Of father, fathers, and Father

Sometimes, perhaps I am just reading a poem by Mary Oliver "Now is my father / Walking the wind, / Sniffing the deep Pacific / That begins at the end of the world." and his face bursts into my mind's eye. And grief's knife twists in my soft underbelly. To know that I can never again cup the cheek of his nubby face or feel him pat my back -- how do you live through this?

How do you learn to be fatherless in the world, after carrying him with you for over half a century? Is it from the same strength that breaks open the spirit of a man when he learns that finally, finally, he will have a child? The same desire to stretch forward into the forever of life? The same joy of vicarious accomplishments? The same fierce protectiveness?

I cannot walk this world alone, so I am glad he showed me how he talked to his father. How, long after my grandfather was dead, my father would point to a flower in his yard, a tomato in his garden, a fish in his net, and say "Ahhh. What do you think of that, Cap?" pronouncing "think" as "tink," the way the Cajuns, his people, do. I am glad he talked with me about his journey with his Father, who walked with him through the dark times he knew we both shared, who showed him how to concentrate on that tiny speck of light at the other end of the tunnel, and keep moving, keep moving, just keep moving: this darkness, too, shall pass.

I will carry my father with me, as I will all fathers, and my Father, such that I have, asking Great Mother to make him room, make him room, for I need both as I go forward from this, and each day from here on, without his booming spirit on this earthly plane.

Mz. Romanz' Guide to Valentine's Day

Please pass along this email to your husband or other significant other, at your discretion, of course.
(LyP completely acknowledges (and apologizes for) the teeth-gnashingly flagrant sexism (which apologies will undoubtedly be likened to the spluttering apologistrophe that followed the Snickers-incited-two-men-kissing and subsequent chest-hair-pulling commercial) not to mention (but she will) the unremitting gender bias, but she posts this for the same reason as the Mars company ran the commercial: even if you don't like/agree with it, most of you will probably chuckle at some point, even in spite of yourselves.

<tongue_in_cheek>

Husbands and Other Significant Others:
Make This a Great Valentines Day!

It’s I, Mz. Romanz, and I’m sending along this Guide to Husbands and Other Significant Others. To make this Valentine’s Day the best ever, Mz. Romanz recommends the following:

1. Write her a poem consisting of at least three lines.
   
   
   
   • Each line should consist of six to seven words of one to three syllables.
   
   
   • If you exclude the words “babe” and “football” it’ll be a winner.
   
   
   • If you mention something like “can’t imagine how I ever survived without you” or “you make my heart sing” you may even see welled tears.
   
   
   • If you mention something you remember about her, you’ll see the tear trail, or as we call it in the biz: lovelines!
   
   
   • It can be anything. Really. So this would work [feel free to use this as a template it you wish]:
     / From your darling <husband | lover | your_name> to my dearest <wife | lover | sweetheart’s name>:
     / I remember your <face | hands | feet | eyes | other body part> on our <first date | wedding day | other important anniversary>...
     

     [Note: Do NOT use “breasts” or “butt” or derivatives of same. At Valentine's Day, these are not considered “body parts” per se. Tip: Using “eyes” is almost always a good bet.]

     
     / You were <freezing | burning up | fainting | worried about your <drunk Uncle Ned | crazy ex>>
     / I couldn’t have imagined how <wonderful | fantastic | amazing> our life would be together.
     / With hopes for many more Valentine’s Days to come.
     / Your_name [written in the best script you can muster]
     
   
   
2. If you can’t bring yourself to write a poem, draw a picture with crayons. Tell her you’re trying to recapture youth, yada yada. You’ll figure out something.


3. Hold her hand and look into her eyes longingly.
   
   
   
   • To create a longing look, think of how to spell “magnanimous.”
   
   
   • Count to three or four.
   
   
   • Really, that’s all there is to it!
     
   
   
4. Do something for her that you don’t usually do.
   
   
   
   • Rinse off the dishes.
   
   
   • Take out the trash before she asks.
   
   
   • Refill her tea when it’s half full.
   
   
   • Take off your shoes and socks in the bedroom [I know this can be quite a stretch for some of you, but try it!].
   
   
   • If you don’t think this will win you points, you’re wrong. It will. I mean it!
   
   
   
   

All of these things work best when accompanied by a sincere feeling of love, but (unfortunately or fortunately, depending on whether you’re the woman or the man) they work whether you mean it or not.

</tongue_in_cheek>

OK, that ought to do it.

The place the Buddha touched

LyP found the essence of this phrase at a blogsite:
http://everest.myblogsite.com/blog/_archives/2005/5/9/664161.html

A couple of days ago we walked down to the Rongbuk Monastery, visited the cave monk in the old Monastery on the way (got to feel where the hand of Buddha touched), and ran into a group of people bicycling from Lhasa to Kathmandu.

Seonie stopped at the edge of the clearing. There was something about this place that wanted you clean and sacred, and Seonie didn't feel all that sacred after the morning she'd had. Paulo came home just as she awakened, the scent of ganja chalky on his clothes. Tomorrow, she would send him to the city, though she could not bring herself to disown this man who was once her son.

The sight of him in her mind's eye rekindled the rage she journeyed here to cede. The rage incited the despair that bore tears to her eyes. She tried to remember that it was the sick part of her thinking that rejoiced in this feeling. She tried to remember that there were brushes with happiness in the past 14 months. She tried to remember that the disease wanted her in despair so deep that it could sink its teeth into the soft, bruised place she had yet to heal. In the in-breath, she tried to remember how the breeze cupped her cheek that day she remembered her spirit. This time it won't work. She thought. This time, the darkness will win. But even as she thought it, the space inside lightened. Another piece of blackness cracked into ash and swirled into a devil of dust, the edges sloughing off fingers of debris with each spin.

Behind her closed eyes, Seonie hear a bird call from far away. She echoed its love-you-love-you-love-you-love-you mantra. She felt that inner shift that said something was different forever, that she would never again have to travel this fork of the path of darkness.

This was the place where she felt the bigness of the world, the so-bigness that she could not know it for more than a second. It made her feel so light that a ray of sun could carry her away. It lay so heavy that she thought her heart would break open, or stop beating. The bottom of the world fell away, just for the space of her in-breath. Then, in the out-breath, the world rebuilt itself under her. The tree she leaned on regrew heart-wood and ring-flesh and bark-skin. The clearing remade itself exactly as it had been, so close a copy that only she knew it was completely different. And she, fortunate enough to pass this moment of light so near to the remaking of this piece of the world, she was re-created as well.

The brush of a warm palm on the back of her hand caused her to jerk away from the tree, and everything re-became ordinary, except that her hand sang in a way she had never heard, or maybe noticed, and she studied its unfamiliarity, as if she had only just discovered this strange bit of her. She leaned against the tree again, and knew with every piece of her spirit that the Buddha once touched this place, this place on the tree, this place in the clearing, this place in the world, this place in her heart.

Now, gratitude fueled her tears, and a different kind of humility carried her forward. She felt empty and full, and not at all concerned with the incongruous melting of that moment into this.

10q, J9... Luv K8

So, I'll take the tag of love from ChemicalBilly, though she has not formally swabbed me with her blogistick.

K8 watched J9 break over the prow of the boat. Ship, she corrected. A throb of sympathy swept through her. She remembered the days of splash-over-the-side waves and San Francisco Bay so close she could dangle her hair over the edge and touch it, her mind shouting "We're going over! We're definitely going over!" And the miracle of keel preventing same.

She found, then, abject terror to be a most effective remedy for seasickness. Thence, motion conjured excitement, tingles of arousal that she hesitated to voice.

J9 straightened, leaning hard on the railing. After several rolls, she lifted one hand to wipe her mouth. K8 joined her at the railing, not touching her, remembering how touch once encouraged nausea.

J9 stared straight ahead, not looking toward K8, but K8 could feel the spark they shared, an old, embery warmth, not the flashy electricity of youngsters falling into the distance between each other. The horizon carried the promise of a clear afternoon, but K8 knew that spring's wildness powered the ocean's capricious nature this time of year, and what was clear in one instant could be cloudy wretchedness the next.

After many moments, J9 said, without turning her head "Well, all right then," as if she had just decided something. K8 moved her hand so it touched the little finger of J9's small, white hand. J9 gave a great sigh and turned toward K8.

"Remind me whose idea this was," she said, a look of defeat warring with irony in her eyes.

"Yours, Jeanine," K8 said, with gentle humor.

"Ah, yes, mine," J9 answered, and gave a small sigh.

K8 covered J9's hand.

"C'mon," she said, "let's take a walk."

"OK, maybe not," J9 answered. "Standing still is working for me right now, so maybe I should keep doing that. I can't even think about moving on a moving ship."

J9 closed her eyes, and K8 could sense the wave of nausea that passed through her. K8 quickly removed her hand.

"Sorry, sweetie. I thought it would help," she said.

J9 shook her head and took another deep breath.

"But you go ahead, Katie," J9 said, opening her eyes and focusing on the horizon. "I hate to be so pitiful, but I really need to be still for a while."

"'S'okay, sweetie," K8 answered. "You take as long as you need. I'll be around when you're ready."

K8 carried her disappointment up the ladder to the topdeck. She struck a course for the wheel house, counting her steps. One-tilly, two-tally, three-tully, four-telly, five-a-whack-a-doo, whack-a-dee, whack-a-day. The remembrance of her childhood counting scheme opened memories of other loves and other times. Her eyes leaked a tear or two, regretting and celebrating those past days.

One hundred-tally-sally-mally-whack-a-doo. And then J9-J9-I'm-a-loving-you.

She walked the circuit enough times to form a mile, then once again to cool down, and finally once more for the goddess of the sea. Then she settled into a deck chair, waiting for the wild red of the sunset to color the bottom of the cloud wall that raced toward the west.

"10q-J9," she whispered into the darkening sky. "10q very much."

Unhurried City

The posters proclaimed a giant circus of a place. A sit-down, eat-organic, 8-hours-of-sleep-a-night condominium project. A Lexus-rich, brewed-coffee place to live, but then, every place seemed that way now. A year ago, everything had been simple. Back-to-basics drawstring pants, the un-made-up-look-style that permitted the words "natch" and "cashj" and the close personal friendships between riders of the same bus.

J9 would have been her name then; now, she wrote "Jeaninne" at a nearly slothful pace, with many loops between letters and the correct number of humps in the "n's.” The pace implied the luxury of time, and time, and time, and those not in the slow-bubbling pot were victims of the faintly amusing requirement of working for a living. Where would they have lunch today?

A substantial woman in a long flowered coat hopped from foot to foot at the crosswalk. The wind dyed her cheeks pink and her fingers yellow-grey. Maybe she was on her way back to work at the organization for mistreated-thing-of-the-month. Maybe her lunch consisted of a half-sandwich and a cup of soup at the deli staffed by volunteers for some-charity-that-contributes-to-the-health-of-the-world group. Maybe the anger would be more than she could withstand today. Maybe rage would incite her to take up the knife and carve a slight line not too deep along the inside of her arm when she got home. Then would she sleep through the night?

The cross light changed, and the man who had been watching her turned away from the window. His cell phone tapped a dance out on the counter, and he saw that the name still read "J9."

"Reed?" the voice on the other end questioned. All graciousness, and honeyed with wealth.
"Jeaninne," he replied, tilting the pronunciation toward France.
"Askar's?" she asked.
"Oui, mon cher," he answered.
"I'll see you there at noon."
"Bon!"

The clock showed 8:09, and he briefly wondered whether it was also 10 seconds, on this, the 11th day of the 12th month. Order suited him. The flash thought that he was relieved when Poncho, his aged terrier, had died earlier that year was followed swiftly the erasure of the thought before his former personality could remind him of any tender feelings he might ever have had. Had he been able to think it, he would have said that denial was a wonderful thing. So much stronger than shame.

He finished a second cappuccino and the paper before thinking about a shower. He undressed in his mirrorless bedroom, shielded his eyes from his reflection as he climbed into the shower, and he was relieved of the requirement by foggy steam on his way out. He picked something black and cashmerey out of the closet. He slipped on his shoes using the long-handled shoehorn. At the door, he paused to retrieve the mail and place the stack on the side table. The new Frontgate catalog arrived, he noticed, and slid it under the rest of the letters. He liked to read it last, like dessert, and he couldn't understand Jeaninne's habit of flipping through the pages while she waited for her morning coffee to brew.

He stepped into the hall and turned to lock the door. He could hear a television murmuring in the apartment across the hall, and as he passed, the sheltie started yapping and scratching against the bottom of the door. A sharp command called the behavior to a stop, with only a tiny whisper-bark to punctuate its end. The wait at the elevator was not unbearable, and he encountered no one else in the building. It was going to be a good day, he thought, and stepped out into the December sunshine.

LyPScratch

With this scratch, I thee bled.

Happy birthday to me yesterday, when I called my swell buddie, ChemicalBilly, who made me unafraid of blogs. I am firmly in cronedom, which makes me borderline for this wacky technology stuff, even though I geek in the nerd world of computers.

Because infancy renders me tenderskinned still, this shall remain brief. And as soon as I can figure out how to link to my buddie, that, too, will appear on this page.