had convinced her to buy language tapes to improve her French (doesn’t that sound like something that would happened to me, not her?) and I needed a few more hours of radio mystery.
Let me add - this had already been one of those weeks. For both of us
Ringy dingy.
“Is this the Florence Canning household?”
“Close enough.”
“Then you are... ?”
“Her son-in-law.”
“This is Kim from Dr. Paparallo’s office. We have the report on today’s CAT scan. Florence has a fractured hip. She needs to be taken to the emergency room at Emerson.”
“Why? What will they do there? We did that last Saturday after her fall on Friday.”
“That’s what the doctor wants.”
“She has some mobility, she is in rehab... “
“But you have to take her to the emergency room.”
“I don’t mean to be argumentative, but why not call an orthopedic surgeon to see her?”
“Dr Paparallo wants you to take her to Emerson. She has a non-displaced fracture of the greater trochanter and it’s severe enough that she should be seen in the emergency room.”
“But then what? We’ve been through this before. They looked at her and sent her home. Now that they have more information, what will they do?”
“She may need surgery. I don’t know.”
Kim won. I couldn’t argue anymore. I knew that Diane, after yet another week of medical calls and today’s CAT scan on her supposed day off, might just complete her core meltdown, which would be pleasant to watch compared to how I knew Flo would react.
“Okay. We have some things to do (I had to find Diane), but we ought to be there within the hour.”
“I’ll call and tell Emerson you are coming.”
Maybe you’d like to call and tell my wife.
The emergency room bustled with business, but Flo didn’t have to wait long to see Dr. Sam Sockwell. Maybe because, in my own fit of pique, I wheeled her through the door marked “Ambulance Entrance Only,” and not the one further away, “Emergency Room Patients.” Wheeled is a misnomer. I gave her a shove and she glided through both automatic doors, and arrived without escort at the front desk, behind which all the doctors and nurses, not the admitting staff, buzzed. Even stressed out Diane, who had to whip her head around to find her mother, laughed.
Dr. Sockwell is tall and thin and his light brown hair has just a touch of gray at the temples. He is direct, very polite and though he has no accent, you know he is not native born. He told us that Flo’s fracture was similar to her right hip fracture of two months ago, and we had to decide if she would get proper care back at good old Concord Park. If Flo were at risk of falling, she would have to be admitted to Emerson, and then shipped back to Rivercrest or another rehab facility.
“Can you be careful?” Each time Dr. Sockwell turned from one of us to talk to Flo, he’d bend down and make real good eye contact. Yes, he raised his voice some, but not a lot.
“Oh yes.”Flo answered. I knew how much Flo wanted to go back to her place and I knew she was going to serve a whole platter of yes’s. I bit my tongue. We all wanted her back at “the hole.”
“Are there people at Concord Park to take care of you?”
“Oh yes.”
“The hole” had morphed into God’s gift to the elderly.
“Will you ask for help?”
“Yes. I will. They told me to pull that thing (her call chain) whenever I needed to, but I thought it was just for emergencies. They said, ‘Pull it anytime.’ I said, ‘You mean, even at 2 AM ?’ They said, ‘Yes.’ “
Diane, eager to make sure Dr. Sockwell knew who he was dealing with, interrupted Mrs. I’ll-Be-A-Perfect-Angel.
“Last night my mother used the commode, but she couldn’t stand it sitting at her beside, so she got up and emptied it.”
Dr. Sockwell, who had been laughing at Flo’s answers before this, straightened up, turned away and muttered, “She’s a character.”
Flo said, “Who’s a character?”
Dr. Sockwell looked down and said, “You are.”
Polite, respectful, raised in that generation of proper names, Flo held out her hand as though closing an important business deal, and I swear, in an octave lower than her normal voice, said, “Okay, Sam.”
They shook hands and Sam signed her discharge papers.
May 13, 2005
Is Rennie nearby?
This week's damage:
New hard drive for Diane’s computer: $164.00 (yes, Chris, it truly seems to be DCR’s default solution to all intractable computer problems)
New main board for my printer: $250.00
New radio/CD player to replace the one that died in my truck: $254.00
May 12, 2005
Parish Priest
From An Invitation to Poetry, edited by Robert Pinsky and Maggie Dietz.
On loan (rakkity knows what that means) from Chris.
from "Clearances"
When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant places
From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head
Her breath mine, our fluent dipping knives --
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.
Seamus Heaney
May 11, 2005
Unearthly
The Carrizo Plain in the sky . Thanks to shinydome and rakkity.
Silence
There is the sudden silence of the crowd
above a player not moving on the field,
and the silence of the orchid.
The silence of the falling vase
before it strikes the floor,
the silence of the belt when it is not striking the child.
The stillness of the cup and the water in it,
the silence of the window above us,
and the silence when you rise and turn away.
And there is the silence of this morning
which I have broken with my pen,
a silence that had piled up all night
like snow falling in the darkness of the house -
the silence before I wrote a word
and the poorer silence now.
Billy Collins
May 10, 2005
May 09, 2005
Carrizo Plain
From shinydome's son to shinydome to the blog. The Carrizo Plain which is between Bakersfield and Paso Robles.
May 08, 2005
Happy Mother's Day
Lot'sa moms
Jennifer will have to help me here, but I think: her sister, her mother( Nancy), Jennifer, unknown, Jennifer's grandmother. I'm guessing the baby in Jennifer's arms is her eldest daughter.
e.e. cummings - i carry your heart with me
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
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May 05, 2005
1952
From Nancy Tomlinson Hall Rice's (Jennifer's mother) Senior Paper, October, 1952
Well, so perhaps my need to write, up through my freshman year in college, can be attributed simply to the fact that I wanted to be like my mother, and was copying those things which seemed to be important to her, without having any idea why. Actually I never saw any of my mother’s finished stories … [S]he was always scribbling down little bits of conversations on the backs of envelopes.
Some of these conversations were ones I remembered hearing or being part of myself, and these were always slightly distorted and much more fun the way my mummy had put them down. I tried not to snoop, but the temptation to see something as she had seen it was often too strong to keep me from looking at things she left lying around in the open. …
And I began to keep diaries … One summer in particular, as I remember it, I used up seven lined notebooks … [My mother] suggested that I try … for brevity. … My diary became not so much a record of what my life was like, but a cheerful practice in saying things well.
And I did say things well. My stories, the ones I turned out in the old days, still strike me as cleverly done. I had what my mother called a flair for the dramatic, by which she meant that I told my stories as she told hers. They were complicated and witty, and very little more. It began to seem to me even then, and increasingly my first year in college, that this was dishonest in me.
One of my best stories, published as the lead story in the school magazine my junior year, would be a good example.
My brother Jerry and I had decided one year to tap the maples on our lawn and in the churchyard next door. It was a silly-ish sort of a lark, and Mummy was cross with it all along, because it meant every pan in the house and rows of milkbottles and dishpans (everything but the bathtub) filled with sickish-sweet maple sap, waiting to be boiled on the stove. And it meant no burners for cooking and the house steamy for weeks, but she was a good-ish sort of Mummy and she let us go ahead. The sap came in a rush, and overwhelmed, we went next door to borrow the giant kettle that Mrs. Delarmy used for spaghetti suppers. Sometimes she let the ladies of the Ladies Aid borrow it for Church Suppers, when she could be there to help.
“If it were anybody but the Hall children,” we heard her say to her daughter as we left hugging it happily, “I don’t know as I would have.” And we remembered our promise to be careful, but wondered whatever there could possibly be to be careful about. After all, a kettle is a kettle, and indestructible.
It was not. We left it simmering one night, and woke to find the house a choke of smoke and the kettle a glowing mass of bubbling flames. The bottom, what with the heat from the gallons of sugar, just burned right out. It was wartime and the kettle impossible to replace. Jerry and I still squirm inside when we remember.
As I said, it was a dramatic story, and I told it vividly and with a high-handed amusement. The details, to be technical, were all slightly askew from the truth, but not more so than the details of the writing I do now. But they were askew in a different direction, and for a different reason. They were askew because it sounded funnier that way, and more dramatic, not because I wanted to make them reveal not only what had happened but the way I felt. I had told it to arouse in others first a feeling of amusement and then of shock, and it seemed to me (almost) that this was enough.
Two things nagged at me. First there was Mrs. Delarmy, who might, because she was a good person, have forgiven the kettle, but never, if she had seen it, the story. And then there was my brother. We never talked much, but we understood each other; about the story he said nothing to me, but I knew I hadn’t been true to something the two of us shared.
May 04, 2005
Faux Americana
Chris, the internet reader, sent me this link . If you have any interest in Bruce Springsteen, it is one of those “must reads.”
Susan arrived yesterday as I was putting dinner on the table. Matt did his caged lion act, forced to sit with us twice as long as normal. After dinner, he bolted to Willow Books while we went to - where else? - Erickson’s Ice-cream .
May 03, 2005
May 02, 2005
Phantom
Last night we saw The Phantom of the Opera. In Diane’s words,”Who knew we’d see something so good?” If I were a theater reviewer my column would have one word - “Go.”
Matt brought his friend, Debbie, and we arrived early so we could have dinner before the play. Matt, the skeptic, kept asking me, “So, Dad (my capital), where are we eating?” He knew I had no idea, but he asked the same question every fifteen minutes or so.
We parked in a lot across from The Opera House, and after looking up and the down the street, but seeing no restaurants, I immediately asked the lot attendant for a recommendation. He pointed down the street, past the playhouse, and said,”There are plenty in that direction.” After walking a few blocks and seeing nothing but a Wendy’s and a pizzeria, Matt asked again, “So Dad, where are we going to eat.” I stopped at a sidewalk cart, the vendor selling t-shirts, and popped the question. He said, apologetically, “I only work here.”
We walked another two blocks when Diane spied Kennedy’s Irish Pub and Steak House a block away, up a side street. It was - even Matt had to admit - perfect. I had salmon, Diane crab cakes (not enough crab for Linda), Matt a huge hamburger with barbecue sauce and Debbie a gloppy, cheesy pasta plate. I didn’t say the food was perfect.
On the way home I played Springsteen's new CD , Devils and Dust. I love it, but I knew Diane would hate it - the repetitive beat, Bruce’s unintelligible mumbling ( far worse than Nebraska), the dirge-like quality (not quite as funereal as Tom Joad) so I kept it low until Matt said, "If you insist on playing horrible music, at least turn it up so we can hear it."
May 01, 2005
The Soul Wanders
Averno
Louise Gluck
Averno. Ancient name, Avernus. A small crater lake, ten miles west of Naples, Italy; regarded by the ancient Romans as the entrance to the underworld.
1
You die when your spirit dies.
Otherwise, you live.
You may not do a good job of it, but you go on --
something you have no choice about.
When I tell this to my children
they pay no attention.
The old people, they think--
this is what they always do:
talk about things no one can see
to cover up all the brain cells they’re losing.
They wink at each other;
listen to the old one, talking about the spirit
because he can’t remember anymore the word for chair.
It is terrible to be alone.
I don’t mean to live alone--
to be alone, where no one hears you.
I remember the word for chair.
I want to say--I’m just not interested anymore.
I wake up thinking
you have to prepare.
Soon the spirit will give up--
all the chairs in the world won’t help you.
I know what they say when I’m out of the room.
Should I be seeing someone, should I be taking
one of the new drugs for depression.
I can hear them, in whispers, planning how to divide the cost.
And I want to scream out
you’re all of you living in a dream.
Bad enough, they think, to watch me falling apart.
Bad enough without this lecturing they get these days
as though I had any right to this new information.
Well, they have the same right.
They’re living in a dream, and I’m preparing
to be a ghost. I want to shout out
the mist has cleared--
It’s like some new life:
you have no stake in the outcome;
you know the outcome.
Think of it: sixty years sitting in chairs. And now the mortal spirit
seeking so openly, so fearlessly--
To raise the veil.
To see what you’re saying goodbye to.
2
I didn’t go back for a long time.
When I saw the field again, autumn was finished.
Here, it finishes almost before it starts--
the old people don’t even own summer clothing.
The field was covered with snow, immaculate.
There wasn’t a sign of what happened here.
You didn’t know whether the farmer
had replanted or not.
Maybe he gave up and moved away.
The police didn’t catch the girl.
After awhile they said she moved to some other country,
one where they don’t have fields.
A disaster like this
leaves no mark on the earth.
And people like that--they think it gives them
a fresh start.
I stood a long time, staring at nothing.
After a bit, I noticed how dark it was, how cold.
A long time--I have no idea how long.
Once the earth decides to have no memory
time seems in a way meaningless.
But not to my children. They’re after me
to make a will; they’re worried the government
will take everything.
They should come with me sometime
to look at this field under the cover of snow.
The whole thing is written out there.
Nothing: I have nothing to give them.
That’s the first part.
The second is: I don’t want to be burned.
3
On one side, the soul wanders.
On the other, human beings living in fear.
In between, the pit of disappearance.
Some young girls ask me
if they’ll be safe near Averno--
they’re cold, they want to go south a little while.
And one says, like a joke, but not too far south—
I say, as safe as anywhere
which makes them happy.
What it means is nothing is safe.
You get on a train, you disappear.
You write your name on the window, you disappear.
There are places like this everywhere,
places you enter as a young girl,
from which you never return.
Like the field, the one that burned.
Afterward, the girl was gone.
Maybe she didn’t exist,
we have no proof either way.
All we know is:
the field burned.
But we saw that.
So we have to believe in the girl,
in what she did. Otherwise
it’s just forces we don’t understand
ruling the earth.
The girls are happy, thinking of their vacation.
Don’t take a train, I say.
They write their names in mist on a train window.
I want to say, you’re good girls,
trying to leave your names behind.
4
We spent the whole day
sailing the archipelago,
the tiny islands that were part of the peninsula
until they’d broken off
into the fragments you see now
floating in the northern sea water.
They seemed safe to me,
I think because no one can live there.
Later we sat in the kitchen
watching the evening start and then the snow.
First one, then the other.
We grew silent, hypnotized by the snow
as though a kind of turbulence
that had been hidden before
was becoming visible,
something within the night
exposed now—
In our silence, we were asking
those questions friends who trust each other
ask out of great fatigue,
each one hoping the other knows more
and when this isn’t so, hoping
their shared impressions will amount to insight.
Is there any benefit in forcing upon oneself
the realization that one must die?
Is it possible to miss the opportunity of one’s life?
Questions like that.
The snow heavy. The black night
transformed into busy white air.
Something we hadn’t seen revealed.
Only the meaning wasn’t revealed.
5
After the first winter, the field began to grow again.
But there were no more orderly furrows.
The smell of the wheat persisted, a kind of random aroma
intermixed with various weeds, for which
no human use has been as yet devised.
It was puzzling—no one knew
where the farmer had gone.
Some people thought he died.
Someone said he had a daughter in New Zealand,
that he went there to raise
grandchildren instead of wheat.
Nature, it turns out, isn’t like us;
it doesn’t have a warehouse of memory.
The field doesn’t become afraid of matches,
of young girls. It doesn’t remember
furrows either. It gets killed off, it gets burned,
and a year later it’s alive again
as though nothing unusual has occurred.
The farmer stares out the window.
Maybe in New Zealand, maybe somewhere else.
And he thinks: my life is over.
His life expressed itself in that field;
he doesn’t believe anymore in making anything
out of earth. The earth, he thinks,
has overpowered me.
He remembers the day the field burned,
not, he thinks, by accident.
Something deep within him said: I can live with this,
I can fight it after awhile.
The terrible moment was the spring after his work was erased,
when he understood that the earth
didn’t know how to mourn, that it would change instead.
And then go on existing without him.