World Vegetarian Week - May 19-25

Why not give the vegetarian diet a try for a week?
You don't have to do it for eighteen years like I've done...unless you want to.
And if you did, you'd have a serious impact...check out the top ten reasons why.

Again with Galway Kinnell

I posted this poetic section in my blog back in March of 2006 -- a time where I remember having a premonition of the terrible events of the first of this year. I remember telling Paul on the phone on that evening in March, "I don't think we have as much time as we think we do."

I was getting over a cold. I had my variegated brown sweater on. I'd been on my way out the door to dash down to Paul's home in response to the horrible cold feeling inside me. He called me just as I was about to get in the car, and was a little startled and perplexed and assured me everything was fine, not to worry, don't come rushing down.

I never forgot that evening and I redoubled my efforts to make every moment between us the best I could make it. Please don't anyone forget that your loved ones can be taken from you at any moment.

If one day it happens
you find yourself with someone you love
in a café at one end
of the Pont Mirabeau, at the zinc bar
where white wine stands in upward opening glasses,

and if you commit then, as we did, the error
of thinking,
one day all this will only be memory,

learn,
as you stand
at this end of the bridge which arcs,
from love, you think, into enduring love,
learn to reach deeper
into the sorrows
to come – to touch
the almost imaginary bones
under the face, to hear under the laughter
the wind crying across the black stones. Kiss
the mouth
which tells you, here,
here is the world. This mouth. This laughter. These temple bones.

The still undanced cadence of vanishing.

-- Galway Kinnell

Four months

I had no choice but to hear you
You stated your case time and again
I thought about it

You treat me like I'm a princess
I'm not used to liking that
You ask how my day was

You've already won me over in spite of me
And don't be alarmed if I fall head over feet
Don't be surprised if I love you for all that you are
I couldn't help it
It's all your fault

Your love is thick and it swallowed me whole
You're so much braver than I gave you credit for
That's not lip service

You are the bearer of unconditional things
You held your breath and the door for me
Thanks for your patience

You're the best listener that I've ever met
You're my best friend
Best friend with benefits
What took me so long

I've never felt this healthy before
I've never wanted something rational
I am aware now
I am aware now

You've already won me over in spite of me
And don't be alarmed if I fall head over feet
Don't be surprised if I love you for all that you are
I couldn't help it
It's all your fault

-- Alanis Morrisette

One of Paul's satellites

Looks like the heroic Ulysses, supported by Paul back in the day, is getting old and tired.
Here is the latest.

Full moon and empty arms

My personal nightmare is the stuff that bad poetry is made of.

I guess I am doing what all grieving people do – hunting through 10 ½ years’ worth of journals, archived emails, chat transcripts, tarot readings, and I Ching readings, trying to recall Paul’s presence to my mind and heart and spirit.

Reading between every line of those divinations looking for hints and precursors and trends and energy movements. Thrashing around wishing those chat transcripts were more like our conversations in person, because we didn’t talk in chat like we did in person. I don’t figure most people do.

I can remember a time in recent years when he and I were hanging out and I had just come back from the studio, or I was about to go into the studio, for the recording of my piece “Ultralite” for Not Made of Stone. The lyrics were very much on my mind and I quoted a line: “If I brought you a pen that was perfect, on your birthday, what would you write?”

“A love letter to you,” Paul replied earnestly.

I blushed and grinned foolishly at him, placed my hand over my heart and fluttered it to illustrate what was going on inside me at that moment.

I don’t belong in this reality, or any reality where Paul is not.

Orpheus of Civic Center BART

The mythology and lore of Orpheus is long, deep, and wide. He is a lot more than the greatest musician of elder times. But lately my daily travels in the "underworld" of BART have led me to think of him and his wife, Eurydice, and his quest to bring her back from the land of the dead.

In the tunnels leading up and out of the underworld at Civic Center BART I've encountered two street musicians recently who have brought me to tears. The first was a violinist playing "Norwegian Wood" by the Beatles, and the second a tenor sax player who played "Someone to Watch Over Me". The sax player saw me crying as I gave him a donation and he declared that he hadn't had a reaction like mine "down here" in a long time.

I said, "I wish your music could bring my man back to life."

I wondered if Tartarus could be found down in the bowels of the Transbay Tube. I wondered if the river Styx might be somewhere under the Bay, and if Charon might be a BART operator. Cerberus might be lurking on a hidden platform to prevent unauthorized passengers detraining.

I wondered if there were souls down there who might emerge, drawn by the artistry of street musicians in the BART stations. If I rode BART around the Bay Area long enough, might I find Paul peering in at a window of one of the trains? Could I charm Hades and Persephone into letting him go, with one of my poems or an improvisation on the bass flute? If I got him to follow me, could I lead him back to the land of the living, as long as I held fast to my faith, and didn't look back to see if he was really back there?

Orpheus must have been just as devastated by his loss as I am. Perhaps his faith was shattered by the blow, as mine has been, so much of my faith in humanity having come from knowing Paul. And there Orpheus was, unable to resist turning around to check on Eurydice and whether she was really back there following him up the escalator. Maybe he worried that she didn't have a ticket, and that she'd end up on one side of the turnstile and him on the other. She would have to illegally jump over. So being as big a worrier as I am he turned around and looked back, and the rest, as they say, is myth.