Journal entry, back at Kaiser

6/22 Yesterday I went into the emergency room and I wound up spending the night in the hospital after two visits to ER for a collapsed lung. A nightmare of a day and a night. I knew the nurses and lab technicians by name by the time I got out of there.

After hours of fiascoes, being shunted around from ER triage nurse to Outpatient Clinic where the doctor went out to lunch during my appointment, and the receptionist told me to do the same, I flipped, with what little lung power I had, I began screaming obscenities, and hobbled back to ER nearly collapsing from pain and a lack of oxygen.

Back at ER, I was finally seen to, only after throwing a tantrum and weeping hysterically. The triage nurse I’d seen earlier, came to my rescue and said “Admit this woman.” After hours of waiting for ex-rays, the surgeon said, “Congratulations, you seem to know your body.”

Fuck You! How come no one listens to me here? I said I had internal bleeding when I was admitted, and again when they released me. I said something is terribly wrong: “When I turn my head to the left, I begin to lose consciousness.” Arrogant bastards can’t handle the concept of the patient self-diagnosing.

(I know plenty about medicine. They released Herman with a “strained back.” I was standing there when the doctor read the ex-ray; saw the cracked lumbar vertebra myself. Granted, I was wandering in and out of everyone’s examining rooms like a zombie, fighting to stay conscious, but I wasn’t about to lose sight of my “patients” for I was the one administering first aid, getting everyone out of the car, etc., before help came.

I watched them flush Verona’s eye cuts, stitch them up. I Insisted the doctor stitch up the gash on Neil’s nose, a three corner tear needing 8 stitches. They were more worried about the fractures in his skull, and rightly so, but meanwhile, I knew his face needed attention too. Since I was a patient, they couldn’t very well throw me out. There was no one to take me home. I was already released, but I couldn’t stand to be separated from them. Safety in numbers?

I gave the ambulance drivers hell too when they tried to separate us—especially when they were going to send Neil and Herman to Novato Community Hospital. I screamed legalities, Hippocratic oaths, saying that by law, Kaiser had to admit us all. Fuck the system. Neil’s life was endangered.

A mouthy, feisty patient from hell, I even unstrapped my head restraint to go fight them off, when they made to move Neil, but they assured me we would all go to Kaiser. (Was that really me?) Then I had to insist they take us via Novato, a ride down Lucas Valley Road would’ve killed us off for sure.

The ambulance didn’t have good shocks. Lord knows where I found the strength and resolve to stay on top of it like that. Everyone else had long since succumbed to their individual pain and retreated from ordinary consciousness. I was the consciousness of the group. Somebody had to be in charge.)

Puncturing the lung is an extraordinary pain. I’ve got a Heinlich valve in my lung, but it took a surgeon three attempts to insert it through my chest wall; I was screaming in agony. My chest wall is tough and thick, he couldn’t get between my ribs. I made him go through the procedure beforehand, explaining my body was not like other women’s: more muscle mass, denser bones, but he didn’t listen.

They wanted to release me from ER, when I was in such great pain I couldn’t even move. I was fighting off shock to the best of my ability. The doctor wouldn’t check me into the hospital, but kept me for observation. I was afraid of hemorrhaging, of dying the hall.

I call Neil on the house phone and begin weeping. He said, “Not to move, help is on its way. I’m sending the yoginis.” What’s a yogini? I wondered. The nurse said, “You have two visitors.” I said “I don’t know you,” to the two women from Neil’s ashram who handed me a coral rose. “From Neil,” they said. “A rose from the Gurumayi’s visit.”

I wasn’t sure who the Gurumayi was, but this wasn’t the time to ask as I was barely conscious and had to fight to get a pain killer. I can’t believe doctors would deny me pain medicine at a time like this! After the doctor bungled the insertion twice, trying to slip it between my ribs and poke it into the lung without having gone deep enough to make an incision into my lung. Barbaric! He had to slice me some more. I was traumatized, clinically speaking.

I told them I could handle Percodan but because it’s a controlled substance they didn’t want to give it to me. “It requires special paperwork,” the doctor said. So? Demerol’s out. As are most of the IV pain killers: I had projectile vomiting after knee surgery. Vicodan also makes me vomit, I can’t handle Tylenol. Codeine surely wasn’t going to work.

The pain was so great, I could hardly figure out how to breathe, let alone vomit. Each breath, the tube rubbed the pleural lining. More ex-rays. The tube, like a tiny coiled snake sleeping beneath my collarbone, the shadowed half-moon of the collapsed lung, like an eclipse.

The yoginis (tiny poodle-haired Jane Bark from the Isle of Barra, and a giantess with coal black hair named Laura—kindly, compassionate faces) wheeled me down the endless corridors to the hospital and into Neil’s room. I thought they were angels. I was in the hands of friends I didn’t even know, having to let go, too weak to stay in control.

(Looking back, I’m surprised by my incredible reserves of strength, rage, and functionality under extreme duress. I always knew I was strong, but not that strong! Superhuman strength and will was required of me again and again. Conversely, the physical pain was quick sapping my strength, my will to survive, weakening by the minute. I was letting go…)

Neil played some chants, we meditated as pain spasmed through my body. A steady stream of tears slipped down my face, I could only take in the tiniest sips of air. He said, “You’re in the best of hands now, you’re right where you need to be. With me.”

Maybe it was the Percodan, I was hallucinating, but I swear I had a transcendental experience: energy running up my spine. I had the thought as the energy radiated into a branched pattern up my spine, that the so-called “candelabra” etched in a sand dune in Nazca is really a map of the kundalini’s path. Earlier, as we meditated, the faces of gods drifted before me beginning with the Aztec gods ending with a pantheon of Hindu gods and I don’t even know their names.

Another image I’ve had was of the dream fragments sliding into place from last June. So, some of it was also to prepare me for this accident. I’d already told Neil he was to help me through a trying time when I was very frightened. (In one dream we were married, though, and I had fear… but the image was that he took me through and out of my fear—which was connected to him. This isn’t that dream, but it’s connected. Like a dress rehearsal.)

I’m released from the hospital after three long days and nights. I’m so weak, I mostly sleep. My pulse drops so low: 113/58, but they don’t seem worried. My fever breaks the 3rd night. They remove the valve next morning. Take more ex-rays. The lung puncture has sealed. It’s staying inflated. I’ll have a scar on my chest, like a knife wound. Everything hurts. They took Neil down to Oakland yesterday. I feel so desperately lost without him. Afraid to let him out of my sight.

Journal entry, Solstice

6/21 Hard to believe this is the Solstice, we are so broken of body and psyche, that time itself has become meaningless. Verona’s clock continues to chime every quarter hour, dividing the tedium of 24 hours into four more meaningless segments, the bells are not on daylight savings time. Twelve bells at eleven, and one forlorn bell at midnight.

I don’t want to remember my dreams anymore, too much distress and gore. I’ve become obsessive about details as if they comprised the underpinnings of life. Writing is difficult, but I fear I’ll go mad soon if I don’t write. Concentration is an effort of sheer will. I’m still on adrenaline overload. My body suffering from the ultimate fight-or-flight experience.

(My lung is gurgling, I’m bleeding internally, and now, spontaneous sweats and fevers). I make an appointment with Kaiser. I reason, if I die while waiting, they’ll find my symptoms written in my journal. I’m really scared for I know I’m broken inside. Why wouldn’t the doctor listen to me? I’m becoming too tired to fight.

Journal entry, Kaiser Hospital

6/19            Kaiser Hospital, Terra Linda. While Alison read to Neil from the book I got him for his birthday on Ulster, I burst into tears, like my previous outburst this morning, it was too much having to take care of Herman at home. I can’t breathe, have to pull myself up the stairs. 

Patrick called and I began to sob, clutching Neil’s pants to my chest, the odor of detergent suggesting the flowered meadows we might not have ever seen again. All I could think of was how close to death he had come, my waking vision of my wailing over his prone body was not so not far off the mark. 

As Alison read, I wept uncontrollably, couldn’t stop. She held me in her arms as she had held Neil earlier. Said “It’s OK, Let it all out. It’s post-traumatic stress syndrome.” I couldn’t shake the vision of how I was covered in his blood. “The red blood of a son of Ulster,” he said, raising my hand to his poor, swollen lips, attempting a gallant kiss from that poor broken mouth. I wept as I kissed his fingers in return, from the shock they were still mottled purple, little yellow islands of fat. Am I Lady MacBeth haunted by blood?

When I could do no more at the scene of the accident, I lay down at his feet right in the middle of the roadbed, and waited for the ambulance to arrive, afraid to take my eyes off him, for fear he’d lose consciousness and die. I remember the blueness of sky broken by eucalyptus leaves, thinking how the patterns of light the most important thing in the world. If I just focused on them hard enough, then he’d live. 

Many images: had I lain at his feet before, covered in his blood, in some battlefield in a past life? I’ve plenty of present life dejá vú, but rarely a past life “memory.” Not sure I even believe. The imagery of slaughter.

Still Your Birthday, After the Accident

Here it is, still your birthday, half-way through the nightmare, and I am still bathed in your blood, covering my thighs like rusted armor. Would you think it strange if I buried my head in your clothes, while you swam in Demerol, your face shattered like a teacup or a mirror—seven years bad luck for all of us? During that tedious ride to the hospital, I couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, I focused on a spot on the ceiling of the ambulance. I tried to reach you, breathing in the light, but you were so deep in pain, consciousness was an effort—small moans and gasps, our only link. In the waiting room Alison sits by me as I slide in and out. Brings me hospital tea, we groan, what we’d do for a real cup of tea—even at a time like this! The small mercies of ritual sustains us. We study catscans, count the cracks in the fragile bone china surrounding your eyes, fragmented handles against the shadowed brain, as if counting facts would avert tragedy. Níl eagla gaothe, have no fear of the high winds…

I would drink the pain from the hollows of your skull if I could. I would raise up that chalice, offer communion, if I thought it could heal the breaks. I would smooth the seismic fractures with my body as sacrifice to the gods of the faultline, travel the coastline of your body home to the land of your birth on this 44th year of your life, if I could turn back the hands of time. For I’d dreamed the fragments of this day into being: I was helpless to avert it. My imagination gone wild seeing you lying there in the road, knowing that if you lay down, death would surely find you. What use is this dreaming? But when the time came, I was a warrior at the ready: I kneeled in front of you, becoming your bolster, so that you might breathe. Kept you conscious so that I might have a reason for living.

My heart beats broken wings against the ribcage, I cannot breathe, my lung has lost inspiration for the taste of air, but I struggle to write for fear I’ll go mad. The dozen roses I bought for your birthday, abandoned on the piano, become a bouquet for the wounded. I remove a single rose, for even numbered flowers are unlucky, they are for the dead. And on this day of your birth, you still breathe. Rusty salutations rise from my lips. Each labored breath brings me closer to the sun. Rose petals bleed on the doorstep. Still you breathe, I sob uncontrollably into your clothes. Coins jingling in your pockets like the bells of reprieve.

18 June, 1997 Novato

A POEM FOR NEIL O’NEILL’S BIRTHDAY

A POEM FOR NEIL O’NEILL’S BIRTHDAY

1. Dear Niáll, a chara,

For this day, roses will bloom,

pearls will swoon with nacreous intentions

and the solstice sun will linger

a little longer on the horizon

moving towards its zenith—

twinned night’s short breath in your ear.

And the sons of Uísna will once again walk

with Déirdre in their midst

for Niáll of the Nine Hostages,

and Niáll GlubDubh, your namesake,

the champions are with us still.

Níl eagla gaothe, have no fear of high winds…

For in the mirrored existence of creation

all things are repeated—from cells to souls,

of grace approaching paradise at the speed of light.

No terra nullis, but the birth of consciousness.

If love is a drowning in flood waters

then let me be the flood. Let me be the offshore winds…

I am come of Ireland’s rocky shore to find you.

You, a descendent of high kings,

were in a hurry to be born in time for tea,

it seems, circled Braveheart’s monument in utero,

but a traffic jam in Paisley returned you home,

and you arrived blue in the face,

tasting freedom in your first breath of air

in a bedroom on High Street, in Johnstone, Scotland,

your auntie Cathy holding you skyward for approval.

And all the roads rose up with you,

the wind was always at your back

to bear you to the hollows of this final shore.

Guncuíreach tú chupa tharís le slaínte agus sonas.

May your cup be always be overbrimming

this day and all the days of your lives

with the grace that is held deep within,

not in reserve, but in abundance.

Drink deep from it,

let it intoxicate you

forever. 

JUNE 18, 1997

Journal entry, Neil's Birthday

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 tension's rising. It’s still there! I’m elated. We test each other on British kings, We know more that Verona, and she’s English!

A TRIO OF MUSICAL NOTES Piano bravo: Kirk Whipple and Marilyn Morales, Maureen Hurley, Press Democrat

June 15, 1997 | Press Democrat, The (Santa Rosa, CA)
Author: Dan Taylor Entertainment Editor | Page: Q27 | Section: ON Q| Column: Dan Taylor

Piano bravo: TV has been good to husband-and-wife piano duo Kirk Whipple and Marilyn Morales, too.

Last February, they appeared on Miami TV host Don Francisco's Spanish-language variety show, ``Sabado Gigante Internacional.''

``It's like the Spanish `Tonight' show,'' Whipple says.

The couple also played in December on Costa Rica's national telethon. Having connected with the Spanish-speaking market, Whipple and Morales (a native of Cuba) hope to tour South America and Spain.

In the meantime, the pianists plan two local concerts: 3-6 p.m. June 28 at Chateau Lanson, 1497 Hurlbut Lane, Sebastopol. The program includes ``Wedding Music for Two Pianos'' and the world premiere of ``Gourd Music for Solo Piano,'' both by W. A. Mathieu, ``Rumbada'' by Morales, and ``Esperando'' and selections from ``Elemental Portraits'' by Whipple. Poet Maureen Hurley will read original work based on ``Elemental Portraits.'' Admission: $15 per person; $25 per couple. Tickets: People's Music in Sebastopol.

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.)

Elemental Portraits readings

A found poem on Ram Dass

He sits in the deep shadows of a long evening.

His wheelchair moored against an old picnic table. 

Silence. The mind is, he says. Leaves rustle in the soft breeze. 

The creek offers blessings over rocks, whispers. Silence. 

The mind, he says again. Silence. His eyes close, 

his head tilts towards the stars, as he searches for words. 

Doctors see the brain as the mind. He says, the heart,

a sudden rush of language. The mind, he says. Silence.

Before my stroke, I was looking forward. 

Are you still? No, he said. Silence. The mind.

But I’m here now. The creek answers.

A riff from an article I read in the Chronicle, Stroke Teaches Ram Dass Anew to `Be Here Now' / Spiritual teacher slowly recovering by Don Lattin 

Poet/Painter Series at The French Quarter in Rohnert Park, curated by Geri diGiorno

Poet/Painter Series at The French Quarter in Rohnert Park, curated by Geri diGiorno, funded by Poets & Writers and the Lannan Foundation.

You can see the scratchboards here. And the poem here. It's a pity I no longer remember which line went with which piece of art.

Journal entry, May Day. Beltaine

5/1            May Day. Beltaine. Odd to think I walked over the bones of Campbell of Glendyon—responsible for the massacre of Glencoe—in Brugge last summer with my cousin Dave. History lives beneath the shadows of our feet. I read about Scotland because of Neil, but have given up hope of consummating the relationship I was so sure would happen. All the false signals. But my dreams are rarely wrong. What goes here? I’m tired of waiting for the dance to begin. He hasn’t time for me, this fickle Scotsman who is to return home to Johnstone within the month. I’m disappointed, I thought he had more integrity. Did I read him wrong?

I read about the highland sheep shed their winter crop for the wool mills of Flanders. The unwinding of the thread that began in the highlands to Philip of Spain and the death of Charles V that set the turmoil of boundaries, nationhood and religion into action. The Jacobites. Bonnie Prince Charlie. The blood-soaked fields. 

It’s been nearly 25 yeas since I saw the fields of  Colloden Mór. One summer I stood in front of the statue of Willem of Orange in Leiden. This was the man my ancestral country still sheds blood over. The Orange Men. Dutch Willem (King Billy) became defacto king of Scotland. I read about the other William—Wallace, Braveheart. What has it to do with my life—other than my first boyfriend was a direct descendent of Robert the Bruce, and carried his name, plus Hamilton to the end of the 20th century. 

Neil was very nearly born beneath Wallace’s statue in Paisley. And Neil’s family from Tyrone were clansmen to my own family. I awoke singing “Come Back Paddy Reilly to Balley James Duff,” only to realize my grandfather was born near Baille Sheámus Dubh, at the crossroads of Moyne, our farm: Fiora. 

Philip of Spain sent a relation (my uncle’s namesake), John Alexander Reilly to build a fortress in Cuba. Many of my family married back into their own Irish clans: Walsh, Reilly, Sullivan. And into Irish and Scottish clans here in San Francisco: Ward, McCarthy, O’Neill, Driscoll, Dinsmore. A distant cousin of mine, Maureen O’Neill, could pass for Neil’s sister. I like the ring of that name.

Journal, Mayday memorials

5/1 May Day. Beltaine. Odd to think I walked over the bones of Campbell of Glendyon—responsible for the massacre of Glencoe—in Brugge last summer with my cousin Dave. History lives beneath the shadows of our feet. I read about Scotland because of Neil, but have given up hope of consummating the relationship I was so sure would happen. All the false signals. But my dreams are rarely wrong. What goes here? I’m tired of waiting for the dance to begin. He hasn’t time for me, this fickle Scotsman who is to return home to Johnstone within the month. I’m disappointed, I thought he had more integrity. Did I read him wrong?

I read about the highland sheep shed their winter crop for the wool mills of Flanders. The unwinding of the thread that began in the highlands to Philip of Spain and the death of Charles V that set the turmoil of boundaries, nationhood and religion into action. The Jacobites. Bonnie Prince Charlie. The blood-soaked fields. It’s been nearly 25 yeas since I saw the fields of Colloden Mór. One summer I stood in front of the statue of Willem of Orange in Leiden. This was the man my ancestral country still sheds blood over. The Orange Men. Dutch Willem (King Billy) became defacto king of Scotland. I read about the other William—Wallace, Braveheart. What has it to do with my life—other than my first boyfriend was a direct descendent of Robert the Bruce, and carried his name, plus Hamilton to the end of the 20th century. Neil was very nearly born beneath Wallace’s statue in Paisley. And Neil’s family from Tyrone were clansmen to my own family.

I awoke singing “Come Back Paddy Reilly to Balley James Duff,” only to realize my grandfather was born near Baille Sheámus Dubh, at the crossroads of Moyne, our farm: Fiora. Philip of Spain sent a relation (my uncle’s namesake), John Alexander Reilly to build a fortress in Cuba. Many of my family married back into their own Irish clans: Walsh, Reilly, Sullivan. And into Irish and Scottish clans here in San Francisco: Ward, McCarthy, O’Neill, Driscoll, Dinsmore. A distant cousin of mine, Maureen O’Neill, could pass for Neil’s sister. I like the ring of that name.

5/7 How frustrated I am by distance and bad timing. True, my phone’s been out of order for a week, but I left messages for Neil to call me at a neighbor’s. I know I can be hard to reach, but it seems I have to call him three times for his every one call, playing phone tag for weeks on end. By the time he did call, I was too distraught to pick up the phone. He’d picked up on a line of mine, repeating my message: “I’m beginning to take this personally.” I wailed for an hour, grief bubbling up, drowning me. I was so desolate I had to call someone. Verona wasn’t home. Ann Erickson was very good about listening to an inarticulate friend crying over spilt milk. I returned his call when I was more composed, it was another two days before he returned my call. His sense of timing, very different than mine. Has he any idea of the grief he’s caused me with all this waiting? Or broken dates? (Or how hard it is for me to call him once—let alone, three times—I’m weirdly old-fashioned.) I retrace the whole gambit of emotions from hope, expectation, to anger and despair, so by the time he actually calls, I’m flattened from my roller coaster emotions.

Geraldine says, “You’re blaming Neil for not calling you. You want someone to blame.” True. This is it. He’s outa my life for good. I’ve had it! I channeled my anger into cleaning my truck, inside and out, even under the hood. It took me three days. I was so savagely thorough, the truck wouldn’t start. In my cabin, I attacked piles of clutter, spring cleaning had begun. Verona called about Herman’s birthday; Neil called her wanting to know if I’d be there (I told him no), she said “Yes,” twisting my arm to come. I said I had no idea how I’d act; angry, cool. She advised, “No, no! Just be yourself. You have so much power and magnetism. Draw on it.”

Glendale, Eagle Rock Wake notes, Barney O’Reilly’s funeral

I awoke to the unaccustomed heat of the desert, and this is only April. At least I remembered to bring shorts. My aunt Canice wore boots more fitting for the snow. An earthquake in the middle of the night shook me awake. The door jam creaking under the shifting earth. How far is Pasadena from Northridge? But we’re on bedrock.

At the wake, the family stories begin in short bursts and fragments. I can’t keep up, and everybody is mixing it up, no one finishes a thought, let alone, a sentence. Especially after the toasts began. How will I keep it all straight? Below are some of the fragments I managed to record, but in the process of trying to make sense of them, and find the thread, they may be even more convoluted.

My grandfather, Bernard Reilly was born on the Moyne farm but his birth was not registered in Cavan, as they left Bally James Duff because of the scarlet fever. Grandpa‘s older brother, Joseph Reilly had died of scarlet fever. The story goes, they opened the casket to put another child in young Bridget’s casket, she was three or four years old, and had been dead for ten years. They said she was perfectly preserved, and her hair and nails kept on growing all that time.

John was my grandfather Bernard’s father. William was Bridget’s father. Both were Reillys. They kept it in the family. Grandpa said that he born under a cabbage plant. His sister Annamarie Reilly married Jerome/ James Duffy.  Their son, John “the lovely “Duffy was a bit of a hellion. It’s about time they called you in and brought you back to school, said the priest.

Grandpa’s namesake, my first-cousin-once-removed, Barney O’Reilly, the man who died last a Sunday, was an American Vet, a sailor, in 1944, he fought in World War II, and later, in Korea. His was a sudden death, he went into the hospital last Sunday morning, April 21, and was dead by Monday morning, 11:25, his wife Ruth arrived at 11:30. she missed saying goodbye to him by five minutes.

Paul played Amazing Grace on the pipes, and the fading strains of Skye Boat Song finally brought us to tears. The Minstrel Boy was Grandpa‘s favorite song. One time he tried to play it on the clarinet, and murdered it.

Uncle John said that Barney lived at our house in San Francisco, and also Forest Knolls when he was a sailor. He said, We used to go up to Honeymoon Flats in the Sierras.

Someone begins a history lesson. There were four Reilly castles in Cavan. The last Reilly stronghold to fall to Cromwell was on an island, but the English brought in the cannons. The Flight of the Earls, the Wild Geese fled to Spain. Someone said Philip of Spain (Carlos III) sent Tomas O’Daley, a civil engineer, and John Alexander “Alejandro” O’Reilly to Puerto Rico, where they built a fortress, San Cristobal. John Alexander O’Reilly lived in Casablanca, Ponce de León‘s house in San Juan, Puerto Rico. John Alexander was the governor of Louisiana. Someone once called from Louisiana asking if we were we were related. We said no, not knowing this story.

28 April, Monday morning. Burbank to SFO. 

The north side of the hills, the southern exposures are already dressed for summer. One northern slope is fringed in green and yellow. I can see vast swaths of poppies and goldfields from this great height, it’s as if they were painted on the hills. A riot of color. The green lends dramatic relief to the shape of the raw ravines and erosion. We must be over the Carrizo Plain. We fly parallel to the San Andreas Fault, distinct north and south ridges and troughs separating the valley from the San Joaquin. Two continents fighting for space.

I dreamed Grandma said something in Irish. I’m not sure what she said. Perhaps she said the word glamour, or magic. I think it was magic. But glamour means magic. She then turned to someone and talked to him. I think it was Barney. He seem to understand her though I didn’t. It was late afternoon and they were happy to see each other. It seems that they do speak Irish in the country of the dead. There is glamour afoot.

Dancing on the Brink

WHAT struck me most about coming home to the north coast of California after a long, wet summer in Europe, was the sharp, aromatic odor of bay laurel, sweet poison oak and sun-burnt hay, flavored with the acrid, thirsty dust—the mellifluous odor of Indian summer making me nostalgic for the past, for memory hidden in the crenulated folds of hills. Buñuel said: You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Pieces of memory resurrect in the mirrored San Francisco Bay and Mt. Tamalpais, the fire-ravaged Oakland hills. They resurrect against a cerulean sky, steep, tawny hillsides cloaked in sizzling non-native oat grasses like sleeping lions, and thick green-black oaks roiling in their crotches—so sexual—it surprises me anew each time I return. It steals one’s breath away, reducing all semblance of speech to that of monosyllabic moaning of prespeech. They say our earliest memories are the strongest. I was conceived on Mt. Tamalpais, my mother watching Point Reyes disappear over my father’s right shoulder at sunset. The lost pieces of memory, a mended patchwork quilt over the bed of time.

A South African writer I know coined the word outgasm. I want to tell Breyten an outgasm of light dances on the bay; I’ve taken in some of his memory into my own. The parched savanna juxtaposed against the funereal odor of escapee calla lilies. “Arum lilies here?” exclaimed a Capetown realtor from the group we led on a hike past an abandoned ranch to view the mouth of the Golden Gate from Indian Cove. I mouth the unfamiliar word, arum; the sarcophagi of Egypt or the pelican daughters of Lear comes to mind. Alcatraz. Angel Island. We resurrect place names of the Coast Miwok, mouthing a dead language: Tamalpais—the land of the Tomales, O’onopais—the land of buckeyes, and Yulupa—the place of the shining Golden Gate. Explorer John C. Frémont’s epithet, Chrysopylae, a historical footnote. Sadly, all that survives of the Ohlone tribal stories of this landscape is: Dancing on the brink of the world. We gently retrace our steps along the seething faultline, the Farallones and the Point Reyes Peninsula draw our eyes to the curvature of the sea’s final horizon.



© 1997, revised 2000 Maureen Hurley

Journal entry, Barney O’Reilly, Sr. died

 

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.

Journal entry, Allen Ginsburg Memorial, Passover Eve., Buddha’s Birthday.

4/20 Allen Ginsburg Memorial, Temple Emanuel, Arguello St. SF. Passover Eve., Buddha’s Birthday. In the courtyard, poets greet us in white robes. Oranges and gardenias float in the fountain. We enter the temple like wedding guests.

Said the rabbi, “‘Others criticized, ‘How could you honor such a person as Ginsburg in a holy temple?’”

Said the rabbi, “A temple is not sacred until sacred people gather in it. Welcome.”

A tribe of poets gather here today, some 3000 strong: an Ecstasy of Poets. The energy is like at COBRA founder Bert Scheerbeek’s funeral in Amsterdam, last June, I stood between his disciples Jan Volkers, Hugo Claus and Willem van Toorn. Breaking from tradition and metered verse, Bert’s post W.W.II vision begat Allen’s voice, which in turn, begat our own poetic voices. I never again thought I’d experience the chaotic force of poets united in one mind. Surely this is Godhead. Yes, we who work at living… and what is the work? To ease the work of living…

So many long-lost friends I haven’t seen in ages, I thought them dead: Steve Petty, Stephen Kessler, the Joannes: Kyger & Hotchkiss, the Jacks: Micheline, Hirshman and Foley, Noni Howard, bald as an egg. A trick of vision:

I imagined the dead joined us. Embodied poetics. Was that really Boschka Layton in the wings, with her face adroop with Bells’ Palsy, dead these 22 years, (Donald Sutherland’s sister). And was it Cliff McEntire serving us platters of sea bass at poets dinners in the Haight? John Logan. Brother Antoninus? (William Everson in his fringed buckskin jacket and boots).

And Robert Duncan in black, like a Zen master Bending the Bow? Kerouac, Cassidy, Brautigan? One-eyed Creeley? I swear I saw Lew Welsh’s face in the crowd. Ring of Bone. Paul Mariah smoking, swigging from his flask and giggling. And the ones I once wished dead, the ex-flames: John Oliver Simon. And a current flame: where is Neil? Oh, to have arms big enough to embrace this room! People five-deep in the aisles: I give Neil’s seat to Terry Ehret. Good to see her.

Nancy Peters said City Lights was inundated with letters, tributes, calls from all over the world. Larry Ferlinghetti said “I’ll always remember Ginsburg’s voice singing Blake.” And read “Allen Ginsburg Dying.” Mark Linenthal who brought Howl into the classroom, said, “He, more than any other writer, changed what a writer could, or should be…”

Ginsburg, our uncle, our poetic ancestor, gave us the right to write from the heart. Kyger, who went to India with Allen, read from his journal: “Widen the area of consciousness until it becomes so wide, it encompasses its own death… widen consciousness…keep it simple…behind writing is the practice of meditation.” Kyger holds up her hand, says “It’s 1977: Allen makes a literary map of Bolinas: ‘I hear the waves of Bolinas reef saying, boxcar, boxcar, boxcar…’” We chuckle.

Pantherlike Ann Waldman notes: “The weight and desire that human attachment brings…Allen flossing his teeth… making chicken soup…” Did someone say he resembled Dostoyevski in death? “All ashes, all ashes again…”

Bob Hass said, “Allen showed us the importance of breath in prosody or free verse—how they breathed their very breath. ‘The point wasn’t to suffer, the point was to get it.’” We murmur in appreciation. Michael McClure, ever in black, “I met Allen in ’54 at a party in SF for W.H. Auden. We were both wallflowers. Allen set benchmarks of political consciousness and speaking out.”

Diane diPrima said: “The excellence of every art is its intensity… How will you measure Allen’s passing… how will you measure the dark?” Gary Snyder remembered Allen visiting in Berkeley, with Rexroth “drinking our graduate schooling down the tubes… Howl held the power of the voice, of the breath… Allen broke that open for all of us.” Gary’s long, rangy voice filled the temple, “It’s Buddha’s birthday. Allen chose to die during the month of cherry blossoms blooming.”

April is poetry month, not T.S. Elliot’s cruellest month… Gary sings from Magpie’s Song: “Here in the mind brother, turquoise blue…” I hum along. It’s Passover Eve. Fill the temple with the sacredness of poets. A kaddish beyond words. Shalom. You spoke of simultaneous thought, Allen: First mind, best mind. Full moon! And Earth Day! Timothy Leary takes to the skies in his silver ship! Bon Voyage Timothy Leary. Say Hello to Allen!

At intermission Herman Berlandt said Neil wasn’t here, but I knew he was, I could feel him. There: standing on the pillar steps. I yelled Neil! several times. He searched, but couldn’t see me. Across the sea of faces, I watched him, as if stranger (who is this man?), before I wormed my way across the courtyard to his side, reclaiming my destiny. Whoever he is, we are linked. There is magic afoot. I touched his arm and he burst into smile.

So many people to talk to: Joanne Kyger asks about the lump in my breast… resuming a conversation we’d had 2 1/2 years earlier. I hug David Bromige, Steve Tills, Ann Erickson, Gary Glazner, Duncan McNaughton—the old Sonoma gang. Last time I saw Whitman McGowan, his face was painted blue. (Light-years before Gibson in “Braveheart”). I choke, suddenly remembering my dead mother’s hands in front of the bonfire in Whitman’s videopoem. An aftergift for the survivors.

The scent of gardenias and 3000 fresh orange rind simultaneously releasing essential oils: the juicy tang of communion. Noni Howard and I nip Hennessy's by the fountain, she was captivated by a man with knee-length dreadlocks, a felt pelt, and here she was bald as an egg, painting on eyebrows and lashes longer than he’s been growing dreadlocks. I don’t think Neil fully caught the irony of the situation. Poets really are wonderfully weird. I hold my breath.

He looks a bit bewildered, but seems to be taking it all in stride. Good. Another test passed. This is where my prospective men have failed the test unless they happen to be crazy as poets too. It’s as if poetry makes us unfit: unable to fit in with the rest of humanity. He walks me to my truck, we lean on the brick wall gazing into the park. Talks of his father, again. And the spaces between worlds. The universe puts me on alert. Something big is about to happen. And he is central to it. Something inexorable closing in.

Jack and Adele Foley, Herman, Neil and I went to the Mission District for dinner at an Indian restaurant. All over the city, poets were feasting and fucking in honor of Allen Ginsburg. Over chapatis, Jack tells us about a long, spontaneous interview he just did with Allen for KPFA. A pregnant woman joins us and announces she’s a single mother looking for a husband. No one makes her an offer. Neil mumbles into his plate: “It’s easier to give birth to a child than to give birth to a husband,” as if he were struggling with the concept himself.

Over dinner, I marvel at how Neil and Jack’s bodies are cast from the same mold: short, barrel-chested, foreshortened arms, diminutive starfish hands. Fir Bolgs? Neil’s a handsome man, most pleasing to look at. Jack’s stringy hair and glasses hide his face, but his eyes and brows are similar. Jack tells us stories of his father, an Irish vaudeville actor blarneying his way out of a ticket from an Irish cop. A lesson on how to grease the spoon.

Neil spoonfeeds me the last of the mango chutney. Walks me to my truck “Like an Old world gentleman.” “In which case,” I say, “I’ll take your arm (and a leg too, if I can).” I give him some Irish books, for, though he’s a descendant of Irish kings, he doesn’t know his own cultural heritage, the Ulster stories of Cú Chullain, Conchobar and Deirdre. The Táin. Fionn McCumhail.

He said, “My flabber is gasted. This merits a kiss…” Our first beneath the orange glow of sodium lamps. He loves to tease me. I like who I am around him: shy, gawky, a child, a sophisticated woman. He pulls me to him, I lay my head on his shoulder. This is becoming habit-forming. I’m still torn by the daisy petal routine: he loves me, he loves me not…

OCCASIONAL POEM FOR NEIL

 

OCCASIONAL POEM FOR NEIL

Did you know I carry

your photo with me

for the times when I need

to restore the grace lost,

for when I’m battling

mad drivers on the road,

for when I’m late again,

for when my mind takes me

to places no one should dwell

overlong,

for when I doubt

that true love exists,

or comes again

for those who’ve hit their 40’s,

childless,

because the stars were too distant

(or too close) after all,

but we weren’t about to admit it.

For dreams were filled with their dazzle,

and we couldn’t see what dwelled

in the darkened rooms of sleep,

because sunspots dazzled us

with sapphire splendor.

And from looking too long at the sun,

by necessity,

we learned to navigate in the dark.

By naming the object of desire,

we could never be satisfied

with the imperfections of an empire

of lost souls adrift on a dark sea

of chaos and survival,

stripped of dignity and grace,

so that I seek…

            4/10/97

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)/

April Foolishness

In the weightlessness of space,
an astronaut's heart shrinks.—Omni Magazine



A VOICE from home via the satellite link-up lessened the burden of homesickness. But where were the poems hidden? Why didn’t they come? Maybe living in another country would open the dam. Amster-dam: the 16th c. dam on the Amsterele river is real, not a metaphor. I've given into the timelessness of being at loose ends—no agendas, hidden or otherwise—in a country not my own, seeking what oddities life has to offer, for death takes such a long time coming in. In another country I could no longer dam my grief, I shed my skin, undressed down to the bone, and resurrected small pieces of myself from the ground up, for death irrevokably changes you, you cannot go home to who you were. Ever.

Death arrived out of breath, I was an orphan. I trolled old sources searching for my lost art. Page One of my journal documented the oddities of The Final Frontier: After fighting three years with Soviet bureaucracy to hook up a computer telecommunications system with the Ukraine for a cultural exchange program, I finally let go of the idea. Then, one April Fool's Day, my first E-mail message arrived from my ex lover via GlasNET. Incongruous to read a satellite message transmitted half-way around the world that began with: “Cosmonaut lands, doesn't recognize his own country.” My first message from the new independent nation, Ukraine, was not about freedom, but about space, the final frontier.

In another journal I found the story of a physicist who told me a story how he demonstrated jet propulsion while seated in his daughter’s Red Racer wagon; using a fire extinguisher for a booster rocket, he shot through the ivy league halls to the surprise of students and faculty alike. He liked to clown around, to act foolish. He gave me one of the first holograms ever made of a chambered nautilus sliced in half. It reminded me of the cross section of a space ship. I was not immune to his charisma or the three dimensional illusion of physics: a rainbow of light, the visible spectrum trapped on that sheet of mylar set my blood racing, but I was uneasy with the whispered secret rumors. Was it in spring? The word fool once meant someone who was in love. Foolish love. April Fools, a day for practical jokes and sex role reversals. My foolish Papá, said the daughter whose warrior soprano vision guided us through the turbulent protests of the ’60s and ’70s. Show me the prison, show me the jail... I study the exposed labial chambers of the nautilus for clues. What’s worse, the walled silence, or the knowing? Will I be silenced for writing holographic truth dammed behind the slander of divided light?

Inexplicably it reminded me of a hologram of St. Steven’s crown with its bent cross László gave me as we stood on the banks of the Danube the day my half-Russian childhood best friend, Stephanie was cremated on the other side of the world. My hands let rose petals stain the muddy river, I wanted to be home to touch the place where the wind took her up. Home to where her Nanna greeted us each day after school in the old tongue where ikonii and troikas were uttered in the present tense. That place called home that Nanna left, became the wind’s body, Stephanie came to me in sleep, we rode our horses out into the deep. Orion’s belt marked our crossing. She was mute, her eyes like stars. Death swallows the unspoken words hovering in the mouths of the dead. When she comes to visit from the other side, my grandmother’s mouth is a thin line dividing worlds in the country of death. I watch Lír’s sea foam horses racing the wind down the strand.

Death nearly boarded the spaceship Mir, forgotten during the 1991 August coup. Stranded Soviet cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev helplessly watched his country disappear: changing its name, anthem, and political order. The abandoned space program was officially broke with no way to get him home. Secret calls in the night; someone trying to sell Soviet space ships for hard currency. When Krikalev returned to Earth after ten months in space, he didn't recognize his own country. White ravens in the snow. In the weightlessness of space, an astronaut's heart shrinks. A loss of innocence. Complex metaphor approaching from the starboard side. In the safe harbor of Amsterdam, I mourned the mounting bodycount, my uncles, parents and best friend. I couldn’t go to Russia after the Fall, to see for myself, the changes. Instead, I translated mute testimony from the dead: my words took on the art of silence and omission. I placed my heart on a small casket, set it adrift in a dark, weightless sea.

Said No to another man who wanted to own me because he loved God more than me.

Who could compete with that?


© 1997, revised 2000 Maureen Hurley

Flying home on Good Friday

Crossing the Sierras, by moonlight at 30,000 feet, I can make out Tahoe by its rim of light. I can see Reno, the Bay Area. A canyon weaves down from a vast lake. I’ve been following a long glaciated valley, perhaps it’s the Hetch Hetchy? Or Kings Canyon?I can trace the course of the river canyon by a string of light that begins like a lone flame, and crescendos into a candelabra of light as it tumbles down the mountains to the Central Valley, ringed with lights along Highway 99, like a bathtub ring, light reestablishing the ancient shoreline of the inland sea.

Sacramento, a pool of light as if the earth glowed from within. The crossroad contemplating resurrection with light.I can even make out the edges of San Pablo Bay, the north country. The amber sodium vapor and the green fluorescent lights. Mt. Diablo’s silhouette, filament of moonlight. The freeways like cells moving through capillaries on 580.

The geometric patterns of industry and suburbs like ideograms of light for the moon to see. I try and recognize the constellations from this height. I can make out the Big Dipper, but the suburbs snaking up the canyons in dendritic formations, industry’s strange calligraphy of light abutting up to the edges of the Berkeley hills rob the sky with their light. A spillage of light up the canyons of the nobility’s territory, the privileged herringbone of empty parking lots, and the strange glow of stadiums lit from within, though the games been long over. 

Stray renegade light slices the night as we descend, Dante-like. I can begin to make out the contours of the land as we enter from the south along the black bay, to bow before Moloch on this eve of Oestare, looking like basilisk lizards about to run on water but land replaces the water at the last minute. Blue eyes to ward off the evil eye, greets us and guides us home to the portal.

Good Friday

Copperfield’s reading, Petaluma, Maureen Hurley, Martin Hinkle

A FOOT ON EACH CONTINENT

 

A FOOT ON EACH CONTINENT

                        For Charles O’Neill  October  30, 1926   to January  22, 1997

A man caught between the old world and the new,

straddles the fine lines that time offers up

at the death of the father

and the preciousness of life becomes a gift daily given.

He asks, “Without a regular supply of grace

is one left in the ego… just to wonder why?”

I have no ready answers, The orb of the sun

sinks into the small of the back: Inverness Ridge

marks the equinox, and Tomales bay shivers—

caught between the tug of time

and the milk-pale moon rising over a salmon-hued ridge.

He says, “This land owns me. I’ve lived here before,

maybe as a Spanish padre.” His talk of monks alarms me.

As if I’d suffered enough in a past life at the hands of a priest.

I shudder, someone walking on my grave.

He says, “Tomales Bay could be back home in Scotland.”

Steals small bits of the bay’s soul with his camera.

I imagine the monster beneath the waves.

We take shelter in a copse of bay trees,

where, on my birthday, he conjured the face

of a shadowed bride, and contemplated

the relentless of mindful of living.

We watch the the earth’s shadow swallow the blue moon.

As we round the tump, the goats let out a plaintive cry

of recognition, of long lost kin claiming us like children

lamenting our passing. The loss of the father

buried in the sacrificial richness of tall oat grasses,

they nibble at the scotch thistles curling about our feet.

Already Neil is shimmering, an apparition

having been taken captive as our ancestors have done,

surely, for centuries on end. Reilly and O’Neill

on Irish battle fields, thickening blood ties into saga and legend.

The wind luffs and lifts his kilt as I raise the camera to eye level.

I will never see proof of this moment trapped on film

for the indelible ink of memory has tattooed it

onto the chambers of my heart for safekeeping.

In this, everything becomes practice for saying goodbye.

The goats are sorry for our going away,

but soon they will drop their heads to the grass,

continue on with the business of living.

            3/23/97  Palm Sunday,

            Eclipse Moon rising just after the Vernal Equinox, Marconi Station