Today

was a hard day.  

Photo by Joseph Barrientos on Unsplash

I was in serious emotional pain and then my mind went into the loop of hating myself because I felt ashamed of my pain. And then I wanted to cut myself to get out of the loop.  Finally, I texted Sarah and told her that while I wasn't cutting myself I really, really, wanted to.  She called a little later, just before my dishwasher shift at Family Kitchen, and reminded me that this was an old script and that I am creating a new brain that doesn't need to fall into the old script. She told me to look at a familiar positive picture of Will when I got home to take the image of his death out of my head. She reminded me that Agnes the Velociraptor has my back.  So I kept crying through my first hour of dishwashing and then my brain settled down for the next two hours. I put a piece of paper towel in one ear so I wouldn't hear the fucking Christmas music and listened to OTR detective radio through my hearing aid. It was a pretty easy night as there were only two pans with serious baked on stuff. Now I'm home, drinking American whiskey and will watch a little TV before going to bed with my dog.

Count Down - 7 Days till D-Day

 Death day approaches.

Letting Go

 Dear Will --

I had the realization this morning that the reason I've been so locked into grief is that it's the only relationship I have with you, especially now that your ghost is gone.

This is the first morning I've cried since Thursday when I had my first ketamine treatment.  I was so happy after the treatment.  The drug was powerful and helped me tune into my deep self again, a self that knew how to survive and thrive even with the interior despair and self hate.  A self that managed that despair through magical thinking, humor, and sex.

Sweetheart, I need to tell the Will inside me to set my own will free. Already, the great rock of grief in my chest has been withdrawn. I feel like I can function again, can do things.  So even though I am crying this morning, I know I am becoming free. Not free of my love for you which is for as long as I live, but free from the interior command to bury my mind beside you in the cold, cold ground.

There are people who love and support me, even though I still put two spaces after a period.  If I ever want sex again, there's ample opportunity to connect through the interwebs, if I want to, even for an old unicorn like myself. I have access to more distracting entertainment than ever dreamed of in my one tv station days.  And I still have a relatively good mind, even though my memory sucks (as it has since 6th grade when I couldn't remember the names of all my classmates and had to read their names off the back of a clay skull when I was the announcer for our 6th grade version of A Cask of Amontillado).  I have enough money to support my end life in-care if I get dementia (unless I am diagnosed with Alz or LB dementia, in which case I'll off myself). My bones are still good, I don't have cancer, and I'm not in pain all the time like some of my friends. So, my life is good.

The anniversary of your death is approaching slowly.  I will create a ritual for Boxing Day and then end this blog on that day.  

Or not.  We'll see.

When I Wear Purple

 So Cindy gave us a prompt to write about what we would do when we were "mature" -- based on the famous Jenny Joseph poem, "Warning" that begins, 

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.

I got so many kind words for this piece.  Cindy said she would have known that I wrote it even if I hadn't put my name on it.  Another student said that I was the most honest writer she'd ever heard.

 

Kake Wearing Purple

 

I have always worn purple with a red hat, even when I didn’t know it.

 

When I was in eighth grade, I was standing at my locker between classes when another girl said to me, “So you’re Kakie Hanson.  I’ve heard of you.”  I didn’t have the presence of mind to ask, “What have you heard” because I was so shocked anyone knew me at all.  But the way I dressed and acted made me visible to others.  I dressed in clothes my mom made, rarely fashionable.  I acted like “myself.”  My mom always told me, “Be yourself” and I have been because, frankly, there was no other person to be. 

Over time, I’ve learned how to justify, explain, or apologize for my differences from others, sometimes when I couldn’t figure out just what it was others were concerned or complaining about.  I would just apologize.  

 

When I taught college, I began by wearing suits, as any good public speaking teacher would.  But in Central Oregon in 1988, that made me look highly suspicious.  It took a few years to figure out that wearing jeans and a blazer or sweater would make me look more normal (and get me higher teacher evaluations). And I always like to do some color matching in my clothes, which also made me stand out.

 

Here are some remembered reflections on my attire.  When I was teaching, after I wore a striped costume on Halloween, a student complained that I walked around looking like a bee and that I shouldn’t be allowed to teach because I was clearly nuts. A friend once gave me a painting of a peacock saying it reminded her of me. The vice president of instruction once asked me why I dressed to call attention to myself.

 

So pretty much all my life I’ve been annoying someone with both my clothing and my way of being in the world.

 

My favorite story is about New Years, 1980 when I found out that my hip and cool queer best friend had some of the same values as my body fearing Catholic Mom.  Mom had found an old 50s dress for me to wear to my friend Lee’s party in San Francisco.  It was sheer black net with horizontal stripes of black velvet ribbon. It fit skin tight on top and the skirt flared out.  It was intended to be worn with something under the top but it fit pretty skin tight on me.  I didn’t want to wear a dress with a bra showing. So I decided, as the current trend was toward showing body parts, that I would wear it with just a half-slip under and nothing else.  The stripes across the chest were not strategically placed.   When I showed the outfit it to my Mom and my husband, he was okay with it, having seen me in the past in similarly provocative outfits.   But Mom said, “Wouldn’t you like some band-aids with that?” We all laughed and I said, “No.”  I knew women in San Francisco and New York were not afraid of showing nipples so why should I be?

 

And then, when we got up to the tres gay household of my friend in The City and I put on the dress for the party, what did he say?  “Wouldn’t you like some band-aids with that?”

 

So then I knew that it was my older spouse, an eccentric himself, who was the real outlier, not my supposedly radical friend.

 

So when it comes to my clothing, after over a half century of being commented on, I have no fucks left to give.

 

Saving the World

photo by Louis Maniquet on Unsplash

 In this morning's sermon discussion group, we talked about Jed's 8:00 sermon which ended with the peroration that we should all be doing something to bring abut the kingdom of God on earth and that while the world needs saving, we aren't supposed to think we have to do it all ourselves.

I was remembering back in 1980 when I was also stuck and depressed and trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. I'd graduated, gone out into the world, and then in an attempt to get work outside of Idaho, I ran into a nervous breakdown and my first recognizable major depression*.  I did little in the world until 1979 when I went to work at McDonald's. During my McDonald's time, I knew it wasn't a career but I didn't know what to do.  I wanted to do work that could save the world but couldn't see how.

I told Will that this was my thinking and he asked me, "Wouldn't it be enough to just save one person?" meaning himself.

Well, I did that.

And now he's not here to help me figure out what to do now that he's not here.

I was told today (as if I needed to be told) that TMS makes people more emotional.

So, I've gone from being a regularly Def Con 2 emotional person to Def Con 5.  Yay.

The good thing is that all this emotion is no longer accompanied by, "Oh, fuck, why am I such an emotional person.  Why can't I be normal?  Why am I such an asshole?  I can't stand this pain.  I'm weak." 

In youth, I wanted to be Sherlock Holmes or Spock.  I hungered to not feel all the stuff I was feeling.  

I don't think that way now.  I don't hate myself for having strong emotions anymore but they are exhausting and tend to increase my self absorption.  

* I say "recognizable" because, while I'd been having suicidal ideations since childhood, I hadn't had months where I was unable to leave the house before.

crying/Laughing

 Dear Will:

Monday morning, almost a year from your death and the wound of your abscence  tore open again.  Will this pain ever stop? 

----- one hour later -----

So...Dr. Netflix told me to watch Ramesh Ranganathan and I feel way better now. I appreciate his worldview.

I'll survive, even if I have those dark hours when I don't know why.  I might even thrive, once I get past this month.

There is nothing stopping me from thriving but 

what?

This is what I'm not sure of.  So, time for The Widow's Guide to "What Color is my Parachute"

It hasn't been written yet, sadly.

Reading books feels like homework without the joy of receiving recognition for one's intelligence and hard work. My friends who gave me books to help me in my sorrow actually imagined that I had the focus to get through Didion or Oates...I basically dipped in to each, reading a paragraph here, a paragraph there.

Everything is helpful but nothing is existentially helpful because I just need to go through this grief thing physically and this morning that included walking in circles through living/dining room and howling.  

I will always love you and miss your well self.  But I need to live in reality to be happy.

kake

Thanksgiving Memory (for class)

Here's a piece I wrote yesterday for the Sarah Lawrence Writing Institute class with Cindy Beer-Fouhy

 

One turkey pardoning another, circa 1970

THANKSGIVING

 

 

My biggest thanks every Thanksgiving for the past three decades is that I am no longer required to have the meal with members of my family of origin.  This year I enjoyed a Friendsgiving hosted by Dr. Amy Harper, my friend and a professor of anthropology who studies foodways. Sadly, I was without my former companion at her meals, dead now since last Boxing Day.  Nevertheless, I enjoyed Amy’s theme for this year: an indigenous feast, complete with smoked turkey and rice-stuffed squash.  And it was fun seeing folks I hadn’t visited with since last year.

 

In my distant youth, when family was the center of the holiday, Thanksgiving was often fraught, especially after the two older girls were grown up.  One Example: picture if you will, a large rectangular, maplewood table, covered with a fine white tablecloth and set with china and silver.  Six high-backed straight chairs with carved legs matching those of the table have been joined by a piano bench because the two older girls of the four-child family are now married and the husbands have been invited.  Or rather summoned.

 

The room is heated by the large square furnace outlet between the living and dining rooms that, combined, make up the east side of the house.  It’s the only furnace outlet in this house built in 1896.  Over the years electric baseboard heaters were added in some rooms. My mom remodeled the old place and now the flow-through dining and living areas look like an upscale 19^th Century whorehouse, with red carpet and red, gold, and cream flocked wall paper.  In ordinary times, the room hosts the dining table without its leaves, an antique couch and side table, a piano, and a large console television set.  Above the TV is a three-foot high black and white drawing of teenage Jesus teaching in the temple in Luke’s version of the Gospel.

 

My mental picture of this late 60s Thanksgiving dinner has eight of us around the table: my folks, my 6^th grade sister, my high school freshman self, and our two older sisters and their husbands.  I have probably been eating so much that I’m a little sick and wobbly.  My younger sister may be avoiding as much food as possible.  There’s probably been the turkey, dressing, gravy, potatoes, green beans, pie and complaining about the dryness of the turkey from its chef, my mother.

 

My strongest memory of that meal is desperately wanting to escape the table while also desperately wanting to eat.  My flight or feast mechanism.  Intense familial disagreement triggered my flight response.  My sister Sally’s husband, Adrian, was a bearded Catholic socialist hippy.  My sister Maja’s husband, Don, was a somewhat more conservative Green Beret, on leave from Fort Brag.  Late into the consumption of food and alcohol, an argument, probably about politics, erupted.  My Mom and sister Sally kept trying to ignore the emotions with conversation changers:  “Would you please pass the sweet potatoes?” “Have you had a chance to see the movie downtown?”  But nothing worked.   I could sense what I considered the “real” existential tensions beneath the superficial argument about national politics and they frightened me.

 

I don’t have a story with a beginning, middle and end for this memory.  Just a silent, cinematic mental image of Dad, a centrist Humphrey Democrat, raising his voice over what I now suspect were Adrian’s left-wing support of Clean Eugene McCarthy and Don’s militarist support of Republican Richard Nixon, just elected president. Dad, red faced, spittle on his lips, pounding the table, insisting that he had the right to be right in his own house.

 

And me, shrinking inside myself, hungering to put more and more flavor on top of an already full stomach.

 

One of my therapists, the one who’s going to sit with me during the ketamine treatments, suggested I picture a happy memory rather than the one I just shared. But most of my happy memories of Thanksgivings make me sad right now.  Because they were spent with my true home, the home I found in the person of my beloved, now materially gone forever.

 

And I have to just fucking get used to that.

 

So thank God for Amy, an agnostic, and her tradition of Friendsgiving.  She gave me the opportunity to create new holiday memories, which will now always be just a little bit blue.

 

Cue Elvis.

 

Bergman

 Dear Will:

I remember us meeting after the movie, The Virgin Spring.  But when I found a story about Cinema 6 in the Idaho State Journal at Newspapers.com, it said that the movie was scheduled for October 17.  Yet in my memory it was in September, when allegedly The Belles of St. Trinian's was playing.

Idaho State Journal, Sept.30, 1971

You were always the one with the good memory until you weren't.  I should have asked you a long time ago.  Oh well.

I don't remember seeing the movie.  I do remember thinking about how Mom had complained about the film a few years previous when it had played at the Saratoga art theatre, so I was probably feeling like, "This is a great film but I still need to close my eyes."  I doubt I was triggered by the rape scene because I hadn't yet been raped.

Bergman was so important to both of us in those early days and was a key influence on my theology at the time.

I watched the movie again, yesterday, for the first time in over five decades.  Actually, I skimmed through it, watching certain scenes, cruising quickly through others, admiring the use of silence, the crisp cinematography, and the naked body of Max Von Sydow, which was so much like yours.

I am missing the well version of you horribly right now.  

I got the Birdy sculpture on Sunday but I don't know if it will fit on your grave.  If it doesn't, I'll just buy a traditional stone and have her placed in the yard.  It's a beautiful sculpture and looks just like her.

Love, always, Kake

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

 Cue music 

Thanks, Ennio Morricone.

The Good:  It was so great to have Thanksgiving dinner provided by my friend Amy.  I hadn't seen her in such a long time, it seemed.  My friends from school work and are busy.  It was good to see other folks and to feel connected to people and have a good meal.  I got tired and left early (I'd awakened at 3:15 that morning and didn't get back to bed.  The food, an indigenous feast, was terrific.  I've gotten over my feelings of being dropped from this friendship group.  That may be thanks to the magnets which have been exercising my brains for the past couple of weeks.  I'm better able to see and accept the reality of how people come and go from one's life and it doesn't mean that one is a bad, evil, person.

The Bad:  Last year on this day, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, a person with whom I'd been friends for three years decided I was a whore and cut me out of his life.  I cried all Saturday afternoon and again through the church service the next day.  I had come to love this person as a friend.  And remember, I was still in the state of mind that rejection meant that I was an evil person.  I was also in the last two months of Will's life.

The Ugly: memories of last year.  Of Will at 113 pounds.  Of the shit and piss and managing those last two months.  It was so very hard for him to die.  The animal in him was powerful and it fought those last two months.  That was an ugly time.

Back to the Good:  But I did it.  I provided love and care and cleaned up shit and slept in a shitty bed one or two nights to stay with him and keep him loved.  The good included the Trinity Choir coming to sing to me.  I did it.  I got through it.  I got through my heart becoming a dumpster fire.

Back to the Good:  When I was very young, I asked God to let me live for love.  I thought I was talking about romance.  But what is dementia care but giving oneself over to Love?

It's a good thing to be sad without being depressed.

So...what I need now is to face the coming month less like a weepy widow and more like a gunfighter.  I will come out of this slough of despond stronger than before.  

And maybe with a good hat.

This sucks and is gonna suck

 

Image stolen from leuschkeangeli Shop on Redbubble

 So I've been trying to find a way out of not having the next six weeks suck balls.  Not that sucking balls is a bad thing, at least as I remember the task.  But when used to describe something one doesn't like, it loses its literal meaning and becomes an expression of, well in this case, anxiety and anger.

I told Sarah, my grief therapist, that I was trying to find a way to make last Christmas not hurt so much.  I have been thinking that I should see the beginning of Will's dying in his own shit as a "gift" from God on Christmas morning.  On Christmas morning I was cleaning him and calling for help to the Hospice that didn't have anyone scheduled to visit me that day, of course.  He was screaming at me that he would kill me.  The hospice nurse arrived and we were able to change him.  I dosed him with morphine.  Shortly after that he went to sleep and never woke up.  On the morning of Boxing Day he was running the killing temperature.  I called hospice for immediate assistance.  She didn't get to me until the afternoon and as soon as the nurse saw him she said, "It will be soon."  And it was.

So when I told Sarah that I was trying to come up with a story to make reality more bearable she told me to stop it.  To face the reality.  She also gave me the tools of the mental safe space and "storage trunk." I've been given them before but didn't use them particularly well.

My reality is that I'm very sad but not suicidal.  The reality is that every time I see a fucking Christmas decoration I'm angry.  (So, not a good idea to go shopping with me!  Unless you want to hear me say "fuck you" to the Christmas decorations in Costco and Safeway.)

My reality is that I enjoy being in church and doing church work, so the Christian meaning of this time of year doesn't make me as sad as the secular part of this time of year.  ("Suck dick, blow up balloon Grinch and Rudolph!  Up yer ass, lifelike rooftop Santa!")

Only two of the Gospels mention the birth of Jesus, Matthew and Luke, and each was written later than Mark, who doesn't mention it.  In Luke, Mary and Joe start off in Galilee and in Matthew they start off in Nazareth.  And there are other differences -- only Matt talks about the wise guys and only Luke mentions the shepherds. So many Christians don't understand that the classic image of the Nativity, with both wise men (and the Gospels don't say how many) and shepherds blends two different stories.

So, I love the mix of Gospel stories because they're so human in their creation and use.  Meaning people have killed other people over holiday greetings.  Oi, I'm cranky this morning.  And sad.

But I cheered myself up a bit, thinking about them.  And I still love Mr. Dickens' take on the whole situation.  

"And what are you going to do about Thanksgiving?" Sarah asked.

I'll wait and see if anyone wants to eat with me and if I receive no invitations, I'll head out to a restaurant.  I will be in my safe space in my head and blaming no one for being busy and not thinking about me (here you see me crossing my arms and patting myself with alternating hands just below my shoulders - it's part of the EMDR training.)

I still don't know how I'm actually going to get through Christmas itself.  The altar guild is very short-handed but I don't want to be in town on Christmas.  I will remember how alone I was that week, how the hospice people failed me.  How hard the dying was. But altar guild is FUN!  Yesterday at our meeting, when Jed asked us to introduce ourselves and why we are on altar guild, I said it was a natural outgrown of my degree in technical theatre.

I guess I need to remember that I have a very good life and that "weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning." (KJV Psalm 30:5)

Huldah's Table

Screen capture of Huldah Bell from a video, circa 1990

 Dear Will:

I'm writing to you in answer to my assignment in Cindy's class:  "My mother's kitchen . . ."

Well, you know that aunt Huldah's kitchen was much more welcoming than Mom's.  And Huldah even enjoyed cooking. But it's her dining room I'm remembering right now.  Where we first talked.  Do you remember?  You had come over to the house that night, Thursday, October 21, 1971, to celebrate my aunt's birthday.  I had just moved in with her that August to go to school at Idaho State.  Huldah was the last Hanson living in a house first purchased by my purported great grandfather to shelter his official and unofficial children.   Huldah's draft-age son and his wife at the time were also living with her.

The dining room was the largest in that 1896 house, built just seven years after the founding of the city.  Perhaps its size was based on the large family customary in those days.

I remember the room as dark and warm, with polished wood trim giving shape to old wallpaper. At one side was the archway leading to the front door. Opposite that was the swinging door that led to the kitchen, where all but celebratory meals were eaten.  In the center of the room was a great round table. To the side of the table was a bay window with a small cushioned seat and a view of the neighbor's yard.  Opposite were two doors, one to a bedroom that I would inhabit through my first school year, and one to the house's single bathroom.  The bathroom had the most decorations of any room in the house, including a roll of newsprint beside the roll of toilet paper to give folks the opportunity to write graffiti while they were seated.

The table itself was beautiful.  Large enough to seat twelve to fourteen people, it was probably a rich American walnut with a deep color from decades of dining and polishing.  Most of the time it was stacked with books and magazines as people ate their meals in the kitchen at a small square vinyl-topped table that sat six.

The night of Huldah's 56th birthday, chairs and benches were gathered from the kitchen and elsewhere to make places for the friends my aunt had invited over.  Most at the table were middle aged, unmarried people.  The youngsters included me, my twenty-something cousin and his wife.  The room smelled of roast turkey, bourbon and cigarette smoke.  There was a lot of laughter and drinking.  You seemed happy and comfortable in my aunt's space.  You were her good friend long before she introduced us.  Interesting that dementia wound up killing you both.

But back to that first night.  Remember, I'd already sent you that flirtatious note, earlier in October.  So I had my barely 18 year old eye on you: the tall, skinny, long haired, bearded professor with the beautiful eyes and smile.

I don't remember if we flirted over the great oak table. Probably, because  I pretty much flirted with everybody in those days.  Hell, I would have fucked a snake I was so horny all the time.  At the end of the meal my cousin brought out a couple of doobies that were passed around the table, sans bogarting.  Then around 1:00 am you decided to walk the three blocks to your apartment.  I decided to go with you.  When we reached your door I insisted you kiss me and invite me inside. There I made sure one thing led to another.

I thought that night was just a roll in the hay.  That roll lasted 50 years, 66 days, and fifteen hours.  

But who's counting.

Me.

Love always,

Kake

"What's with her?"

Photo by Mary Jeanne Kuhar

 A church friend of mine told me that someone had come up to her after church on October 30 and asked about my odd behavior.  You see, I wore a costume to church.  It was Halloween Weekend, after all, and costumes were everywhere.  So I did myself all up in white, including wings and halo.  When I got to church I saw that I was the only one.  I started to stew.  Do I take my wings and halo off and bow to conformity?  Should I not be a weirdo?  Or do I sell my bluff of bravery and were the outfit up to the pulpit, read the wonderful passage from Isaiah in which God bitches about rituals performed by folks who don't have their heart in it, lead the psalm,and went back to my seat in the back.  

I guess my friend responded to the dude questioning my sanity by saying something about me being full of life and energy and a little different.

And then later this same week, on Thursday, I finally came out as non-binary to the "Women of Trinity" at the quarterly potluck and got to explain the difference between "trans" and "non-binary".  I asked them to contact our fearless leader if anyone didn't want me attending women's group activities.

One of the great things about the contemporary Episcopal Church is that, ritualistic as it is, it has space for weirdos. 

Cranky with the Dude

Photo by Brian Patrick Tagalog

 My "Poetry and Memory" class at Sarah Lawrence had its last class on Wednesday.  I actually wrote my last poem for the class during my memoir class when someone else was talking.  Yes, that's the kind of student I was and it seems that at age 69 (heh heh heh) I'm still that kind.

So, here's my last minute poem from the prompt, "write about wounds"

 

 

WOUNDS

 

How can I talk about wounds without mentioning Yours?

 

Fuck You. Fuck You and the ass you rode in on when You

went to your death for love and justice.

 

I was not anxious for suffering. Wasn’t ready for his

wounded brain’s release of his bodily function.

Wasn’t ready for our life of gradual forgetting

 

as forty years evaporated, one exploded neuron

at a time. It took so long.  It was so hard.  And You,

how did you answer my prayer for all to end?

When I told you I couldn’t bear it anymore?

 

You let my rage release as he locked me out again.

You let me forget the other ways inside.

You let me pound on the door and call him with

all my power.  You let my hand go through the glass,

an instant geyser from my artery.  Blood everywhere.

 

This is how You show mercy, is it? Saving me by

offering me death?  Answering my prayer with blood,

a neighborhood of rescuers, friends taking charge of my

demented sweetheart, seven hours of face-masked rest in ER,

and a brilliant surgeon?

                                    Huh. Ok.  I get it. I get it.

 

Your prayer about losing that damn cup is for all of us,

isn’t it?  We all want to let our bloody fate pass from us.

But Life (or your Dad) isn’t about that. Life is learning

that love is loss and compassion is costly. Life is suffering.

But life is also others acting as Your wounded hands, others

walking with Your wounded feet, carrying Your love and grace

for wholeness and healing, even if they’ve never known Your name.

 

 

© Kake Huck, 2022

 

Time

 Dear Will:

Jonah and the Whale by Pieter Lastman

I had a couple of weeks of just plain happiness after San Francisco.  I was looking forward to ending my history of depression with ketamine therapy.  I was feeling able to call people.  And then I got triggered.  I had a conversation at coffee hour with a new church member who has Alz.  Then my movie on Sunday night, Metropolis, flopped.  Then a friend told me I'd hurt her feelings last June.  There's also the fact of completion.  You know how I always got when I finished a project -- post show downs.

We were asked to write about a myth in my poetry class and this is what I came up with:

 

THE COMPLAINT

 

 

Have you ever been inside a damn fish?  You think you got so much to say about it.  Sayin’ it ain’t necessarily so and all.  Well, let me tell you it stinks.  It smells like your cat vomited out its dinner, ate it again, then shit it out, ate that then threw it up again.  It feels like you’re bein’ squished by some huge, wet, slippery snake.  It’s dark as a dungeon, deep as a well, you know what I’m sayin’?  But I wasn’t inside for no three days.  No, your boy didn’t need that much time to tap out. But I sure didn’t wanta go to that city, I tell you what.  It was a hella tough assignment. Was why I was on the damn boat in the first place.  He tells me, “Go straighten ‘em out in Nineveh.”  I said, “Hell no, I’m goin’  the other direction, if you don’t mind.”  Then He blows up this storm so I gotta jump the boat and wham!  I’m bait.  I’m thinkin’, “Really?  Really?  This is my reward for years of service, a fucking fish?  So I hollered, “I give, I give” and that thing barfed me back on the beach. So I did it, preached destruction and hellfire if they didn’t shape up.  Just hopin,  y’know, they’d keep sinnin’. No such luck.  No Sodom, no salty lady, no punishment, no rain of fire. Just a hundred thousand people sorry as shit for their sins.  I couldn’t stand it. So I’m sittin’ here under this tree suckin’ my teeth and starin’ at a  beautiful big city that should be smoke and ash.  Ain’t no profit in bein’ a prophet these days.

More Out Coming

 Here's some data about an important quality that Will and I shared.  While both of us worked hard on what we enjoyed and what we were specifically assigned, both of us also didn't feel compelled to do "extra" work on assignments we didn't enjoy.  So we stayed married even at a time when most people would have divorced - in part because of lethargy.

This old fact occurred to me this morning as I thought about how often people need to "come out" if they don't fit the profile.  But why?  Why is "coming out" important? 

I realized last week that I don't even know what label to use anymore. One of my Exploring Faith Matters students in talking about the feminist reading they had for last night mentioned the "13 different genders" and then said something about how challenging it must be to wake up and decide every morning.  Hahahaha...but she doesn't know yet that I'm whatever I am.

Do I have to be politically correct when I label myself?

So, here's a little poem I wrote a couple of weeks ago in response to the prompt, "Write about an object that was important to you in the past.

JACKET

 

It doesn’t smell like leather when I pull it from the closet.

Its black has become gray or brown in spots.

 

The five steel zippers with their stainless teeth

have lost none of their bite.  I slide hands down

 

satin lined sleeves and zip them tight. My fingers find

no holes in the pockets. The epaulets and studs still

 

speak a style once built for combat. Years left of wear.

But not for me.  The decades since San Francisco

 

took me as the man I thought I was have widened hips and belly. 

Age and life in Oregon have softened hunter’s eyes.

 

So I bundle my old armor into bubble wrap and box

and post it to a thrift store on that street in that City

 

where I bought it: the city where I left my heart,

where every gesture had a meaning back in the day

when freedom was in the air there,

when I wore my keys dangling on my left hip,

when I wore a black bandana in my rear pocket,

before I’d ever heard of body dysmorphia.

 

And after our visits to the city, when we returned to Idaho 

smelling it reminded me of that purchase at Hard On Leathers.

 

Wearing it in those days (before the Plague made

my natal gender safer than my chosen one) I felt protected.

 

Safe in black leather and black jeans, I stalked the streets,

my head on a swivel, my eyes dead except in the safety

 

of the Castro or Noe Valley:  a short, plump chick

costumed in Tom of Finland gear. So long ago.

 

Remembering the young queer I once was, I put a paperback

of John Rechy’s The Sexual Outlaw into the inside pocket

 

and UPS past proof of my pirate phallus to Polk Street Thrift

making peace with the living and the dead.

 

San Francisco

 Dear Will:

work by Anselm Kiefer, SFMOMA

I got back from San Francisco a week ago.  I meant to write to you earlier but when I came back I fell into my basement dweller self again, not calling anyone, not writing my thank-you notes, just smoking weed all day and sitting in the basement.  Oh, okay.  Yeah, I did have a great dinner with Stacey on Thursday night and I saw my dentist, my contractors, and the Tuesday group.  So I saw people.  And soon I will be getting my brain softened so I won't keep believing my friends don't call me because they really can't stand me and only put up with me because I force them to.   Soon...maybe by November, I'll actually be able to look at my friends' social media feeds without feeling so whiney!  

I know, I know.  Woulda been nice if my craziness had stopped while you still had your brains.  I remember one time you said, early on, that you didn't have time to deal with your own neuroses because you were so busy dealing with mine.

I missed you terribly the day I got to San Francisco and got sick in a restaurant and started crying, thinking that I couldn't function.  But I went to MOMA and the theatre and the symphony on Saturday and to Grace Cathedral and the Opera on Sunday.  I was popping weed gummies all day each day and felt great.

Do you remember the wonderful Rigoletto we saw in San Francisco, way back in the day?  Inside the set shaped like a box? I think that was San Francisco, anyway.  Could have been Portland. 

I think I was able to love San Francisco and be there by myself happily because it was mine before I met you.  New York was ours, never mine.  Except that one time.

I thought of you most often when I was in MOMA.   Especially when I saw the great Anselm Keifer.  Remember when we saw his work in Germany?  And then went to the great retrospective in the City?  His work is so vast and often ugly yet beautiful in its ugliness.

Like my grief for you.

Love,

Kake

Back to School

 My teacher friends are back at work. And I'm back at work this morning.  I'm taking a poetry class out of Sarah Lawrence Writing Center.  Our first assignment isn't due until next week but I've already written it.  Our prompt was to write something about doorways and have two questions.  So I gave myself the challenge of writing a sestina.  So, ok.  It ain't great.  Doesn't have enough physical detail.  But pretty good for two hours of writing.

AFTER 50 YEARS

 

 

Our first kiss was in the doorway

of your duplex. Chill autumn air

Invited us inside. Why wait?

Do you remember?  When we kissed

you were confused.  It was too fast.

It was too soon. I was too young.

 

I didn’t know that you were young

as well. I didn’t see a  doorway

to something permanent. “Love fast,

die young,” my plan. All up in air

the moment that we hugged and kissed

because I was too hot to wait

 

for freedom. And you couldn’t wait  

for a companion, so took a young

thing home. Were you surprised we kissed?

When we stepped through your doorway

what was your hope?  I sought to air

my youthful lust. Some called me “fast:”

 

an old insult. But we made fast

to love.  Remember the wait

during the blood test?  Orange August air

made us sweat.  We were both too young,

Me 18, you 43.  Doorway

to disaster! But when we kissed

 

something connected.  When we kissed

we didn’t know we’d be bound fast.

You didn’t hoist me through your doorway

and sometimes I couldn’t wait

for satisfaction and sought young

things myself.  “Give her the air,”

 

they said, who didn’t know us air

for each other. When last I kissed

your flesh, it chilled.  I am now young

again in this world, a long fast

of kisses ahead.  A long wait

until I pass through that doorway

 

to find you young, eternity’s air

a doorway bright, sun- kissed:

Love holding us fast. Till then I wait.

Drama - yuck

photo by hidefumi ohmichi on Unsplash

 I talked with a friend (A) yesterday who had experienced a weird communication from the friend I "broke up with" back in January (B).  I told her about the break up and then reassured her that friend B was a good person but that I had grown afraid of him because of my interpretations of his communication behaviors.

I kind of miss friend B but how can I restart a relationship with someone I'm afraid of?  Does my fear make sense?  Yes and no.  What is the reality?  I had a relationship with B for over a decade.  He did nice things for me.  I thought we had a dependable relationship.

And then against my expectations, he expected way more communication skill from me than was possible after Will's death.  I behaved inappropriately and then he blew up in a way that scared me.

I am someone who has had my world turned violently upside down a few times.  And when I say "turned upside down," what I mean is that an event occurred which undercut my understanding of how the universe was functioning.  These are times of extreme disruption of perception.

1. ghosting by first lover
2. oldest sister - "The Hero" - killing her child and trying to kill herself
3. kidnap-rape by strangers and disbelief by family members 
4. Will showing that he didn't accept a core aspect of me after we were bonded
5. relationship with emotionally abusive Irish Catholic
6. death and smelly rotting of best friend in grad school
7. accusation of sexual harrassment by good friend in the workplace
8. dementia of my sweetheart (a saga of dealing with piss and shit)
   
9. death of my partner of 50 years, 66 days, and 15 hours.
   

Here's the point.  I don't think my lost friend understands how PTSD has shaped my brain.  I'm about to read the book, The Body Keeps the Score.  Hopefully, this will help me to understand my fears and why I can't talk to certain people after a blow up.  After I read the book I'll think more about hiring a mediator to help our friendship restart.

The Shooting in Bend:  As I said to some friends the other day, as someone who experienced violence early, I think it's a privilege to live in America without having experienced it.

Memories

 I got an email this morning from my old friend Rosemary.  We were really good friends in the late 70s, early 80s.  She sent me a pdf of this old picture of her and Will in our backyard in Pocatello.

NSFW - Sexy Will

 My sweet Will was a highly physical person.  He lived in the material world in a way that I didn't and don't.  He was very much aware of his body -- all its sensations, positive and negative.  Personality test-wise (for those who "believe" in Myers/Brigs) he was an ISTP -- focused on the material world. 

Thus, it's not surprising that he enjoyed sex up until almost the end.  Not that we were enjoying it together.  During the years of his dementia, we stopped having sex together but he didn't stop enjoying himself.

It was sex that brought us together.  In a later post I'll finally get the story of our "coming together" in print.  But here I'll note that Will and I had a lot of sex over the years in a lot of different places, including the car and in a bedroom at a friend's apartment during a New Year's Eve party.

But today I want to post two pictures of him that I've packed away.  I forget when I made these -- probably in the early Aughts. I decided to present the images here in the state they were in when I took them off the walls to take pictures.  Both works will now go back into my "Will" chest.

 The tall picture with the six Polaroids was framed by Sandy and Steve Miller at Sunbird.  It was actually in a "human figure" art show. 

This collage, with it's pearls and marbles, was supposed to be a solar system image with Will's cock at the center.  Unfortunately, the wire that I bought got very bendy and crinkly so it didn't turn out the way I envisioned it.  But I didn't want to try again so here it is.  (With art as with writing, I don't like "do overs.")