AT THE VERNAL POOLS, and INNER DIALOGUE NaPoWriMo, PAD Challenge, Day 4

NaPoWriMo write a triolet, an eight-line poem in iambic tetramenter, lines  1, 4,7 are identical, as are the 2nd and last lines—the poem begins and ends with the same couplet, within a tight rhyme scheme  — ABaAabAB. I don’t think I like writing in forms.

AT THE VERNAL POOLS

Across the pond the herons glide,
And the egrets seek higher ground
From prying eyes and compromise.
Across the pond the herons glide,
Hunting for froglings and newts’ eyes.
We used to watch them soar around.
Across the pond the herons glide,
And now egrets seek higher ground.

4/9/23

2023 April PAD Challenge

Write a dream poem, and/or Write a reality poem.

INNER DIALOGUE

Some say that in a dream, 

the idea that we carry a dialogue with us, 

wherever we go, day and night, 

it accompanies us, is like a familiar, 

watching over us, waiting for the news, 

hidden behind a veil of symbolism 

and random metaphor.

4/9

Dream Journal: making coffee for John

Last night I dreamed that I was at a rustic cabin retreat deep in the mountains, long shadows and minimal sunlight. We were a gathering of poets. Someone asked me to make coffee, and though I searched everywhere for a pot to boil water in, I found nothing suitable. I had seen one earlier, but I let it get away. And then I couldn’t find it again. I rummaged through dark cabinets. On the bottom shelf, there was an ornate plastic punch bowl with a metallic sheen, matching cups, and a variety of small vases, but nothing big enough for boiling water over a camp stove, or an old fireplace. John Oliver Simon, who had asked me for the coffee, said he would take me to a place where there were larger vessels. I thought it odd at the time because he had me ride piggyback, so I rode him like a horse and centaur as we traveled across creeks and meadows, traversing glorious mountain passes that took my breath away. The blue netting covering his face was like a mask, but it was slipping, so I straightened it for him, tenderly stroking the face of my old love. We never did find the pots. The journey was the goal. When I awoke, it was as if he were Charon and we were crossing the River Styx, but I had no coins by which to pay him. It was another visitation dream. And somehow it felt like an old debt had been repaid.

the last travel dream I had with John was right before his death: John Oliver Simon dream

LEARNING TO FLY

LEARNING TO FLY

In the dream, the yellow school bus 

dropped me off at the highway at the bottom of the road.

I escaped a bedlam of screaming kids, the taunting, 

and the torture of spitwads and rubber bands.

But when I stepped off the bus, it was so silent,

my feet couldn’t touch the ground, as if repelled by gravity. 

I entered a parallel world, my legs dragging in laden air, 

as if I were paralyzed. The ground misbehaved like oil & water. 

It was like being in the Barbano’s pool, just up the bend, 

when I was 10, learning how to swim after a near drowning.

I experimented with weightlessness, hands cupping the air. 

I struggled to get my bearings. It was a long road with no birds. 

Man had not yet walked on the moon. My home 

was another world where my grandmother stacked wood, 

buried ashes in the garden, argued with Cromwell in empty rooms.

I tried the breast stroke, then the Australian crawl 

all those strokes I learned in that saltwater pool. 

At least in this dream I could breathe. No fear of drowning.

Not like the tsunami dreams filled with fish and shoes.

I pulled the heavy air to my chest in hard thrusts, 

gaining traction, but I couldn’t leave the road. 

It was as if I was chained to that roadbed, 

hovering a few feet above it like Chagall’s floating women. 

No chance of effortless flight like the redtail hawks & vultures. 

I had to work hard to gain momentum. Nothing was given.

The road was my body, my guide, my mentor, my map. 

But I couldn’t stray from it. My arms grew weary. 

Like Gulliver, I was chained by invisible ropes. 

Frost rimed the new grass. A pale sky verging on white, 

the beginnings of spring circling the dark drain of winter.

1/12 CPITS Write On! Terri Glass class

Practicing the lucid art of Covid dreaming

Last night I dreamed I was in a darkened hall filled with far too many people that  I cared about, who crowded too close to me, some wanting to hug me, or to converse with me—or perhaps even to say goodbye. They were all there, the old boyfriends, ex lovers, even my former partner. My long-dead grandmother, where was my mother? MIA most of my life. Some thing never change. I’m having personal space boundary issues. No one was keeping social distance, no one was masked. Maybe it no longer mattered. Maybe this was it. The last hurrah, the long goodbye. The hubbub and roar of things left too long unsaid was palpable. No more pretense. To mask, or not to mask, that is no longer the question. We are all unmasked by this disease, and have entered into the third realm. I found myself freaking out, thinking, We’re all going to die. Shouting at my friends, and relatives—Keep your distance. Quarantine, thy name is.... Hold on. Thinking, it’s hopeless. Trying not to breathe. The very thing we need to do right now, is remember to breathe. To focus. How do we circumvent the futility of our dreams? We have entered a new realm—the lucid art of Covid dreaming. Meanwhile, the earth abides. When’s the last time you were hugged? This is a question for those of us who are alone in this madness. The other week, an old friend hugged me. I had all kinds of reactions, it dawned on me that I hadn’t been hugged in nearly a year. I burst into tears. I find myself making drawings of places I’ve never been, a landscape of hope on my bucket list, God willing. We will abide, our hearts will lead us, show us the way home. This what love is.

—for Laura Austin Wiley, who dreams she is being served cake, the final dessert, the endgame. But there’s always a cheese plate. —with love.

Bucket list. Fjaðrárgljúfur Gorge, SE Iceland. Rebecca Schultz went to Iceland and did these fantastic canvases of rock formations, which inspired me, then, and when I saw photos of this gorge with the unpronounceable name, I had to draw it.

Corona dream

Last night I dreamed a tightly curled succulent, the size of a baseball, opened up its knife-like leaves into a crown, a corona. It sprung into action when I approached, instilling both beauty and fear. It was tracking me, almost sentient. There was no escaping it. It followed me everywhere. I dreamed I was infected, and woke up in a sweat. And of course, I panicked. We once had a sepia-tone lithograph Arkle, a famous Irish racehorse on the living room wall, and I decided colorize it, to make it look more lifelike by lightly tracing around the outside of the horse with a red pencil, the kind teachers used to correct homework. The addition of red line really made the horse’s flared nostrils seem alive. You could almost hear him breathing. I also embellished a photo of my grandmother’s long-dead brother. She was not happy. See, in the old Irish tales, animals from the Otherworld always had red auras, red-ringed ears, and noses. They lived forever. Decades later, when I scanned the family photos, that embellished photo of my great uncle, was the sole survivor, and I had to remove the traces of my childhood art. Penance. Fortunately it was a sepia-tone, more forgiving to work with. Survivors say the color of their dreams changed—so vivid, that there were no boundaries between waking and dreaming. It was as if they had entered another realm. Lately, I’ve taken to coloring soft red lines around my dreams in order to keep them alive.

Disguise dream

Last night’s dreams led me to the past. I was cast in a role from the late 1800s. I searched my closet for appropriate clothing and decked myself out in layers of long dresses, a facsimile, for sure, but I had no appropriate shoes. Modern flats would give me away. It was important that I was incognito. My life depended on it. But pulling off the disguise was proving a difficult task as I had given away nearly all my clothing and shoes when I fled my ex-boyfriend’s house last year. I found some old Reeboks but they were mismated shoes, singles—one red, and one black. How on earth did that happen? I loved my red pair, and wore them to death until this century—but the black ones were from the 1970s. Egad. Time collapsing. I awoke, wondering how I would adapt. How I would be able to pull off the disguise. How I could fool the audience. Then I remembered the black paint. Forget about the Velcro straps. I could disguise that, easily enough. Problem solved. Then I remembered it was April Fool’s Day. What kind of joke was that? And who was pulling the strings?

John Oliver Simon dream

Last night (or rather, this morning) I dreamed that John Oliver Simon and I were on the road. I'm not sure where we were but it was something like New Mexico, or it could've been Nevada. I don't think it was Mexico. We were in a new white VW Beetle, crammed to the gills with all our gear. I must've been driving, because when we parked the car, he took my face in his hands, and tenderly kissed my cheek, saying, I love you. It was so tenderly sweet. He was so present. Not his ambivalent self. I said, I love you too.

We pulled into the driveway of a sagging two-story house that spoke of the Southwest. We clamered up the steps to meet some poets, and were talking for hours. I went out to get my camera gear and the car was gone. John joined me on the porch, as we looked all over the yard for the car.

Someone had stolen it with all our gear, electronics, cameras, clothes—everything. I was too shocked to be angry. Then as I looked around the yard, John had disappeared. I was alone, cameraless, in a strange town, in a strange state, or country, utterly alone, with no way home. He had left me. He had left me.

I awoke feeling utterly bereft. Abandoned. It was almost 4 AM, I couldn't go back to sleep.

That afternoon, as we were headed to Savers in Dublin to get rid of old clothes, and buy some new ones, I told Neil about the dream. I said I think it's a warning that John is dying. The doctors gave him a year or two, but I had a bad feeling. I couldn't shake John from my mind.

Next morning, Tina from CPITS called to tell me the news and I said, I already know. I could feel it. His leaving. She said he died between 2 and 3 AM on Tuesday. I knew. Irish clairvoyance at work. We dream of the dead. They come to us in dreams to say goodbye. Somehow I thought we'd have a little more time together.

I am so grateful we had such a sweet goodbye after our Emerson after school class on the eve of the Winter solstice. Complete and total melding into each other's arms. I said, I love you John. He said I love you too, Maureen. He didn't shove me away, or do the ambivalent hug.

He said, I want you to meet Susie. I haven't told her about our star-crossed path, but she knows about you. You'll come to our wedding. I said, I'm still wrapping my mind around that one. He laughed, and said, Yeah, me too. I held his face in my hands, and wished him well on his upcoming chemo. I said I will hold healing thoughts for you, We want to keep you for a good while longer. He laughed and said, Me too. That was the last time I saw John alive.

I awoke to the image of white horses standing in the rain

I awoke this morning to the image of white horses standing in the rain, while thinking of Robert Sund's The Hides of White Horses Shedding Rain, part of his Ish River poems collection (Copper Canyon Press). He was an amazing reader—could weave a spell in no time flat. A calligrapher and painter as well. We had much in common. I wish I had bought that book, when I met him at Port Townsend in 1981, but I had no money at the time.

...The great white horse 
Stands under the warm rain
Like a shining cathedral.

—Adrian Mitchel, from Understanding the Rain

...and again falls
this quiet,
persistent rain.

—Robert Creeley, from The Rain

3
Along the Columbia,
     three more hours and I'm home.
But first
I close the car door
and walk in a field of mountain grass.

I lie down, drink clear
water, dream of old rituals
and what it feels to be pure of heart.

When I get back home to the Ish River country,
I'll open the barn door
and see the hides of white horses shedding rain.

—Robert Sund, from Night Along the Columbia, Day in Blewitt Pass, Going Home

I had a white horse for a while—a stray from Forest Farm Camp (Linda Gregg's home) who wandered from winter pastures to our hill. Poor old Foos hated the rain—she turned dingy creamy, rain falling from her long lashes and that pale summer blue lake of her eyes, entreating me to make it stop.

I had to wait that long, seven years, just to find Sund's poem on the internet.

Major 7.0 quake, offshore Ryukyu Islands, Japan. Wonder if this was the source of my horse dream?

added & revised 2/2017

 Anacortes poet Robert Sund's 2001 obit

Sorcha Fragment

On a far distant isand on the other edge of the known world, a girl lay on a bright pile of mown hay, thinking of the tale the visiting seanchaí had told them around the hearth the night before. The sun drowsed her into that limnal state between waking and sleeping. The wind was like loose silk on her skin. She imagined it whispering—sometimes she could almost understand what it was saying. Something about Sorcha. A kingdom of light. Was it the wild geese flying overhead in a vee-formation that trapped her daydream in their net of air?

Beltaine, May Day dream sequence

Lá buidhe Bealtaine shona daoibh. 

To celebrate the day of Beltaine,
wash in the May morning dew.

The woman who washes her face
in it will be beautiful;
the man who washes his hands
will be skilled with knots and nets.

Dew, they said DEW. not a feckin' downpour or monsoon! Sheesh! The rain woke me. No chance of dew. Then I remembered, the dream flooded back.... Beltaine, May Day is the night when the gates to the Otherworld open, it often comes in as if a dream. May First begins the season of the dream walkers.

* * *

OweynagCat
YouTube of Oweynagat, a journey into mother earth. 

I dreamed I was traveling on foot across the countryside, and in a wooded clearing, I stumbled across a wide barrow on my right. Thinking I'd stumbled upon something like the massive rabbit warrens that my grandmother crawled into as a child, seeking refuge in the hills above Bantry Bay, I got down on my hands and knees to see what I could see. I must've heard a noise because I looked deeper into the limnal jaws of the underground maw.

As my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I saw vermin, no, a little black fox, with matted fur, or at least I thought it was a fox. He was mangy and grubby but unafraid of my alien presence. Behind him I saw a buried Liliputian city, replete with Victorians painted yellow, orange and red, fiery, as if lit from within, in this underground cavern. It was night in that realm, streetlamps cast small pools of light on the pavements grey. Perhaps it was a reminder that this was a dream, not real.

The little fox was standing on a street corner, perhaps in another land, or another time. I no longer knew where I was, but I was growing frightened. This much I knew: the burrow was the gates to the Otherworld. To enter the Otherworld was to never return to this realm, it was also the gateway to enchantment or death. Land to the west. Tír na nÓg. Perhaps. like Oisín, I would return to another century.

Sometimes in dreams, my dead mother comes to visit. Sometimes she is with my grandmother. It is always a tearful reunion, they can never stay long. And here I was, willingly crawling underground, still very much alive.

But like a changeling child, the little black fox kept beseeching me with his milk blue eyes and small whine, begging me to come to him into the cruachan, but I was afraid of his fleas, and imagined diseases. 

I thought of rabies and of the bubonic plague, the black death that killed many millions during the Middle Ages, they knew rats were somehow involved, they never dreamed it was the fleas. 

I thought too of my grandmother's stories of the OweynagCat, the cave of the great Irish three-headed saber cat, in which case, I was right in the middle of some seriously dark Otherworld sidhe mojo, as Samhain was the feast night of the Great Cat. And this was Beltaine, the beginning of Hafgan's realm, the Annwn Welsh lord of summer. A time of stolen children and horses. At least I had enough sense to leave the rowan and whitehtorn unplucked.

But the young pup cowered and whimpered, wanting creature comfort. I realized that he was as lost and out of his element as I was, so I crawled into the burrow to comfort him. He gladly crept into my arms, licked my face and throat. Initiation by saliva. He whimpered with recognition and squirmed with joy. Who was this little fellow and why was he abandoned on the metaphorical mean streets of an underground city?

I realized that his unkempt appearance was not because of mange or disease, though I still feared his fleas, but because he was a puppy, not a fox, and that there were others of his kind, hiding in the alleys and back streets. He was a sentinel scout for his brothers. The litter came bounding forth, surrounding me with their joyous puppy energy.

I was gathering them in, comforting them, when I sensed another darker presence on my right, and I was looking into the ominous yellow eyes, not of a fox, but a wary long-haired dog, a dog unlike anything I'd ever seen. Surely not an Alsatian or a German shepherd guarding the gates of hell.

The dog's ink dark coat was longer, thicker, no distinctive saddle markings. Her head was narrower, her ears bigger, her snout longer. Perhaps she was a half-breed. No Cerebus, but there was something unkempt and uncivilized about her that I couldn't quite put my finger on.

I realized I was looking right into the eyes of a wild wolf mother and I was in her den. In her territory. I froze and we eyed it off. I backed away slowly, but the pups would have none of it. They bounded in my arms, pounced on me, pulled at the tie that held back my waist long hair with their milk teeth, and paraded it forth until I was bound up in a veiled tangle of my own hair, I was a selkie caught fast in the fisherman's net.

The mother wolf backed off her stance, lifted a front paw slightly, and sat, as if to acknowledge that I meant her babies no harm, and then she stiffly, or formally approached. I offered my curled right hand, palm down, for her to sniff. The tension crackled like static electricity.

I willed myself into calmness and looked down at the ground, not daring to make eye contact as I knew that would be perceived as a threat. My throat exposed, my hand, soft in supplication, I had to will the fear from my body and just be there, in timeless suspension. I focused on my breath. When I felt her cold nose on my hand, I knew that the danger was past and that I would live to see another day.

The loba returned to her young, sat down, with a ribbon of tongue lolling out, she began the endless task of bathing them, taking in their sour milk-odor, as they settled in for a long suckle. I retreated from their burrow and with that, I awoke to the heavy downpour of rain on the first day of May. 


So much for bathing in the May morning dew.

Was it May Day, or maybe mayday but then I realized that I was true dreaming, that I had indeed traveled to another place and time. It was a dextrous right-handed dream, and in that moment I realized that in the face of death, the fear is something I make daily, of my own choosing.

And in that moment I realized also that the reason why my mother and grandmother were hovering in the wings of my dreams, was that they had come, not for me, but for their remaining daughters and sisters, my aunts—where the cancer blossoms inside them like a black rose.


I awoke to the urgent ringing of the phone—on the answering machine was the dark news no one wants to hear. The ravening wolf.

YouTube of Oweynagat, a journey into mother earth: still images of the entrance to the Otherworld, by Mike Croghan, with music by Afto Celt Sound System.

Celestial Padlocks

I awoke thinking of celestial padlocks. I was actually thinking of the keys to celestial padlocks and wondering what left field that came from. Keys to the city. Made of clouds.

 

The Bathtub is Falling

The bathtub is falling, the bathtub is falling!

We live in an old house, the cracks around the tub and wall have noticeably widened since the last two earthquakes. There's been a permeable odor of mold that I can't seem to locate or eradicate. I scrub the tub and shower curtain, spray the cracked grouting with a bleach solution and think perhaps it's the walls or the sub-flooring that is rotting.

I had an odd thought while showering. Perhaps it was a dream fragment. What if the heavy enamel iron tub just fell through the floor to the basement below while I was bathing? I couldn't walk out the basement as the crawlspace is too low, and the little trap door below the front porch is locked from the outside.

I'd be barefoot, naked and wet in a crawlspace where I normally wouldn't want to be fully clothed. Spiders, cobwebs, small rodent carcasses. Maybe even a cat or an opossom...like under Brooke's house...

Even if I could get to the outside of the house, then what? I'd be wet, buckass-naked (not a pretty sight at my age) nearly 55, gimpy-kneed and dirty, standing outside on my front porch, locked out of my house. Then what? Wait for the mailman to come? And run away screaming? Though my hair falls iin a thick mane to below my waist, I was never exactly Bottacelli's Venus on the half shell. And at the rate my hair grows, it'll be another half-century before it falls to my knees.

Or I could just stand in the fallen subterranean tub and scream or wait. But then who would hear me or who would hoist me up? I couldn't crawl out. I'd have to wait until this evening when Neil gets home. Throw me a rope. Naked, vulnerable, unkempt—sort of like the process of writing. And why was I thinking of all this with myself in the third person? She. Sidhe, as in otherworld barrow—what is beneath the surface.

Back to an audience of one hand clapping, from what I can tell, not even the mice are reading my blogs. So who is my audience? From what I can tell, according to the Technorati and Google spiders and webcrawlers, I'm the only one reading my own work. I got irritated when Technorati kept listing my blogs as unclaimed. Hey, it's mine—even if no one but the spiders are reading it.

Doesn't that defeat the purpose? Do I invite people to read my blogs? Or do I remain hidden in the crowd behind the hordes of some 3 million bloggers out there? No, make that nearly 4 million. The Technorati count was 3 million mid- August. Who is reading all this stuff anyway? Technorati spiders seem to only pick up the pages with typos and even after I revise and correct them, the offending pages stay up for all the world to see my imperfect art.

No one leaves any comments on my pages. I actually put a site visitor counter on my blog, but, as I suspected, I was the only one who was triggering the counter with all that obsessive editing. I took the counter off, disenheartened. After all, it's better not to know who isn't reading this. And so I end this one on a double negative. But at least it's progress.

On Writing & Dreams

Have you ever had the experience of making mental notes to say this or that to someone, something terribly important (or at least half-way intelligible) and in their presence, despite best intentions, you turn featherbrained on yourself, betrayed by a cheesecloth-that-stands-for memory/mind: whatever thoughts you had, driven clean out of your head, only to re-emerge at the oddest hours—say, at 5 AM, in a strange flat (and country) not your own—even the cats have deserted you because your tossing and turning like a crazed narwhal reminds them of the bilious sea, and water is not their favorite subject, unless fish are involved.

(As the actress Tallulah Bankhead said, I nevah drink the watah, dahling, fish fhuck in it. By the time it reached the sanitized public, it was "piss" versus "fuck". As if piss were preferable to fucking. Tell me why San Francisco society was not ready for that Anglo-Saxon word. My first and only opera I attended, there she was in a peacock sequined gown, Tallulah brandishing a cigarette holder longer than her arm, speaking in a sotto voice that carried across the marble lobby and into the streets. Fresh from the hills, I was wide-eyed in amazement, but that’s another story.)

This mental indulgence exacerbated by bad cramps tempered with aspirin, cognac—one gets these images of wheels spinning in the muddied ruts in the backroads of the mind, ends up having entire one-sided conversations that never actually reach their intended victims. I’m a lousy correspondent—either dead silence for years, or a series of volumous ramblings like this one. Nocturnal epistolic documents, personal essays produced under duress by the obsessive urge to write. An unwillingness to let go.

Ah, one could say, self-indulgence is a fine thing, as long as it goes no farther than the page but essays demand an audience, that’s the other half of the Faustian pact. The monks had it right: indulgences. These, my indulgences—not poems (too self-absorbed and convoluted), but poet’s work.

Practice for scholarly glosses in the margins of what may later become a poem (if one is lucky).

I like Brodsky’s attitude on writing and the personal essay: A man of my occupation seldom claims a systematic mode of thinking. He elaborates that a writer is caught up by the relentless centrifugal nature of language. . . . where . . . ambivalence and open-endedness as the essence of [the poets’] endeavor.

This of verbal excess began in earnest when I had a Ukrainian boyfriend. Suffice to say, in 1989 letters rarely reached their intended destination, the KGB (or NKVD or NVKD—they were forever changing their acronym every decade or so, but not their technique, their headquarters, the Lubiyanka, cold solemn stone fortress/oubliette in the krasnaya heart of Moscow) working overtime to intercept love letters complicated by poetry between the sheets of Soviets and Americans.

So we wrote everything in a gonzo journalistic fashion, in triplicate, mailing one copy, sending the others via “couriers.” (Yes, our mail was opened.) I met many Russian couriers traveling to the USA, I received mail postmarked from all the cities of the free world, or got late night calls from homesick Russian friends of friends wanting to talk with someone—anyone who'd been there—a sort of sympathetic magic. The friends system was amazingly good.

Luckily, there were many Russian delegations traveling back and forth because of the efforts of people like William Mandel, a NPR radio commentator, Armand Hammer, the baking soda king, and the stuffed toy animal king, Henry Daiken. They all were couriers for me, they allowed me to stay in touch, to communicate with my Soviet lover—who now lives in New York and shared afternoon coffees with Josip Brodsky—who gave his Nobel money away to struggling Russians.

Strange offerings I received from people I didn't even know from Mother Russia—pre-revolutionary peasant dresses, coral & amber necklaces, USSR army watches, belts and pins. The Russians sent things of value to the west to raise valuta to buy an airline ticket out, or to pay for delivering packets and letters.

Once I flew back from St. Petersburg smuggling out dozens of letters, lacy silver spoons and tea glass holders, and more US currency than I arrived with, I was afraid I would get caught red-handed, so to speak. A counter-counter-revolutionary of sorts, I said No when they handed me an old icon. Ironically, I’d smuggled in as much money from Russians working in California for their families to live on; a thousand dollars was worth more than a year’s salary in Russia.

I chased elusive dreams to distant countries specifically because they were off limits, I purposefully slept with the enemy because in 5th grade I learned of a mythical Russia with troikas in the snow, in love with horses, I couldn’t let go of the image, and little did I know it was somehow tied to the frozen canals of Holland—Hans Brinker’s mythical silver skates—

I lived in St. Petersburg one winter, small patches of ice-free water beneath the bridges relentlessly patrolled by the ducks who knew: to let go of the open pond was to die. Friends are everything in Russia; without them survival is impossible. On the Field of Mars I stood overlooking the converted palaces, children sledding down the steps, and really, it was no different than here in Amsterdam.

Only later I learned Tzar Peter modeled St. Petersburg after this city we now inhabit. That inhabits us and our writing. Czaar Peterstraat and the birth of the Russian Navy. Amsterdam was his window to the west.

Of course, I’d be sentenced to spend time here looking out these windows, letting go of the myths, only to reinvent them in the poem. I perversely learn history through the back door, as a traveler in search of some elusive mystery. For what reason? Why do we write, and who for?

I need that reassurance of the personal conviction as testimonial. For poetry makes us whores— it is a relentless, unforgiving mistress. I’ve found myself in unusual circumstances for the sake of poetry. I’m merely the scribe.

And this Celtic insensibility—of course I skirt the issues, isn’t that Celtic nature, the Gordian knot? The muse comes in strange forms I no longer question. And so dawn nudges the trams into play, here, as in Russia, still I can’t sleep, but soon oblivion will find me like all the rest.

The cats are semi colons at the foot of my bed: I dream of people before I meet them. Crazy? A good Cartesian response to the unmeasurable. I know craziness second-hand, my mother’s indulgements influenced by the drug-induced ’60s & ’70s.

Then, my grandmother spent her free time wandered about the house muttering Cromwell; the Anglo Saxons & Jutes. The sassanach, she spat. When I was a child, I thought they were swearwords. I knew they were bad, very bad, that I mustn’t forget my history. And so when I recognize “kin” so far from home, I am overwhelmed. There’s a word for it: anim chara (soul/heart friend).

I don’t want to “make” precognitive dreams come true. Once I went to great lengths to try to change them. To my horror, the circumlocutions were also part of the dreaming cycle. If anything, I err in being too passive, waiting for them to unfold, & then wonder what the (fuck the) significance is. It’s not like a storyline, it’s a series of isolated moments, that upon waking, I sometimes mistakenly string them together into a narrative thus confusing the picture.

Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine:
people live in one another’s shadows.

I didn’t get a chance to tell you I dreamed I had to memorise 5 lines in Welsh—it was all a jumble of sounds, with no images to hang onto. I no sooner got one line down when it forced out the one preceding it, and so on through the night. I can’t even begin to pronounce the Welsh, I barely know the rules of Irish. I awoke with the cadence.

Pay attention to the rhythms. Teachers come in the most surprising forms. Poetry is a two-way mirror. The inside looking out. The outside looking in. You have to be ready to reassemble the pieces, wrote David Meltzer.

Once Vins and I went to Louven in Belgium where he went to University to study philosophy. Wandering the city, we stumbled upon an arch with Old Irish enscribed on the lintel. To my surprise, I was able to decipher it. . . perhaps one of the few visitors able to do so in the past several hundred years. A college founded by Irish monks in the so-called Dark Ages. And here we are, archaic sentinels from a culture (and languages) on the verge of extinction for nearly as many centuries. And we’ve so rudely taken a long time dyin’ at that.

How does one come to terms with: Cenedl heb raith; cenedl heb galon (a nation without a language; a nation without a heart).

I prefer phrases like Tá grá agam ort or Yr wyf yn du garu to the names of war.

Glamour, corrupted from grammar, this rough magic by which we strike. It’s in the blood. The dark, threatening sky. Again.

As I watched the stairs, I remembered subject/ object/ verb, but not the details—like inside vs. outside. I got to WH Smith bookstore 10 minutes early, I went downstairs 5 or 10 after 3, but didn’t think to go outside, and there he was out there all the time standing in the rain. I sat in the bay window, the rain falling, thinking Paul had gone home first, and got caught up in something. The story of star crossed lovers stood up by a miscommunication, the clock kept chiming the quarter hours with a vengeance.

What I recall of Ted Hughes’ animal poems in Thought Fox, I liked very much—especially the one about the horses. I need recommendations to “get” a particular poet. Maybe it’s because I’ve never “gotten” his voice in the small bits of anthologised poetry I’ve read in Norton, etc.

Of course, at the time (early 1980s), feminists were blaming him for Sylvia’s death. . . I was still new to poetry. So much to learn. . . In context to Ted’s poems, Heaney’s seemed a bit flat, but I was already familiar with many of the poems.

Some poems take their own time coming in.



© Maureen Hurley 2002. A shorter version/ variation of this piece, Anim Chara, takes the form of the epistilary letter—actually a confluence of two posts to Walo Rojas, Chilean poet, and to Paul Evans, Welsh poet and translator. The original piece dates back to 1996 when I was living in Amsterdam, after participating in the Poetry International festival. Amsterdam is very much a dreamlike city. For years, I repeatedly dreamed of the canals of Amsterdam, long before I ever went there. It was already part of my dream psyche, only I always thought the shining city of light was San Francisco with weird mantle clock houses. I was shocked to recognize the place of my dreams in Amsterdam.

Dark dream

Last night I dreamed I was choking and so I coughed until the phlegm lined my throat, but it was the roots of my tongue come loose from its bright moorings leaving me mute, intestate. My sphincter having reversed itself so that my entrails slowly bled a rich dark blood, devoid of oxygen. I'm like a sea cucumber spilling my guts at the first sign of danger. Others tried to stop the dam to no avail. Someone suggests a doctor to shove my entrails back in, another tries to realign my tongue. A child pulls the tampon that short up the bleeding. And my old augury spills to the ground unread.

11/99
added 9/17

Dream: Robin Williams

7/24: Last night I dreamt I was hanging out with Robin Williams, and it seems so real. I was amazed that he remembered me after all these years. After all, I haven't seen him since 1983. And despite all those years since College of Marin, (1970-1973), I was surprised to discover that a part of me still loves him. 

I awoke with a sensation that one doesn't ever really fall out of love, it just moves over for another person, like a lazy dog at the hearth. And so, I chose Bob Hamilton, or should I say, he chose me, because I was too shy to pursue Robin, and he was too shy to pursue me. I was left standing in the field.

 Imagine how different my life would've been if. If we had managed to handle the mating dance? But now, more years than I care to imagine, have passed. What is the half-life of a first love? If requited, or not? 

I dreamed we'd absolved all that self-confessed shyness. I regret all the lost years. I said, too bad we weren't in touch when you did Moscow on the Hudson. We could've practice our Russian. Yours was pretty good, I said. But mine's better.

There wasn't a romantic twist to the dream. We were just glad to see each other after all these years. But our lives, once intertwined, were interrupted, and I lost sight of him, both literally and figuratively. And the world claimed him, as he lost sight of himself.

7/24/1998

Journal entry, ulcer, 4/21 - 4/26

4/21/1998 I’ve been uneasy about Neil being in Asilomar, it turns out for a good reason. On Sunday he passed out at the ocean and when he came to, he thought he had food poisoning so he took himself to the hospital. It was a duodenal ulcer and he nearly bled to death, they said I was feeling more and more depressed as I headed north and I didn’t really know why. I guess I sensed something was amiss. He’s on the phone with a classmate, Jill, gory details. Tom Harrell, the doctor/boarder, walked in the door it looks like he had a rough day in the emergency room. Neil talks about his classes and I’ve heard the story before. It is the first warm day, spring has arrived and it’s a bit sticky. Scent of lemon blossoms hangs in the air.

4/22/1998 Neil sleeps. Wendy called to ask how he was doing. He was so shaky and gray yesterday evening when I arrived. Shaky on his feet. We held each other for sometime. I gave him a light massage but his skin hung to him, clammy. He probably lost a quart of blood, and is anemic. I remember seeing how sweaty he was the other day, and I thought it odd. And that sweetish, almost fetid odor that emanated from him. When he fell asleep on the couch, he was sleeping oddly, and I thought something was wrong. Did he have a stroke?

4/26 A second night on the couch for him, and of course I can’t sleep. 7 AM. Nightmares of vultures landing on the infield. Too many consultants between me and the pitcher anyway. I had to throw a fit in order to see who the pitcher was, let alone, see the ball. When the vulture landed between us, ending the game, it began to feed on itself for it was dead, or dying, plucking it’s skin like a doppelgänger devouring itself, beak first.

Journal notes: Dear Neil letters 8/7 to 8/31

8/7 The other night I dreamt I was standing by a lake, it was too cold. But there was an underground hot spring. I dipped my toe in, ah! a goner, I slid in fully clothed, I love water so much. I swam out beyond the cove, Neil yelled from shore to be careful of the current—It’ll be hard to get back to shore. So I swam across the current towards the cove to where he stood. The evening water was like a mirror, so beautiful and calm. I treaded water as we talked, my clothing gone. It seems I am always naked before him.

8/8 Thurs. I dreamt we were wandering in Mendocino, staying in familiar beds. A memory of my mother, perhaps my grandmother as well. I introduced Neil to Pat Wall, wishing him a happy 85th birthday. His thin face had become platter-shaped like Henry VIII, he loomed over me smiling, how many years? I was glad Neil and Pat met. Where was Micaela?

Scene change: I dreamt we were in a grove of oak trees, a herd of black horses like shadows among the trees. Niall was a black stallion who bit my neck and mounted me. Was I the white mare? I thought I was black like him. He slid off; I was bred in a circle of oaks. Were the druids gathering mistletoe with golden sickles. Was it Lughnasadh? Was it an archetypal dream, or a dream of the now?

I awoke thinking how the kings of Ireland were initiated into sovereignty by making love to a white mare. (Was I Epona?) Niall Glundubh, of the dark knees, was a dark horse, all right. This dream is more about mating than initiation of royalty. Elements: oak grove/druids: sacred wisdom. Horses: creativity. Stallion/mare: completion/fertility. Black? Neil was reading to me about the four bodies of the individual soul. Black is the casual body: sleep, pranja, heart. Black is sacred anomg Native American tribes.

8/11 Awoke grumpy and frustrated. My rib hurt something terrible yesterday. I carried water, my back’s unstable. Cause and effect. I’m mad at the doctors for misdiagnosing me, mad at Verona for the accident, even at Neil for the ambiguity of our relationship. Feeling forlorn and abandoned and it’s all foolishness for I’m to go home, get my mail and tax stuff, and return. I’m loath to leave, loath to stay.

Neil put me on the phone with his sister May. She said. “The accident makes you appreciate life, puts it in a different perspective. I work in a hospital: In one room you have the terminally ill, in another, the euthanasia patients, in one room they are laughing, in another, babies are being born…” She said to meditate, she hopes to meet me soon. I can understand why Neil thinks his sisters are so great. The concept of family continually expanding as we uncover the links (the ties that bind).

I am out of sorts today, the muscle relaxant didn’t help—foggy-minded—in the foggy, foggy dew? As we continue to forge links, strengthen bonds, I usually don’t resist, but today it’s the taking of three steps backwards only to find myself at the edge of the abyss that keeps following me.—as if I were a cartoon character, the eroding cliff compensating for my forward movement, leaving no place for retreat. The edge of that cliff is time. The option is to remain standing still and let the cliff erode around me. Tow options: willing or unwilling. On days like this I tend to hang out in the latter camp. Neil is the same person he was yesterday, or last year—only my perceptions have changed.

8/ 13 This journal of dailiness, the practice—even if the words don’t come, it’s better than the void. Healing takes its own time coming in. We made a mad overnight jaunt to Forestville, my cabin filled with the archaeology of a past life I can never go back to. Neil loves my cabin, the artifacts, the books. We gather up all my tax stuff. Neil said he would help me tackle the Big One—whatever it takes—his gift to me. I need all the help I can get. We continue to help each other, reordering our lives. I don’t seem to want for, or miss much from my old life. I have all that I need here—save for an occasional scurry into the archives.

I’m feeling breathless an dizzy; Neil wants me to go to Kaiser, if it’s a spider bite, they can do nothing for me—I’ve taken antihistamines. I think I was nailed by a black widow while digging out my old tax stuff from the shed. A bull’s eye bruise and two fang marks. Neil helps me hang an art show on Mon. in the library at the Petaluma campus of SRJC for a workshop on Friday with Terry Ehret and Marsha Connell.

Yesterday Neil spent the entire day tracking the best way to send money to Scotland to buy his mother’s council house, getting few definitive answers and no good rates. At the end of the day I called an 800 number on my checks, got a financial currency broker who gave us a fantastic rate (saving him nearly 300) so we went down and made the transaction from my account—I was a money launderer? We celebrated with a latte at the Coffee Mill, home for soup, and out to a movie, “Mrs Brown” with Billy Connolly—our first “date” since the accident which has disrupted us to the bone. we’re still sleeping in till 10 AM; we can’t seem to help ourselves, needing 9+ hours of sleep in order to heal, most of our waking hours in the house of “Tír-na-n-Óg,” the tiny patio I’ve converted into a dining room. After Amsterdam it seems quite spacious, I bought a couple of plastic chairs, some plants… He laughs at my nesting instincts, loves the results. Loves having me here.

I can’t believe we’re living together so well (though the dreams already warned me this was to be); but though we sleep in the same bed, we are celibate—by his choosing. I dream of making love nearly every night, I wonder if he does the same—sometimes he grabs my hips or rubs my back, strokes my hair. He’s had some restless nights: sweats, thrashing, scratching—I try and soothe him, stroking his hair or back, but it does little to calm him. He seems to find comfort in snuggling up to my back, spoon-style, holding onto my hips: which seems sexual, but he seems a bit afraid. He talks about the rock inside him, how it never allows him to be content with life, with women… he’s tried the addictions, to break free (including women) but says the only thing that works on that rock (there since he was a child) is the meditation, the yoga—it opens doors for him and he hopes it will do likewise for me. It’s more about right mindfulness, being aware in the present. Not to let the distractions of dailiness immobilize us. Though he sees doubt on my face, he tells me this anyway, for he feels I’m on the verge of opening up—shaktipat, he calls it. Is my spiritual path caught up in the karma of a man? Sounds scary.

I’m not sure what our future is or what it may bring—I know our lives are inexorably linked at this moment in time: if only the present exists, then this relationship exists in the now (whether or not we have sex is immaterial), transcends ordinary friendship. To know another person so deeply, to put their welfare before yours, is that not love? I keep house—not because I feel I have to, but because I want to. Creatures comforts tied up with our psychic well being. He plays the mantra over and over until it resonates inside my own head when I’m facing the world—a necessary state for my fragile state of being.

Nearly two months since the accident and we’re still weak-kneed, fragile beings who thrive on ibuprofen and foot massage. We nurture each other, what could be better? I keep thinking I’ll go home next week, but next week never comes, I’m still here, after all this time. I was go home last Saturday but I didn’t feel up to it—estranged and out of sorts, I even slept on the couch for the first time in weeks. The end result is that we both began to feel withdrawn and isolated. Over breakfast he said, “Let’s talk about it…” We read the runes. He got Karma, as did I—the rune of destiny comes up again and again between us. It is not yet time.

8/14 I dreamed I found my dead mother’s broken necklaces and jewels (in front of Mary Bianchi’s in Forest Knolls). She was so attached to those things yet made no move to get them herself. I gathered amethyst and citrine, and garnet. Simple stones set in silver. Was I gathering them in my shirt for my dead mother or for myself?. There were so many they fell into the ditch. There I was, bottom up, searching for lost treasure when I realized I was wearing a short skirt and no knickers, my snatch on view for the world to see! Only the windows looking on.

8/15 Say the mantra… I was bitten by a black widow on Monday. Thursday Neil took me to the hospital. we are Pavlovian in our response. Time unreels in increments of weeks. I still dream of car wheels spinning out of control, of soft shoulders, and dangerous curves. eucalyptus trees pointing accusingly to the sky as if we’d tricked fate out of its just due.

8/16 Sat. 1st time home in FV in over a week, Still feels wrong to be here alone. Called Paul just to hear his lovely Welsh accent. He restored my sense of being. He read me Dylan Thomas’s Do not go gentle into that good night… in that lovely lilt that’s neither Irish nor Scottish. Neil clips and glottalizes words—yet I can hear the Irish overtones. I told Paul about the accident and how that poem resurfaced in my memory as a warning? And so we raged against the dying of the light…

A long chat with Neil—neither of us sleeps well apart from the other. He said he felt confused and afraid, slept facing the wrong way. Our sleep cycles altered by the accident. I took creature comfort snuggling up against the wall seeking Neil’s body. He said the play won the Bay Guardian Goldie award and tomorrow is closing night. Ken Larsen called from Oakland, here I’d planned to stay home for a while and I’m already going back down. Neil’s to see Ingred today—one reason why I went away was to give Neil space do what he needed to do—and most of them canceled.

8/22 Fri. Over breakfast we rehearse lines from O’Neill’s play “Long day’s Journey” for a screen test. Neil’s the Earl Flynn of wasps, beating back a yellowjacket, swashbuckling with a bread knife, the wasp dancing a minute fandango or making a benediction over his head—I can’t decide which.

Came to find him later sitting on the couch listening to “The Dead” Snow is general all over Ireland…it falls upon the living and the dead… He was in tears grieving for his father. At last the dam has broken…I’ve been waiting for him to cry, wondering when it would happen, knowing he hadn’t let go. I put my arms around him the way he’s done for me so many times when I’ve been devastated. We’ve seen each other at our worst possible moments and still we love. His love of me (filial, or so he says), mine, full-blown—will the two never reconcile? I awkwardly held him on the couch, he grabbed me fiercely, crying a few brief moments—then put it away, saying, “I’m fine, I’m OK,” as if it were true or even necessary) still grieving for the lost years. “Twenty years here in America, and for what?” he asks pessimistically, feeling guilty for all the “wasted years,” for having to leave home in order to grow, for being so angry with his oldman—when the went to Ireland, seeing his tiredness and frailty. I stroked his hair, letting him ramble on, hoping the slate would come clean, he would push through the wall of grief to the other side: acceptance and healing. For I remembered, ages ago, when he said he hadn’t yet wept for his father, alarm bells went off. Sometimes it just takes its own time coming in.

Niall went north to Maxwell for a murder mystery play. (It’s uncomfortably hot today.) Like a good wife (or mother) I laundered and ironed his shirts, coached him on his lines, packed his lunch…and the irony is I actually don’t mind all the housewify stuff… me, the arrogant one who refused to be anyone’s wife. But I’ve now spent so much of my life living alone that it’s a novel experience. At first, I was so awkward, not used to the role. Sometimes I wonder if we’ll soon tire of each other, that he’ll want his space—but so far we seem to be in balance. Or so it seems. I made a vow to get him back on his feet…surely I’ve completed my task. Isn’t it time to go? Why do I linger on? Why does he hold me so?

8/26 Wrote my first real poem since the accident (wrote some stuff at the SRJC workshop) “Thirst” after a strange dream and full moon left me discombobulated. I won’t show it to him for it’s rather a brutal portrait. This unease within me is building.

8/28 Thurs. Thoroughly wigged (and pre-menstrual) I fled Neil’s place while he was at UCB, I was feeling unwanted and insecure for he slept out on the couch. (Indigestion, he said). Neither of us slept much. When he leaves in the middle of the night I immediately sense the loss of his presence… I was feeling funky on Mon. and so the past two nights he slept the other direction—head to toe—this further increased my sense of isolation. I don’t know if what I’m feeling is really from him or if I’m just oversensitive.

When I finally slept, I had nightmares of the stove coming loose from the wall as I was cooking. I tried to move it back before the flame spread to the gas lines. I yelled to Neil for help but I had no voice. He couldn’t hear me. I let go of the stove, ran down the hall to get him. He went outside to shut off the main valve while I tried to staunch the flow of gas. I let go as the flames leaped to the wall and traveled down the pipes to where Neil was trying to shut off the main valve. Only I knew the valve didn’t have a handle—time was running out. The pliers were inside, somehow he managed to save us.

I awoke apprehensive and uneasy as Neil was leaving for school. He said something about closing my eyes while Niall Glundubh snuck off into the sunlight. I don’t know why it struck some aching place inside of me—as if it were true and I’d experienced it before. And I was struck with an overwhelming sense of loss. tears welled up. H handed me a hanky, stroked my face and arm, saying I’d be OK, played the meditation mantra to comfort me. Already he was late and couldn’t stay. But I didn’t realize I was feeling so sad, such grief welling up. Is it because I’ve opened up my life for the past five years? Is it because I’m doing my taxes? are all the deaths and sorrows resurrecting, resurfacing? It felt as if the shadow of a djunn had alighted in the corner of the room during the night engulfing me in its darkness. All this depression taking over.

He said he’d be back at noon, I cleaned the house, but my feeling of unease increased, I fled, leaving a note on his door, feeling I couldn’t wait, I couldn’t face him. Feeling too insecure about our relationship, wondering why he keeps me outside of himself, why no physical relationship, or at least talk about it—why doesn’t he want me? Let’s get it on the table, so to speak, but by living with him I’m too vulnerable. what if he says he’s simply not interested? Then what do I do? Die of humiliation? Was fleeing the right thing?

 Also, I said I’d stay for the summer, which is technically over this weekend. Maybe my work’s done. he’s back in school, his grants came through. He’s on his feet and running. It seems as if there’s little time for me–with the play and school. Time to leave him be unless he wants me to come and live with him formally—as his girlfriend (which everyone thinks I already am—if they only knew that we sleep in the same bed but never touch, except for massages, or the occasional hug—esp. in public, leaving me confused. Am I the fool involved with a man unclear about having a relationship? How did he feel, knowing I’d flown the coop?

I was still sobbing when I got to Novato, so I went to Verona’s, hanging out trying on clothes she was getting rid of. Doing woman things which helped alleviate the depression that was threatening to make me numb. So, ironically, one of the events that set off my rash of insecurity was whether or not I should go to the opening of “Sons of Ulster” tonight at the Phoenix tonight? I asked him if he wanted me there for moral support several times, and he never ansnwered me. I’ll be going to the opening after all with Verona and Herman. A closure of sorts

Journal entry, Gemini June NON

6/1 Met Neil at the TCI Awards ceremony with Verona and Herman. Chaotic. Neil got some TV coverage. I’ve no idea if the cameras were rolling when I read a poem, but it was live TV. I had an audience, even if only the others in the studio. Neil played a few tunes with a band wearing my green silk smoking jacket. It looked pretty good on camera from the waist up—as long as you didn’t see his tatty shorts. Some woman recognized Neil from last week’s Open Mike show, complimented him on his music. (She was all over him, I felt disgusted—I reacted by distancing myself from him). So it pays to get one’s face out there. A musician, Rich, said he recognized me from a party at Dennis Perón’s… in ’92? I tell him about the Dutch photographer, Jan Bogaerts, and how we met Brownie Mary. A big teddybear of a man, a bouncer hanging with the gayboys but yearns to be with a woman, or harbors chivalrous notions of love. “I know you!” we said simultaneously. In this life? or a past one? The depth, the stepping into, the kenning. Ah, the pan-global Celtic tribe.

We went over to Dylan’s Pub where I was introduced to Titch as “A fabulous poetess…” I’ll have to break him of the -ess part. We played ping-pong. N & V were quite good (he plays tennis too), but I was a disaster area. I kept smacking the ball to kingdom come. “Look at that shark fin come up when she plays,” he said, “a healthy, competitive streak.” 

Neil was due at another party but Herman convinced him to come to Novato for a midnight swim and spend the night (it didn’t take much convincing), but the hot tub was cold. A sultry, steamy night. I made a bed on the floor and we slept in bathing suits, snuggling despite the heat, talking into the wee hours about his family, his first lover in the U.S., and how she betrayed him sleeping with an exlover. “You don’t do that to a Celtic man,” he explained, as if it explained anything. Neither of us could sleep. We never got any farther than Melissa’s neuroses—his mind was racing so—I gave him a massage. He moaned with sheer joy, asked me to do his feet again. Talk about being starved, when was the last time this man was touched by a woman? As my hair brushed his feet, I thought of Mary Magdelene’s hair—how Catholic men want the whore-Madonna. Which was I to be at that moment, chaste in my bathing suit, swaying at the feet of my future lover… who is afraid to make love to me?

6/2 I’ve got AV book looming over my head, editing paste up. I’m days behind, can’t seem to catch up—I’m distracted by Neil, but have nothing much to report. At Verona’s the other night, we slept on the living room floor, he drew a map of Scotland—his home town in relation to Paisley and Glasgow—on my naked back, his fingers tracing the firths, the islands—and the map began to blur from the hard pressure of cities, the feathery touch of inlets and rivers—the lover’s touch upon my back, but then, he pulled away—reluctantly, it seemed. What is wrong? He gathers my hand to his heart as we sleep, spoon-style, pulls me back into his arms as we each turn in tandem (like slowly orchestrated beached whales). One time his hand rested possessively on my hip—not a platonic gesture. I was certainly close enough to notice a hard-on, but I never detected one. Mornings he gathers me into his arms so completely, I feel I’ve come home, while in the night, his embraces are filled with reserve. It feels so natural for us to sleep together, and ironically, that’s a more intimate gesture than fucking—though neither of us sleeps too deeply, preoccupied with the newness of it, the potential. On the other hand, we’re never really been in a setting conducive to lovemaking: drunk at 4 AM in the back of my truck, mid-afternoon in the orchard with the tenants peeking on, in the middle of Verona’s living room floor, the odor of skunk clogging our nostrils.

Verona, Neil and I went over to the pool next morning and meditated until we were sunburned. Neil’s voice, so pure as he sang skyward the Vedic chants…jai ram… I recognize a few words: namaste, bodhisatva, mantra, om… Covering all bases, he threw in some Irish and Latin for good measure. Beannacht loive. Et cum spiri tu tuo. I felt like I was attached to the sky via a thread from the top of my head. I focused on love without attachment, on healing his heart and mine, the grief we’ve both suffered. As I floated in the pool I could hear his voice speaking inside me, our hearts beating in unison, sometimes in syncopation. A pulse in my womb like the clicking of an insect, was it a pulse or did my womb resonate with his heartbeat? So odd to hear the pulses aligning. I did not tell him his voice was inside my head for I do not know if it was real. Already my life has changed because of him (and his’ through mine?). The change could be seen as disruptive, we’re both attached to our own little rituals of living alone. This requires adjustment and negotiation for we’re always on the edge of survival. I know he is affected by me as I am by him, but he’s too busy holding onto memories, hurts. “My last great summer in California…” has become his mantra and he’s greedy for experiences to fill that nostalgia and I’m but one more memory. He’s a social butterfly; I’m not. His world is vast by comparison. He eventually does find the time for me, but I feel overwhelmed by the thought of his leaving in September.

We went out to breakfast, I’d misplaced my wallet, the morning’s grace undone. I’m frantic. He asks why. I confess to him my fear was a dichotomy: a fear of letting go and a fear of holding on. He says, “Everything you need is already inside of you.” And I thought how this man steadies me like no other ever could, for I am the skittish horse. Many’s the time when he’s pulled me into his arms and I’ve transformed, settled down. “Ach, look at how she’s settling in the noi!” he’d say.

6/9 Mon. Bolinas. A horrifically busy week, pasting up the AV book, meetings, preparing for Verona’s 6Oth birthday party, picking up food, chairs, cleaning Herman’s place (filthy) on Fri. I was quite grumpy for I had to work non-stop at breakneck speed to get everything ready for Saturday. I was still working when guests arrived, I found it hard to relax. Neil showed up at 5 PM, I felt a little distant for he hadn’t phoned in over a week, but as the evening wore on, we inevitably were drawn together like magnets. I try not to come so close, but I think neither of us can help it—like poor moths tricked by an artificial moon, plunging into the flame. Verona got quite drunk, wailing over her dead husband on the beach at sunset. As Neil sang and strummed, we took turns holding her. The evening was quite lovely. Crepuscular blue. Venus on the horizon. The party continued on back at the cabin till midnight with singing and storytelling. A jaunt to Smiley’s to see who’s playing, we danced a bit, then headed back to Herman’s cabin.

Neil was more than willing to spend the night (as I knew he would) but it was quite some time before he reached for me. I felt abandoned, thinking I was definitely going to bail, but by morning something shifted, and we were once again in each others arms, within the circle of love. A cozy morning. Herman and Verona returned early to Novato. It was late afternoon before we ventured into town for the Sun-Day festival, which was nearly over. It’s been a long time since I was last in Bolinas: merchants and locals asking where I’ve been, made me realize I too, was part of the landscape. Neil and Patrick hit it off as I knew they would, talking about Buddhism and the Tibetan Book of the Dead—I talked about my experiences with the dead, and the experiences with blue and green light. I usually keep quiet about this stuff, but it seemed OK. The said words like: enlightenment, astral projection. Neil and I keep learning about each other through our interactions with others. Yesterday he said, “I think Patrick fancies you.” I got quite upset because we’re just good friends. He backed down. Neil picks up on nuances, like that creep at the Nicasio bar. Usually I sidestep that riffraff. Like that guy Steve, at Smiley’s who asked me to take him home—I was shocked, I’ve known him for years, never giving him any encouragement! Must be something in the air.

Neil could be waffling, ready to bail, but I won’t let him be complacent. We went to RCA beach at sunset, and the personal stories began to surface: first sexual encounters, early relationships, wounds and battle scars. I asked, “How old were you when you lost your virginity?” He said, “That’s rather personal!” and laughed. He was 16, in London, it was something to get over with—not a great experience. We were in full confessional mode. Over dinner I told him about Herman’s approaching me, and how devastated and betrayed I felt. Neil raised the issue of incest, he saw it as a serious breech of trust. Yes. He kept probing and I realized my deep anger toward Herman is a direct result of that breech of trust. He was a father-figure, I was in mourning for the lost father. I was sad to be the one who shattered Neil’s picture of Herman. He said, “It’s karma.” He marvels at their libido: both interested in sex in their 60’s and 70’s! While Verona’s looking at other men, Herman sniffs around too, I don’t think either scores, but it’s not from lack of trying. Neil said “She fancies me too. It’s merely the flesh!” I wondered about the state of Neil’s libido.

I felt shy as he prepared for bed, it was as if he were a complete stranger, so I told him. He sad, “That’s because you’ve revealed something of yourself to me.” He crawled into bed next to me—it was different. Not late party flophouse crashing. This was more formal, a deliberate arrangement, I felt like Ryan’s daughter on her wedding night. We chose to lie next to each other. (There was another bed, the one we slept on last night.) He asked for a massage, and we slept naked in each other’s arms. A conscious choice, but still no sex. He nibbled on my neck, I shrieked and shuddered deliciously, the erotic pulse, like electricity. He said “I could feel that too.” When I asked him where his erogenous zones were, he said, “Dead.” (A warning!) But that didn’t stop us from touching the whole night long—holding, snuggling, cuddling takes on a whole new dimension when one is naked. Inexorably we are moving towards sex—though he still resists, I don’t force the issue. All in good time. For the relationship has deepened considerably in just 24 hours.

In the morning he exclaimed how long it’s been since he felt the loveliness of a woman’s naked back against his, and gave me a long massage, made me tea and toast. I was the bed sluggard. He massages me again (I think he just wants to explore my body), telling me about meditation and the chakras, touching them, then my 3rd eye, opening it just like that and I was gone—following him to the purple light, finding the stillness, the connection as he meditated beside me. Is his meditation the reason he holds back from a sexual relationship? Compatibility? I am truly open, perhaps for the first time in my life. Every day he surprises me, our perception of the other continues to grow. We agreed that there were no accidents, that we’re supposed to be together (at least for now) because we have some real work to do. I told him one of my roles was to be a sounding board, that he needed an observer to explore all realms of possibility. I keep getting snippets of dejá vús—not significant unto themselves, merely gateposts. He’s still curious about my dream of him, and I wouldn’t tell him. I said, “I didn’t want to force, or rush it. It has to evolve naturally. He let it go , but is anxious as to the nature of the information I’m withholding. But if he’s afraid to be my lover, how will he feel when I tell him he’s to be my husband? And of course, he could change the future, the outcome, by refusing to do anything—refusing to grow and stretch. In which case, we’ll be condemned to repeat this scenario in the next lifetime, or the next—until we get it right. I don’t want to scare him off. Last night, without meaning to, I said “I love you,” it just slipped out. He stumbled, but kept on talking, not sure if he’d heard, or imagined it. I had to laugh because he’s always saying revealing things to me under his breath. We are undressing each other emotionally, physically and spiritually. How erotic!

Today I slipped into the shower with him and we stood naked before each other—no blankets to hide behind. I scrubbed his back: he wanted more, more. I did his legs and chest, feeling a bit shy. He was less modest with me, more thorough, inspecting me with a practiced eye, liking what he saw. My breasts pointing at him—a dare to touch them as he bent to scrub my thighs and calves. I can’t say he rose to the challenge, but he definitely got a buzz. Here I was, standing naked before an O’Neill, reenacting an age-old story; our ancestors having done this before. As I put on cream, he watched my every move in such open admiration, I was glad to have breasts. He put his hands on my shoulders, leaned over and bit my neck again. I made him bite the other side for balance and he said it affected him too.

“Uncircumcised,” I blurted out of context, as we tried to get the boat engine to work. We ran through his lines; a defrocked Protestant. My grandmother would roll over in her grave! “A cuddle for a cup of tea?” he asked. Silly. But we do spend a lot of time in each other’s arms. He marveled how we’re so much alike. “Chatterboxes. It’s amazing we can stand each other, let alone spends days together.” He comments that my face is so Irish, saying his eyesight is so bad, that I’m probably much prettier that he thinks I am. I’m surprised, for I didn’t think he thought of me as pretty. He’s beginning to thaw, though at the car his kiss was closed-mouthed. I demanded another, he laughed knowingly and kissed me again before driving home. I stay another night in that bed, breathing in his scent.

6/13 Friday. Today I told Neil that I dreamt of him (and two other men) a year ago today (six months before I actually met him.) I told him about Paul Evans but hesitated over the details of Waldo Rojas—because we were lovers just like in the dream, and I didn’t want to give that away. Besides, they were both my lovers simultaneously changing back and forth within the dream. And though a year’s space of time separates them, I don’t like mixing my lovers. The phone rang and it was Waldo! (after a year of silence). His English has improved, he made me work so hard translating for him in Rotterdam. I spoke in stilted Spanish, he spoke in broken English. My first phone call from Paris…! Wow! And he never received most of my letters. Crossed communications. Were the fates playing tricks on us? If Waldo and I had more contact (and if he wasn’t married), would I have melded with Neil? I feel like saying, “Neil, do you want me or not, for another man is still in love with me after a year of not seeing me. Waldo’s off to Chile June 27, and will return mid-August. His letter kept falling off the bolster, demanding my attention, I merely shoved it behind the photos on the wall, thinking I have no photo of Waldo there with Neil and Paul. Since my relationship with Paul is platonic, he’s the one staring out at me each night, watching over me as I sleep. These past days I’ve had calls from the three most important men in my life, all three of which, I didn’t even know a year ago, except in the dream.

Neil still wants to know what the dreams are about, when I reminded him it was a year ago we “met” in dreams. This much I told him: Something would happen (I don’t know what) and I would be terribly afraid, and he would lead me out… I didn’t tell him what the fear was about… He’s too bogged down in his worries and depressed to be subjected to the dream ravings of an imperfect clairvoyant. How to tell someone who still talks about not having a spouse—that we’re just “great pals,” and the implied statement: “you’re not the one,” to tell him that in the dreams we’re two-years married and my fear was of the marriage itself—that I thought we’d made a big mistake, I was without hope, but I HAD to trust him, had to come back to him—there was only our naked selves to face. It wasn’t about feeling trapped in a marriage per se, but about truly committing myself to the man in a deeper way I’ve never experienced before. I was truly frightened. This was life and death.

Waldo kept pleading, “Speak English to me!” It wasn’t my Spanish failing me, but the improbability of him calling me, on this, of all days! Dear Waldo! He was obviously as affected by meeting me as I was with him. So, why these three men? What is the gift? I was offered three choices, it’s as if I was given the opportunity to sample the virtues of each man sequentially: Waldo, Paul, Neil. My year and a day will end tomorrow. Perhaps it’s time to reveal more of the dream to Neil, he’s asked three times now. I’d better make sure he’s sitting down. He’ll probably shit bricks if I tell him. Yet, he too put the call out to the universe—and got me—but he chooses to look at gift horses in the mouth…

I had given Neil little talking to earlier this afternoon saying, “You’re responsible for your own happiness (or suffering, as the case may be), because the material he’s fighting predates his father’s death. He also asked me to bolster him up to help him to get a job, clipping want ads, making sure he was getting his résumé out, etc. He got a nibble for satellite disc sales; he and Gary Mullan took their résumés to 12 restaurants, then worked on a monologue of Bobby Kennedy. He tells me he is grateful to me for the attention and care I’ve given him, but is afraid of becoming dependent on me and others, and so, gets depressed instead. I said, “It’s obvious you need a little push and support. If I thought this was going to be a lifelong problem, I’d have second thoughts about it—I can’t fix things. (Is it a life-long problem?) I warned him my time and energy was limited, I was happy to share some of it with him, but it can be used up! “Careful how you use me. The energy I give you, I take from my art.” I also told him any time he wanted me to stop sending him ads, say but the word… As long as it feels balanced, I’m OK—he pours energy into me too. So far, it’s not an unequal exchange.

We talked in-depth about meditation and spirituality. He reads snippets from a yoga journal, a realm I know nothing of—eastern spiritual philosophy—I’m resistant, due to all the crazy cults. But I’m not resistant to him (he walks past my defenses), I realize how important this is to him, he wants to share this world with me. Finding the center, the stillness within. Kundalini, and a word I don’t know: shaktipat? energy transference, he suspected it would happen between us (a warning?) and to not be surprised or startled by it. Yes, we both sense there’s something more between us than meets the eye. He sees it in the spiritual arena, I feel it in the emotional realm. I wished for a man who can meet me on all fronts, it looks like my wish was granted. I asked for someone who had his retirement together, who spoke English, who was attractive on the physical, spiritual, intellectual , emotional levels… If this is what it takes, I will open up to it. But he’s also a bit out of control at this time (he’s a mess!), there is cause for alarm, he is a soul in transition. I have a hard time comprehending his living in debt, on credit cards, manipulating money. The whole thing makes me uneasy, I must admit. Big red flags, bells and whistles: a possible financial and emotional gamble, a risk. Be careful.

6/18 Neil arrives late at Verona’s. I’m miffed at him for turning down my invite and accepting hers. What does that tell me? Herman tells me Neil wants poems for his birthday. I scribble something. He greets them but it’s quite some time before he says hello to me (but I am writing!).They pour champagne, I try to put away my negative feelings and foreboding. I desperately want to put a stop on this day, stop time. I don’t want it to go forward. I’m uneasy in my skin. I don’t want to go to lunch with them. I’m the party-pooper, antisocial as hell. Bad dreams this morning. The maja veil is over my mind: I can’t recall enough to know what it’s all about. I remember thinking that something really traumatic needed happen to bind us to each other. I stared idly at Neil’s picture when a vision came into my head. Something about an accident. Neil laying in the middle of the road. I chalk it up to aggression, I’m a bit pissed at him. Then felt guilty.

We drink a toast and get into their car. It was just broadsided in a hit-and-run. The fender squeaks. Neil hesitates, “Shall we go in my car?” he asks. Verona says, “No, no. Don’t be silly. It’s your birthday. I’ll drive.” Neil and I crawl into the back seat. I reach for my safety belt, it’s not all there. Neither is Neil’s. I figure, “Oh well!” We thaw and begin to flirt. The champagne’s gone straight to my head. It’s like it was Easter—the sexual tension rising. It’s still there! I’m elated. We test each other on British kings, We know more that Verona, and she’s English!

(And then, the car accident in West Marin, that pivotable moment when your life changes completely.)

Journal, April Foolishness

4/1 Easter Sunday, April Fool’s day, and Canice’s 60th birthday. We BBQ lamb and beef, a good party. Neil comes late: 10 PM, we all sing until the wee hours. Neil sleeps on one couch, me on the other—talking until dawn. I confess to him, “How you shed light. You’re so easy to be with, I don’t have to be anyone but who I am, no pretensions or posturing. I can be myself. What a relief!” He talked about his parents’ marriage, and how they were great friends too. I asked why he never married. He said it never felt right. Something was missing. He let go of the idea; it didn’t bother him so much now. He didn’t want to marry when he was young because everybody was doing it. He asked why I never married. For similar reasons. I don’t tell him of my lack of faith, my loss of passion and desire, my inability to fall deeply in love again after breaking up with John.

The cats raced through the house using us for launch pads. Neil’s allergic, so of course they want to visit him. He was so thrilled by the view outside the window, I opened the blinds, noting the sensation of dejá vú as I leaned over him. I’ve done this before. Our energy isn’t just sexual, it’s a settling into each other. I began to think he wasn’t interested in me because he said he had monkish tendencies when we were talking of marriage.

We caught a few winks somewhere between dawn and 11 AM, when I dreamt of Ram Dass. We cozied about in bed until Sinéad got up and served us tea, toast and huckleberry jam. Went to the Swing Café, met up with my aunt Jane. Already we were intimate, having shared toothbrush and razor. Last night I handed him my tin whistles, he played a tune, handed them back saying, “Play something.” I put it to my lips, still wet from his, it was as if I was tasting him and we hadn’t even kissed each other. Swapping spit. We’ll be doing more of that soon anyway. At the café, he stood behind me, I unconsciously leaned into him, brushing against him like a mare in heat, I pulled back just as he trilled his hands down my back to my waist, grasping my hips, pulling me in. Dangerous ground. It was all I could do to keep myself from rubbing my ass into his groin. And my family there! The first flicker of heat from me in ages! Long buried desire—something I haven’t felt since my parents died. (Him too I think.) A transitional moment, a flickering of lust, promises to come… we were still checking each other out. On the other hand, if we were dogs, we’d be fucking right there in the café… someone throwing cold water on us to separate us…

We went out to Mt. Vision, hiked down the trail overlooking the estero. I wore his shirt under my jacket. The wind, so strong it nearly blew us off the face of the earth! We took shelter on a grassy path overlooking the estero. I gave him a gift of wild strawberries, but he absent-mindedly threw them away. Uh-oh! I played with the violets and pussy’s ears as he talked about his father, wanting to do a film of him. “Return to Redargan.” The story of the farm in Ireland he lost and the resulting 50 years of his life. The flashbacks of multiple selves meeting each other… Our deep reverie interrupted by a mountain biker who appeared from the middle of nowhere like an apparition! Meanwhile, our own meeting contained multiple dejá vús—more so for him than for me. We talked of death, the fire burning within our journeys, through suffering, Buddhism, why he became an actor—all through the afternoon.

And over dinner at Café Reyes, we’d spent 24 hours together, most of it talking, and we’d barely scratched the surface! If it’s going to be platonic, then we’ve covered more ground than most couples ever do—in an amazingly short time. Over dinner he said, “I suppose you know we’ve begun the dance?” I answered, “Yes.” Why play coy? Lay our cards on the table. “I don’t know what will happen or where it will go…” he added, his voice trailing off. This, slipped in somewhere between Descartes and states of grace. Can I trust him? I watched his body settle into the words, some resistance, perhaps resignation, or surrender, saying the words out loud, he met them head on, took responsibility for them, and more important, I believed him. This, after nearly bursting into tears when I talked about my dead mother. Yes, we are both suffering but this is larger than our individual pain.

This morning, he was lazing on the couch, a bright form beneath a red sleeping bag, I brought him a pot of tea, he muttered under his breath, “Shall I pour for you? Take care of you? With me, you’ll not suffer for want. This, I promise you…” I was so stunned I didn’t know what to say. Was he practicing some lines, was I hearing something so private, as if he never uttered them aloud, and was I eavesdropping, or had he said those words to me before, in another lifetime? I nearly dropped the teapot. “This morning I watched you sleeping… You were snoring” made me realize he was watching me as much as I was watching him. But I was caught unaware, an unguarded moment. All this talk of marriage. Does he know what he wants from me? Do I trust him? This is all happening too quickly.

That evening we watched the comet, he hugged me long and well, I felt like I was coming home. He placed a hand on my shoulder, turned me to him, chucking my chin with his finger, searching my face, as if debating to kiss me…then thought better of it. We may have begun the dance, but I guess it doesn’t mean we don’t have second thoughts. Over the safe distance of my truck he asked, “When will we see each other again?” I said, “It’s your turn now. I invited you here to meet my family.” I told him I wanted to go to the SF Film Fest. I decide this is a test. See if he’ll come through.

We’ve made so many tentative plans to go out to the Point, to see a play, a movie—plans that have never materialized, he’s never followed through and I’m a bit leery. The urge, the impulsiveness was there, but now there is a deliberation, a formality. He still owes me a dinner, and $15 (never paid back!). He might not know what direction we’re heading, but I do. My dreams told me ages ago, but it has to come from him—and his plate is full, indeed. In debt, in mourning, uprooting to Scotland in May, Hell of a time to start a relationship.

4/9 Been feeling a bit desperate, uneasy and abandoned all week long—as if a gulf has opened up between us—thinking I’d hear from Neil. I sent him the stuff on the film fest on Mon.—circled the films I was interested in, the fest came and went, and he never bothered to call to confirm or deny our plans, leaving me hanging so I didn’t get to go at all. I was very angry. I also left a message re: Ken Bullock’s birthday party, but again, no answer. Gena said “Don’t worry, he’ll call tonight.” A forlorn red light blinking on the machine. By the time Sinéad called, I was thoroughly depressed, then it dawned on me, he couldn’t call me because the line was busy. I hung up and he rang within minutes, from Mendocino, he decided to stay, “Jammin’ with friends at the Gualala Hotel on an electric Gibson. I’m thinkin’ about startin’ a band,” he says. (He had an epiphany while playing, it was magic.) Why did that bother me? An inconsistency? Minor alarms sounding. We talked for an hour.

He said he read the excerpt from my flood piece, “Building an Arc,” which won 2nd place in the Copperfield’s literary contest, and really liked it. “They really gave you quite some bio. Was that the same Maureen Hurley I know?” teasing me. “You’re important. I’ll have to watch it.” He saw a lot of women like me in jeans and pickup trucks—a west county phenomenon—wholesome and fresh. He met someone from Forestville who didn’t know me. Thought about driving over for a visit (but I was teaching all day). While I was feeling desolate, he was thinking of me and I didn’t even feel it. Just the distance, knowing I wanted to see him again, feeling abandoned… Gena said, “That’s about your own fear. You have to let go of it. He’ll call.” And so he did.

See Journal entry, Allen Ginsburg Memorial, Passover

4/23 I go home, smudge the house and spread rose petals on my doorstep for the dead. My neighbor Steve confesses he gets nervous: “Every time I see you do that, somebody dies.” Odd, I never connected the two. Sinéad calls to say our cousin Barney O’Reilly, Sr. died. We prepare for an Irish wake: whiskey and bagpipes in Eagle Rock. I sing Danny Boy. The earth is shaking again. Time is imploding. (My cousin Barney O'Reilly died)/