Rain

The Autumn rains have arrived, bringing new challenges for someone who after three months is still forced to use a knee scooter to get around. I don't mind getting wet- I have a nice new rain jacket and a great wide-brimmed hat which acts as an umbrella- but the handlebars get slick and the brakes, already pretty rudimentary, become practically useless when wet. The leaves on the sidewalk hide all the bumps and cracks, not to mention the sticks and nuts which have been driven from the branches by the rain, so I roll along even more cautiously than ever. Leaves get plastered onto my wheels and I have to stop occasionally to scrape them off.  So I'm even less mobile than I was a few weeks ago, with no end in sight. The last time I saw the doctor she seemed baffled as to why I'm not healing up, and started talking about possible infection in the bone, which would require surgery. She took some x-rays which were expensive but inconclusive. I've only seen her twice and am already trying to decide if I need to find a new doctor. The first time she trimmed the dead skin from my wound (a fifteen second procedure which I get billed for as "surgery") she was concerned that it was bleeding more than she expected, and said it could be a sign of liver damage. Now she's talking about operating. It's true that it doesn't seem to be healing as quickly as it should, but then no one has been able to tell me why this happened in the first place. I know the medical system, already pretty pathetic, has been stretched to the breaking point by the pandemic. I know that everyone working in that hospital is stressed out. But I'm at my breaking point too. I'm tired of shelling out money to doctors who are incompetent or inexperienced or apathetic or a combination of the three. But the dysfunction of the system seems as predictable and inevitable as the rain, though unlike the weather, it doesn't seem likely to change anytime soon.  

October Pilgrimage: brief summary

For someone with mobility issues which aren't proving to be as temporary as I had hoped, I got a lot accomplished during my two weeks back in the Lehigh Valley. I went to New York to see an amazing show of Phillip Guston's late paintings. I read at an open mic. I wrote the first poem I've written all year and filled three sketchbooks with cartoons. I saw Robyn Hitchcock perform. Best of all, I flew my brother in from Minneapolis to surprise my mother for her 70th birthday. I smile every time I think about her reaction when my brother sauntered into the kitchen and casually asked "What's a guy gotta do to get some coffee around here?"

I also managed to relax quite a bit. The weather was cloudy but mild, so every day I'd get my coffee and sit on the back deck and read or draw and listen to the birds. I have been such a throbbing knot of anxiety lately that I really felt like I was starting to crack. I could tell that if I didn't get a break of some sort, that something bad was going to happen. But after just a few days of lethargy, I found myself feeling calmer and healthier than I have in the past three years. I didn't try to accomplish too much, just allowed myself to space out and spend a lot of time with my mother and a few old friends. 

 

I visited Jasmine's brother at the old Hoskins Hacienda, where he and Jasmine's old school friend Jana and I spent hours looking at one of the few remaining caches of our wee companion's paintings. It was extremely intense; both beautiful and incredibly painful. It felt like ripping a scab off of a wound that hasn't healed properly, and then probing that wound with a  rusty scissors. As more pieces of the story of her collapse are revealed, the more I'm sickened by how stupid and preventable it all was. While we will never know all the details of her death and what led up to it, I have enough clues now to conjure a scenario that channels some of the more unsavory aspects of a David Lynch production. As much as I want to cling to whatever memories I still have of her, and as much as I believe in facing the truth head on, no matter how dark, I wish I could forget everything I've heard about her final  moments, because they are irredeemably fucking grim.

It took me a couple of days to crawl out from the dark shadow cast by that evening at the house in the woods, but I did, and a week later Jana and I had lunch at the Italian place in Bethlehem she loved so much. Afterwards we sat on a bench in the courtyard behind the Sun Inn, reminiscing pleasantly about our dear little frenemy in a way that felt more healing than painful. Her and Jasmine's brother and I are the three who loved her the most, I think, aside from her parents, who both died swiftly of cancer, and possibly her ex-husband, whose heart remains as enigmatic as their marriage was. But looking at those wonderful paintings- all of which were done when she was in her teens and twenties, after which her output slowed considerably- I'm convinced that she really could have been a Great Artist, if only a couple hundred things would have been different. Or maybe just one thing. Regardless, she is gone, and my heart breaks every day thinking of her, wishing I could hear her laugh again, see that mischievous twinkle in her eyes. 

 

Even at the Guston show, I couldn't completely lose myself in the art because there was a painting- one of my favorites- which I last saw nearly 18 years ago at the Met, with her by my side. And there it was again, but with her gone, it was like a huge chunk of the picture had been painted over. I found it hard to look at, and yet I stood in front of it for a long, long time.

There are plenty of other things I'd like to write about the trip, but I haven't yet been able to sift through the many emotions which inevitably accompany my trips back East. I will state the obvious and say that it is hard to watch one's parents aging, and it can challenging to enjoy what time we have together without feeling overwhelmed by a half century's worth of conflict, loss, and sometimes difficult love. But we keep trying, and sometimes we even succeed.

Unfinished travelogue -October 1st, 2021

 I'm flying back East for the first time in two years. I have an early flight, so I shoulder my duffel bag and head down the hill on my scooter to catch the train to the airport. Paranoid about missing my flight, I catch the first train of the day, which arrives a little before four in the morning. I'm the only passenger for a number of stops, at which point a skinny figure in a hoodie slipss on and sits somewhere behind me. After a few minutes they start to moan; quietly at first, then louder. It's a woman's voice. "Oh god," she says. Oh god. Oh my god. Oh. Oh. Oh god. Oh yes. Oh my god. Oh my fucking god. Oh god." I resist the urge to turn around for a long time and when I finally do, the compartment is empty.

As we move through the sleeping city, the train fills up with transients, some with bikes or sacks of cans. They stumble on and promptly fall asleep. At the end of the line, a security guard gets on and wakes them up. "Need to wake up and get off here," he says. "You can get back on in a few minutes but I need to clear the car. New rules." The men ignore him then slowly begin to rouse themselves and leave the train, milling about on the platform until they're allowed to get back in and continue their slumber.

The airport is under construction and people are running every which way trying to figure out which way they're supposed to be going. It's more people than I've seen since the start of the pandemic and it's completely overwhelming. I check my bag and get in line. People keep butting in front of me, and I keep politely informing them of this fact. Every one of them stares at me as if I'm crazy. In the middle of the concourse is a corral where a guard is walking a large spotted hound back and forth, back and forth. They're having people line up two by two and march shoulder to shoulder through the corral as the guard walks his dog in front of and behind them. They are pulling some people aside afterwards and leading When I get there I get paired up with a guy wearing a t-shirt with a picture of Rasputin on it. He carries a guitar case with the words "THIS IS NOT A GUN" written on tape across it. I tell him I like his shirt and he ignores me as we pass through the corral together.

The flight is uneventful. I have a five hour layover at Ohare, which is formed of seemingly endless miles of very narrow corridors. I roll up and down them looking for a place to eat, but all they have are chain restaurants like Chili's. I finally find a place that sells tortas. The tiny, ancient Mexican woman at the counter mangles my order but the food ends up being delicious anyways. Towering above a booth for the history museum is a full size Brachiosaurus skeleton. Across its face is a surgical mask the size of a tent. A sign at its feet reads "Look up! Look up!"

Every time I look at the departure board it lists a different gate for my plane, so I park myself in a central spot in case I need to move quickly and spend the five hours watching people. After being so isolated for so long, it's a shock to see so many people. The majority of people I see in my daily life are either museum patrons or people living on the street. I find the sheer variety of shapes and colors and faces stimulating but also exhausting. After a while they all start to blur together into one swiftly-moving mass.

 My second flight only takes a few hours on a small jet. It takes me right to Allentown, which I planned so I could avoid the hellish drive from Philly or, even worse, Newark. I've only landed at this airport once, sixteen years ago, during my first trip home after moving out West. It's a sleepy little place with only a handful of gates. I call my mom as I'm waiting for one of the two luggage carousels to churn into motion. I'm relieved but somewhat stunned to be here, on the ground, surrounded by walls covered with ads for familiar local businesses... Service Electric Television, Channel 69 News, Just Born Quality Confections... it's both comforting and jarring as I feel my brain trying to adjust, overlaying these images of my Pennsylvania past with those of my more recent life in Oregon. Between these two poles rushes the river of faces and bodies in the airport, the stream of humanity which I'm a part of but feel so separate from. I hoist my bag and wheel outside to greet my folks just as they pull up to the curb. 

Offender Call

I’m sitting on the back deck of my mother’s house

with a Coors Light in one hand

and a flyswatter in the other, smashing lantern flies 

and flicking stinkbugs off the banister.

The air is filled with the twittering of birds

punctuated by screams from the roller coaster down the street.

Inside, the land line keeps ringing. 

The caller ID reads Offender Call; my stepbrother

calling from prison. He calls every day

since his mother died and his girlfriend found the cash 

he’d squirreled away before he got locked up again. 

Last week my own number got tangled up in some scam 

and now I receive incessant texts telling me 

my debit card has been restricted, 

or trying to sell me car insurance, though I don’t drive, 

or looking for someone named Nicole.

My mother’s trying to get me to move back here

but most of my old friends are gone

and the places where we ruined our youth have closed.

My dad’s half blind and will sometimes topple over, 

and despite my years of threats, despite my failed attempts, 

for the first time I really see how this ends, 

can catch a whiff of final stink wafting up the cold corridor,

can hear the wheeze of the machines, 

the voices and dings over the intercom. Last night 

I got a message from my friend who works in the covid ward. 

Every one of her patients is dying.

Every one of them refused to get vaccinated. 

Possibly a coincidence. “I show up every day 

with grace and love in my heart,” she writes, 

“and then it all turns to shit.”

It’s been two years and I still picture the love of my life

face down in the grass, flopping like a fish. I do my best 

to push away the image, grab whatever distraction

is closest to hand. Yesterday the family 

piled in the car and drove downtown 

to the rinky-dink museum in the church basement

where the Liberty Bell was hidden from the British. 

My mother nodded and my sister rolled her eyes 

as the guide prattled on, instructing my brother 

to take the looped pole and hook it around the clapper 

and pull it to kiss the bronze rim of the replica.

I can still feel that great peal reverberating in my skull

…or maybe it’s the trilling of the phone

as another insect lands before me, stupid and fearless, 

antennae twitching, orange eyes staring.

I hold the plastic swatter poised 

keeping perfectly still

and I drink in the silence as the phone in the kitchen 

finally stops ringing