“I CAN’T THANK YOU ENOUGH FOR TAKING CARE OF ME ALL OF THESE YEARS.”

Those were the last words he spoke to his wife before he died. And those were the words his wife related to me during a haircut recently, a couple of days before Thanksgiving.

I had just sat down in the barber’s chair, fading into a benign hypnotism of vanity and small talk, when an older woman walked in - thus raising the population of the shop from 2 to 3.

Like any barber who seeks to pass the time, mine can be a master at meaningless chitchat;
and along those lines, she nonchalantly asked the lady how her husband was doing.

“Oh, he died last week.”

It was like a bomb dropped on the easy dynamics of this quiet shop - the next thirty minutes were not going to be easy for me; I couldn’t just stick my head in a magazine and lose the time.

He was her life companion, she confided in us
as she saddled up to the empty adjacent chair…"and now he is gone."
Suffering to the end, he had gallantly emerged from his prolonged silent pain
only to express a few earnest words
of thanks to his wife,
for a shared life.

Now she sits here waiting for her turn in the chair;
Turns out, even devastated people need someone to cut their hair.

At first something deep inside of me resented her for putting this on us. Yet picking the less uncomfortable option, I engaged her and asked her about her plight.

But then something funny happened…after a few minutes of discussing the vastness of her loss,
I felt a lifting of some veil...liberation from a barrier;
increasingly I was gaining a new intimacy with these two souls.

Turns out, this is not her burden solely, a common enemy unites us. This/the/a conversation about death always lies under the surface, simmering...try as we might to hold a lid over the popping pot.

Eventually, the conversation turned to the makings of a good Thanksgiving dinner, and the more we talked about our favorite sides, ingredients, preparation, and presentation, the more it seemed to be the only thing worth talking about.

The newly widowed woman began to light up somewhat, as she cheerfully recalled the family meals she had pridefully prepared in the past - something I can only imagine factored into her husbands eternal words of gratitude.

On the way out, I met her eyes and said goodbye.
On the way home, I decided I must learn to cook.

Those Two Couples at the Next Table Over

Cursory smiles and generous giggles
Extend the time.
It’s enough to look up
And prick my finger with the dispassion.

I stretch out the sensation of that touch like fresh hard pizza dough,
But the bombastic voices call last call, and call it again, and again;
Should I shrug or or should I chug?
First I want to drip these tears into a souvenir glass.

A poem

Here was my weak stab at writing a poem about all these people who were for this war - and now I’m not so sure what they’re for. I wrote this on the Banality of Evil thread:

EXECUTION

Don’t waste time looking back right? We are where we are and we have to deal with it.
Gross mistakes have been made but lets move on, our very survival depends on it.

It’s interesting that that stratagy works out so well for you.

It is a dilemma I deal with for sure - rehash the past, confront the demons, risk ruining the present, disrupting the future.

You trump me with you compassion.

Do you feel my forced silence?

As the rug bubbles up and the threads stretch thin, I ask questions quickly, quietly, not at all.

In my hung over haze I wonder what I’m after, consequences, repercussions, accountability, guilt, apologies, self congratulations, lessons learned, redemption…

I want you to want to tell me the answer.

You have moved on to another question

Don’t let me let you do this

There are disabled veterans around the corner...

This is a post I wrote for this ROS show.

Last Friday, I had a scheduled appointment for something minor, at the VA hospital in Jamaica Plain, MA. This was my second time and again I felt transformed somehow. I suggest anyone reading this, visit their local VA hospital at least once and just walk around a little. Go have lunch in the cafeteria, (anyone is welcome, there is no checking in at the front desk) talk with an employee or patient - or don’t talk, just observe - be humbled.

One thing you might notice is that it’s quiet. You don’t see much small talk with the patients, maybe some with the staff, but even that is subtle – It seems there is just too much to say, to actually speak.

The old men sit or stroll with a deep harnessed dignity. I found myself wondering what keeps some of these men going, many were alone and obviously in slow pain. Then I thought that these men must know the value of life better than anyone; Every day they can go on, is a day they can honor those fallen who gave their life – for life.

In my imagination, these old veterans would be treated with more reverence than your average patient in your average hospital - but that speaks to just one more instance of the folly of war - romanticized.

But oh - there was one magical moment. I was sitting there on one of the steel chairs waiting, when a lone decrepit veteran started to shuffle slowly by with a worn-out walker. The little wheels were broken, so every step he took made an extended scratching sound as it slid across the floor. At first the prolonged screech was abrasive but I decided to embrace it and it quickly became a kind of music. Everything this old man had been up to this point seemed to be getting projected through this walking instrument - like that old homeless trumpet player I would hear blow on Decatur Street in New Orleans. If his walker was fixed, he would have been invisible to be, but now he existed – big time.

Now get this, as I’m observing this man, I hear the echo of a saxophone bellow down the halls – I thought I was daydreaming or something. Well, it turns out the VA hires (or they volunteer) an old time jazz band to play in the lobby of the hospital. I swear I heard the music in that old man’s walker before that band started up, but I guess it could be the other way. Either way, the two sounds harmonized and it lifted my spirits and it was sweet and it was deep.

Before I left, I walked over to the landing and looked down on the lobby with the band playing and the veterans waiting – and waiting. It was not your typical jazz show, to be sure. The listeners – and players, were expressionless, reflective, and in some way peaceful.

So please take a stroll through your local VA hospital – and listen for the music.
http://www1.va.gov/directory/guide/home.asp

Sonny Rollins improvised a few days after 9/11

I wrote the following about the concert. During the interview with Sonny on ROS, they read part of this on the air. After hearing it, Sonny said he liked what "my friend" wrote.

So now I can always say that Sonny Rollins considers me a friend. I subsequently had the honor of meeting him after a show, and I can only say that he might be a true saint!

As my self-reflective consciousness kicked back in, I realized I was far out - of my seat…with my upper body bent forward on the balls of my feet. Somehow I was keeping balance as my arms stretched up and away…grasping for an acknowledgement of my solidarity. We were a congregation that night, lost in praise for a wordless sermon…ephemeral shrills and high-pitched hoots were our response - to his call.

The particular call we were responding to was an improvised solo at the end of the song, “Why was I born.” The date was significant, September 15, 2001. Sonny Rollins stood before us looking both delicate and sturdy…as his solo climaxed with a succession of short ebullient bursts of sounds…defiant sounds…sounds that grabbed you by the collar in a paternal way and said snap out of it and start living again! A shared cathartic hysteria ensued.

Four days earlier, Sonny had been startled in his apartment as he heard the first plane crash into the World Trade Center, just blocks away. The power in his place went out and the police rescued Sonny (and his sax!) live on CNN.

So it be…Lucille, his wife of 48 years, and obviously a perceptive soul, convinced Sonny that the show must go on. He could still feel the dust in his lungs.

To share a Sonny solo is to share in a tour de force. For me they unfold like a contemplative walk through a familiar neighborhood…a journey that evokes a variety of impressions; from childhood memories induced by some old swingset, to larger questions about society brought on by the homeless. Even on this meaningful night (maybe because of this meaningful night) Sonny’s solos referenced lighthearted melodies such as “Oh Susanna” and the “Jeopardy” theme.

Sonny’s sax is not as much an instrument as it is an extension - of the man himself. The man himself is serene…he has nothing left to prove, and so much more to give. At some point years ago, the saxophonist Sonny Rollins decided to jam with the better angles of his nature…and he’s been blowing hard ever since. Blow baby blow!

Mailer: The Old Man in the Sea.

When I think of the man Mailer or Hemmingway the man, a song comes to mind that I heard belted out from a burly dreadlocked Jamaican on a beach in Negril.

“Please don’t mistake my kindness for weakness.”

These are strong men who are in touch with their feminine side. In touch in a way that says I lust for life, the whole of it, and the whole of it means embracing vulnerability and encompassing beauty and if you have a problem with that say it to my face!

A few weeks ago I was sauntering through Hemmingway’s house in Key West Florida. Hemingway and his house have nothing to prove; their foundation is concrete, enabling them to venture to be tender.

Cats abound, the ancestor’s of the cats who were Hemmingway’s true friends, 50 of them prance and linger throughout with a reserved pugnacity. As you make your way along the wide halls and multitude of glassless windows, there is seemingly more sunlight inside the house than out; all of it emanating a boundless warmth. Walking down the back stairs you descend into his luscious garden and eventually come across a subtle drinking trough for the cats. Turns out this trough was once the urinal at “Sloppy Joes,” the bar he drank in almost every day. Legend has it he said he deserved the damm thing after all the money he had poured down it (I’m inclined to think he felt a curious intimacy to it as well). So one day he dragged it home from the bar and planted it pristinely amidst his flowers.

Even today, in the context of his sun-drenched garden, the toilet reflects an ivory luster from its worn-in porcelain. It has a history; it’s experience (no matter how coarse) complements the fleeting radiance of near-by buds. The garden is whole.

Norman Mailer died today

ROS did a show on Mailer a while back and I wrote a little about him:

“He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.”
-Oscar Wilde

For me, all of Mailer’s moves coalesce into a lived life of art. Guys like him and Hemingway, and even Muhammad Ali, were all carrying on a tradition of the Aesthetic movement, one of its tenets being to make an art of life. Yet if the coin is the Aesthetic movement and Oscar Wilde is on one side, then our American men of men are certainly on the other. In the same way that Wilde’s homosexual flamboyancy expressed his individualism to those Victorians, our American machos expressed their individualism by flamboyantly displaying their masculinity.

Our man Whitman might be the tie that binds here -

WHEN I PERUSE THE CONQUER’D FAME

“When I peruse the conquer’d fame of heroes and the victories
of mighty generals, I do not envy the generals,
Nor the President in his Presidency, nor the rich in his great
house,
But when I hear of the brotherhood of lovers, how it was
with them,
How together through life, through dangers, odium, un-
changing, long and long,
Through youth and through middle and old age, how un-
faltering, how affectionate and faithful they were,
Then I am pensive—I hastily walk away fill’d with the bitter-
est envy.”:

This I believe

Radio Open Source did an hour on the well know NPR series "This I Believe." This was what I was believing at the time:

My reasoning tells me the trick is to strike a delicate balance between ambition and contentment. Ambition and contentment, I dangle between these two like a trapezes artist with tired arms - this is my destiny - this I believe.

I also believe the act of kissing your lovers lips and face should be improvised like a jazz solo; I believe Satchmo’s solos on the trumpet are a manifestation of his all encompassing smile; and the most precious smiles happen in moments of wordless chuckles that linger after a shared laugh among friends and family.

I believe Ralph Waldo Emerson when he writes, man “cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.”

(As a side note, I believe our Concord sage would have done well to eliminate the limiting pronouns “man” and “he” from those beautiful words).

The playwright August Wilson said the five themes that run through all his plays are honor, love, beauty, betrayal, and duty. This is what I believe about those themes:

love is an earnest exchange of vulnerability; honor is a gift a person gives to themself; beauty floats somewhere between Bridget Bardot and the sun drenched Fall foliage of Vermont; betrayal is that menacing noise outside my window, but it’s also the darkness inside my basement; duty is my humble payment to the piper.