THIRST, take 2

THIRST, take 2

Last full moon of summer, a tide of ants journeys

to the evening’s dishes stacked in the sink.

Colonies­—eons before we paved these headlands—

why do they ring the bathtub like flotsamic ink?

Counter our battle with traces of formalic acid on bread?

They’ve no need for time or history or maps,

breaching bungalo walls to win the font.

Neil brings me some sweet tea in the bath,

removes the sugar to a stove island where at night

a pilot light guides lost craft and keeps ants at bay.

By the soapdish, ants emerge from riddled plaster,

they pool by fallen brethren, staining the tub.

Perhaps seeking the end of religion they eat their dead.

The communion of phagos: no sweetness wasted.

No tyranny of soul or tragedy of self to proclaim.

Unmade dreams slip from the thicket of thighs

where I caress the cloak to see if I’m alive,

having dreamt of women chadored and circumcised,

hemmorhaging on the white tiled floors. No words come.

I cannot help them nor staunch the red tide.

Who else sat in this tub watching the ants’ progress?

What clothing was shed on the honeycomed floor,

what seminal dreams were flushed down the drain

with little to survive them except the salt-

sweetness of laborer’s sweat at the close of day?

Sequestered on the parched bed, he sleeps with

hands wedded to thighs drowning in moonlight.

Moans in the night, dreaming blank futures,

returning to the womb with tonsured ardor,

leaving a river of ants to circumscribe my thirst.

8/26/97

Oakland

THIRST, 1

THIRST, 1

When the moon is full, an artery of thirsty ants rings the tub.
Over the years, they’ve burrowed from the patio 

through the bungalow walls to gain entrance to water. 

They pool around their fallen brethren as if in mourning.

Perhaps they’ve found religion 

in this microscopic city-state of insects. Resurrection. 

They eat their fallen dead, leaving no trace behind. 

Such is the frugal intelligence of protein when food is scarce. 

The colony of ants, probably here before the house was built, 

is a persistence of memory. I think of the ancestors of those ants 

tunneling through walls for how many generations 

before they breached the final wall in search of water. 

Sometime during the Great Depression, who bathed in this tub? 

What clothes did they divest? What unmade dreams 

washed down the drain with little else to show for, 

like laborers’ sweat at the end of the day?

The unmade August moon dreams at the vee of my legs, 

where I touch to see if I’m still alive, 

having dreampt of circumcised Muslim women, 

and I cannot help them, nor stop the march of the red tide, 

the countdown, while he sleeps alone in his isolation, 

dreaming of a future which never comes.

8/26 1997
Oakland

Blue Willow

Book of Knowledge, Children’s Encyclopedia, 1917,  PD Wiki

WHEN I was a child playing at the seashore, I imagined the Coast Miwoks wrapped in bright silk brocades, supping from celadon bowls, dining from blue and white plates painted with rural scenes of China. When Sir Francis Drake the Pirate landed here in Nova Albion in the summer of 1579, claiming Point Reyes for the Crown, he left behind a legacy of coins, glass beads, and his cargo of exotic silks and porcelain from China. Later shipwrecks offered up inlaid rosewood tables, ornate carved chairs waiting for an audience to gather on the beaches. Tabula Rasa. Feathered cloaks for the wind.

Perhaps I became a writer because I ate morning cereal from a story painted inside a Chinese Blue Willow bowl: two birds on the wing. It’s spring: fruit trees bloom beneath a surreal tree near a temple. Though a path of light invites us to the temple, a fence stops us because we are not Chinese. Though I am four, I know this, for my grandmother takes me to Chinatown to buy new pieces for the set. Old men in black robes with thin grey plaits down their backs, kow-tow to her, offer me sweets. I stare, round-eyed at the rows of pale celadon melons glowing with a mysterious verdant resilience beneath a grotesque curtain of plucked fowl hanging by the neck. Gateway to another world. Here, we are all immigrants.

When no one’s looking, I climb over the temple fence. (Later I will find a gate, learn the story of the lovebirds—changelings: to escape her father’s wrath, the forbidden lovers find each other on the wing. A story that includes European colonialism and the Far East—a Chinese story from an English design by way of the Dutch, or was it the Portuguese? Evolving into Blue Willow pottery, ideas shipped back and forth across the oceans.)

I am in love with the blue language of the teapot offered up each evening, and the insistence of silver spoons against teacups calling us to vespers. My grandmother says the designs on the edges of the bowl are like hieroglyphic Greek keys—a symbol for clouds, or, the Almighty. (She knows that I will search for celestial dragons in the mountains of the world, for I was born a wanderer during the tail end of the Year of the Dragon.) Every morning I’d wait for the two lovebirds to meet mid-air. Messengers from the otherworld. If they emerge through the thin layer of milk, upside-down, did it change the story? They say birds are the kisses of Aengus Óg, the Love God. My grandmother urges me to finish the last two swallows of milk—because babies are starving in China. My eating habits will become inexorably linked with the welfare of those poor babies.

I gaze deep into the milky scene: A fisherman in a junk casts his line into calm waters. Distant islands. I’m trapped within the white heart-shaped void between island, trees and slender birdwings. No children. I hardly notice three men dressed in robes on the bridge, who, after morning prayers, leave the temple, carrying the tools of my profession: walking stick, scroll and lantern. As they approach the archway, so like a Japanese torii gate, the ancient willow, roots bared by time, weeps and leans into the east wind, small hands of branches claw the air as if to follow them. Every day they’ll begin the journey but never reach the portal, the birds will never quite meet mid-air. Soon my grandfather will die, the dinnerware and our family will scatter when we move north to the Point Reyes Peninsula. Only a platter and a teapot will survive the uprooting. My grandmother and I will drink tea from it for decades. And the platter will bear the holiday bird at family gatherings.

But from my coffee mug made during the height of the Cold War, modern Blue Willow—not from the English copper engravings of the 18th century—tells another story. Memory reemerges with a different historical slant. The two birds meet mid-air, but have grown into fat, complacent pigeons, the fisherman still fishes, but the boat is farther from shore and the fish don’t bite. Our eyes are no longer drawn to what lies beyond the uneasy sea. The islands are gone. Three men still cross the bridge, they’ve lost more than priestly robes: the first one carries on his walking stick a bundle of rags, the second man still carries a scroll—what is written on it we cannot decipher—the third has lost his lantern. They are centuries from home. The shining path to the temple is dark, the celestial gate is gone—bringing us that much closer to the land. And so I am alone on the edge of the continent, dancing on the brink of I know not what.

© 1997 revised 2000

White Deer

My grandmother and I used to traipse along Inverness Ridge each fall to pick huckleberries, and for a glimpse of Old Man Ottenger’s exotic white deer and the spotted fallow deer; but the National Park Service took the land from them, parcel by parcel—destroying most of the dairy ranches in the process.

The NPS gave the land to the public, tore down historic farm buildings, killed off the exotic deer: non-native species. If the alternative was a future of tract-housing, then they did a good thing, taking the land, but what they destroyed in the process was a thriving community of farmers and ranchers—for the greater good of tourists and their easy dollars.

But most of this land commuting northward at 2 inches a year along the Fault, is so far from civilization that its isolation is its salvation and its reward.

Trigger-points of memory: a certain angle of light reposes on the blood-red roses splayed against the limed wall of an abandoned farm. A bleached redwood wine vat holds the music of spring water plashing into the mossy trough where cattle and deer come to slake their thirst at sunset. Generations of barn swallows sip and weave the air into arabesques. No one wants to look at the moral dilemma: ranchers—treated like the Coast Miwoks their forefathers displaced—offered land treaties in the form of 25-year leases. Polyester tourists, also a non-native species. Rarer now to see the white deer.

Once while rough camping, I saw a big white buck in the night mist—an otherworld apparition of white on white—his antlers tining the haloed moon. But another kind of darkness hid in the pale Albion moonlight.

A sudden chill, a premonition drove me deep into the arms of pine boughs as truck lights severed the darkness. The silhouettes of two men illumined by red tail lights filled me with unseasonable fear. . I heard shots. Saw them leave. I was so afraid, I curled into the arms of the old pine and shook with fear.

At Limantour Spit death’s admiral was waiting in the staccato report of poachers’ guns—like Chinese firecrackers—the night they shot Ranger Kenneth Patrick for the rare white deer hides. Like the dried penises of white tigers, the deerskins were destined to be sold as aphrodisiacs and for healing magic to the highest bidder in the black markets of China.

© 1997 revised 2000 Maureen Hurley

Celtic Fringe

The Celts are going, the Celts are going at last. Hurrah! Soon a Celt on the streets of Dublin will be as rare as seeing an Indian on the streets of Manhattan.—British Government, ca. 1847.

IN my family we eat soda bread with tea, croon Irish songs when the uisge beatha whets our pipes: it helps us reach that 2nd octave in Danny Boy. My grandmother never let us forget our history: the millions dead from the Famine Years. A dirge for the dying: Oh the praties they grow small. . . My great-grand-father raised fast horses, drove them with the cattle between bonfires at Lugnasadh. My family is of the earth, they survived because they held onto the land, the farms: at Coomb an-nOir, the Hill-of-Gold Walshes, and the one-eyed Sullivans of Bantry; the Reillys and Duffys of Long Kesh, Fihora. My ancestors survived by eating the blackened potatoes, cow fodder, and wild grasses. Then, when that was gone, they sucked stones, swallowed dirt, buried their dead and dreamed of another country to the west: Tír na-nÓg.

Lord Russell said the famine is good, teach the Irish a lesson. Ships laden with Irish cattle and grain sailed for Britain while we died with grass stains on our teeth. Béal na blát: from the mouth of flowers I came. In America, the Cherokee Nation collected $200; they sent us cargoes of maize and beans. Too late. “Coffin ships to the Americas. Slavers to the cane fields and estates of the Barbados,” she said. From the Celtic Fringe to the Celtic Diaspora; countless children sold in the West Indies, destined to enter the bloodlines of Africa. A Black woman asks why she never learned this in school. I tell her we share the same Anglo roots of history. She said, “I had an Irish grandmother,” we joke about being black Irish.

I’m allergic to the new world foods: beans, corn and potatoes. They say there was enough food in Ireland to feed 20 million. Instead we fed the enemy with our bones. Their sheep replaced us. But we survived. Sínn Fein: Ourselves, alone, she said, Never forget. Use their language against them, she said. This, my inheritance. Sláinte Gael macushla mo chroidhe. I’ve kissed the Blarney Stone, though there was little need. The cats form semi-colons at the foot of the bed: what was the lesson were we supposed to have learned? The Irish nation scattered to the winds. Full glottal stop.

© 1997 , rev 2000 Maureen Hurley

VIENNA, 1939

VIENNA, 1939

An old woman contemplates 

a passage in her black book.
She sits alone in a park.

It could be it be Vienna, 1939.

She sits in a metal chair, 

her purse sits on the wall 

like a well behaved cat. 

An umbrella bridges the arms of the chair.

She is dressed in black and white.
Her earrings are of gold, 

she wears a worn wedding ring.

On the other side of the park 

three people sit lost in thought,
as blurred as daydreams they once held.

Her hat and glasses, are from another era.

She primly crosses her ankles, 

maybe it's earlier than I thought. 

The dress is too long and her gloves dangle 

helplessly, and swoon from the arms of her chair, 

a white shawl, in case there's a chill.

Her hands are thick with age. 

The young moon of gold on her ring finger 

remembers her wedding day.

She is, like Proust, stirred by remembrances 

of things past. Perhaps it is Paris. 

Will she go go into a café at teatime, 

order madelines and think of her well spent youth?

She's dressed in widow's weeds.

The dark mourning after the war. 

Was it the first one? Or the second one? 

Did she lose a son, or a lover? Or both?

But that's all in the past. 

She's sitting in the park, lost in a book 

and the city waits for her to reinvent it.

8/15/1997

10/15/2015

COLLAGE

COLLAGE 

The beach rises from the swamp, 

rise and fall by the edge of the sea.
Bring out the lions. 

Little remains of the next frontier.

How lovely, this green made of spring.
Deep in the heart, the earth will translate your arrival
Calling out the names of cattle 

on this last handful of dying earth.

You better find another way out 

of this country by the execution of desire.

A Celtic lion, the flowered word.
Writing jails a tropical sunset 

with its Venetian blind approach to image.
Line after line in pewter script, 

it relentlessly marches across a trinity of palms. 

The ubiquitous cliché of paradise.
But below that crepuscular sea, 

lines and words become like strata 

and break into symbols. 

Like schools of fish in the sun.

At the bottom of the ocean 

the lion is awake 

spewing forth the flowered word 

into the depths of the abyss. 

He is awake, not rampant.

The artist practices her name 

over and over again
Design elements and fluid writing 

like the ripples on the pond 

breaks the surface. Hold her sanity in check.

Sometimes if you sit still enough,

you can see where the fish come to feed, 

breaking the mirror with their small o's

of their mouths as they breach the air. 

8/15/1997

10/15/2015

CORIOLIS EFFECT

South of  the equator

water doesn't swirl in the opposite direction. 

The Coriolis effect in the bathroom sink, 

is as confused as my current relationship.

Postcards from Fiji and the Southern Cross

arrive. Images of Islanders, Polynesia, 

cave writing, the hieroglyphs of a lost culture.

Red lateen sails at sunset. An Egyptian dhow.

Island pals shimmer and dance and sway.

Coconuts are like money in the bank. 

Copra currency in the tropics.

Meanwhile back at home, 

snow falls in the coastal valleys.

Mount St. Helena is like a white lion 

stretched against the empty winter sky.

The equator divided us, 

it did not make us equal, or whole. 

It divided the distance of seasons, days.

Enough to say that I still miss you, 

Especially at sunset in a strange land.

The fish knows no boundaries

other than infinite variations of blue.
The sky fills up its vault with careless stars

and the Southern Cross is crucifying me.

I know of the infinite variations of blue 

in the sky, I know they named the darkness too.
But I no longer know the real word for balance. 

Already the nights are growing colder. 

We've had our first unseasonable snow. 

Postcards floating like rafts 

on the edges of memory.

8/15/1997

10/15/2015

VALLEY FEVER

VALLEY FEVER

It's the way the ivory keys line up 

at the ready, like so many tombstones.

Lives were lost dragstripping along backroads 

where dangerous curves and soft shoulders 

collided at the speed of thought.

It's the way the tree held me, 

as we crawled out of the wreckage, 

all missiles, silos and combines.

Fingernails in columns in varying shades 

of red and gold, and the silk tassel 

of pomp and circumstance.

We were among those who 

almost didn't make it back, like James Dean.

I remember my mother's voice, 

disembodied, and she told me how 

Brenda Fullick's mother crawled out 

of the burning car, her face rippled like water.

My aunt can't abide the dirge, Danny Boy 

because of a boy she once loved.

She would never tell me his name.

My uncle loaned Danny his car 

with a jerryrigged battery 

and a milk carton for a seat.

When the headlights went out
they didn't see the parked truck.

Before the accident, I dreamed 

of images of wheels spinning in dry earth, 

I dreamed of the fragile beauty of flowers

harvesting the dead.

I saw seven keys for the days of the week 

opening the memory of destruction. 

I think of cars and locks that once held keys—

they are no longer whole, or complete.

They are separated from their source. 

Time reels me in, in increments of weeks.

I still dream of those wheels spinning 

out of control as they bit into the soft shoulder 

and screamed at dangerous curves. 

Eucalyptus trees that loomed in the sky. 

The odor of fresh grated earth. 

At least this time it wasn't a grave. 

A John Deere tractor awaits a writer 

to plow and scribe the fields beyond.

8/15/1997
SRJC Workshop with Terry Ehret
10/15/2015

AN ALPHABET OF WAR

AN ALPHABET OF WAR

She purses her red lips beneath the archway

waiting to be kissed under a storm-laden sky,

a vulture's wingspan completes the doorway. 

Once I tacked vulture wings over the barn door

not expecting their enormous span to engulf me.

Or the stench. The cats lunged skyward like birds.

Over the dead cities of the Fertile Crescent, 

palm trees from an earlier era, pray in the wind.

Mirage water mountaineers the horizon.

Did I gather apples in the Gardens of Babylon 

by the canals, where wild strawberries grew?

This valley cradled a swamp, teaming with life,

where blackbirds whistled drills in the reeds.
Lions guarded the gate as alphabets 

began their ascent from the mud 

and the cuneiform of clay tablets.

Imagine a culture where the aurochs, 

the ox used to plow the field, 

becomes the sound of a baby,

or the barrier of the lips.

The walls of the house, 

the temple in the beginning, 

was the alphabet of lips. 

Mountains on end.

But in the temple. God breathed, 

the sacred ladder of the sky rose up, 

became smoke in the hollow of the hand, 

Became a hook, then an arm, an eye for an eye, 

became a mouth seeking revenge,
a tooth biting off more than it could chew.

It became the head in profile, resh,

pulled back in introspection, or in sorrow.
And see how the monkey turned its back 

to look one more time at Gomorrah?

And that final mark, the tau, 

that X marks the crosses of the dead, 

and the illiterate mark of the unlettered,

has fresh fodder for its hunger.

A stone angel stands in repose, 

lost in thought, head turned down, 

arm to mouth, in that lovers stance, 

his shields and arrows at rest.

Frozen moment in time. 

Whose lips were waiting for a kiss?
Did a woman come to the city, 

wait beneath the lintel of death?

A woman's lips waiting for the man.
As the red letter a escapes: an ahhh!

merging with God's aspirants.
But the old men objected to this lip service.

Fearing contamination,

they closed the doors to the temple 

of the heart. Slammed shut. The letters of war.

This is what's written in stone. 

8//15/1997
10/15/2015

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

Sebastopol Summer Music Festival

Car accident journal, July heat 7/2 to 7/29

7/2 To awaken each morning aching like this—it’s been two weeks, will the pain never end? Ibuprofen isn’t working. Or it is… and I’m really in a lot of pain… Laughter is painful, sneezing is torture, but coughing is worse. Sinéad came over yesterday. Alison was stressed/torn between wanting me gone and being too terribly overworked to look after Neil. I refuse to leave. My role, besides dispenser of pills, tea hostess and greeter, is to keep the household in order: picking up stuff, feeding Neil. Chatelaine of the castle. Not hard tasks. I have fits of weeping every few days, the trauma working its way out. Neil just holds and holds me until it passes.

Last night I fell asleep on the couch and he began talking to me, subliminally feeding me. I was conscious enough to remember the gist of what he said. He wished me grace and help on my spiritual journey, for my writing to blossom—why he wanted me to read to him the article on abundance, so that I would have abundance in my own life… I’m sure he said more, for I was aware of him sitting silently, watching me sleep for quite some time before he put the lights out. (Just like in the dream.) I was out of sorts and exhausted from doing too much. Even a bath didn’t help to settle me, my knee and rib ached. He played the guitar for me, serenaded me, attempted to play the tin penny whistle with his poor broken mouth, and the piano. And I thought how lucky I am to have this musical massage. Fresh out of the bath, I sank down into the couch and slept and he tenderly covered me with a blanket.

7/3 Thurs. Novato. Alison took Neil to the hospital to get his nose splint off, he looked so much like himself (instead of a deranged mummy escaped from the crypt) I didn’t realize he had it off! One eye is still bigger and his bite’s off, swollen cheeks but he looks damned good. I’d gotten used to his deranged face, I hardly know what to think; a miracle! She takes us to Marin, to house-sit, and to drop me in Novato. The day is blustery and beautiful. I watch one of my long hairs reach over from Neil’s vest like a snake to tickle and irritate her. She keeps brushing her arm, but my errant hair is persistent. We eat grapes and watch the boats from the Richmond Bridge. With Alison I begin to understand why the Chinese use the ideogram of two women under one roof = trouble. We’re alpha females with well developed territorial urges. (And type A to boot!) At Verona’s, we have our first reunion outside the hospital, each of us glad that the other is alive.

Fourth of July Sunny and cool with promise of heat. It’s a good thing it’s summer. I can only wear baggy shorts and sleeveless tops or a bathing suit. I have trouble dressing, I still can’t use my left arm. Have to put it in first, then get my shirt across my back, and my right arm in the hole. Hike it up, then button it with one hand. A real chore. I can’t wear anything tight around my ribs either. No bra. No tee shirts. I can’t get them on alone. I got stuck in a tank top and my rib began to hurt, I panicked and Sinéad had to peel it off me—quick.

It feels so strange not to look in on Neil, to see if he’s awake, time for meds, make tea, and orange juice, bring him a hot wash cloth to unglue his poor eye, crawl into bed with him and wile the morning away with stories and foot massages. A late breakfast. Perhaps move to another room. More meds. Talk some more, Maybe this time on the couch. Listen to music. Screen a few calls. Receive visitors in the afternoon. Make more tea. Smoothie time—fortified with vitamins and minerals blessed at the ashram. Think about dinner, then a movie, or a serenade from Neil. 

Late night talks, me falling asleep on the futon mid-sentence. More meds. Him wishing me well in my sleep, telling me he loves me, that mine is the face of grace. Today, the probe lands on Mars and I am missing Neil. (Dust storms, 95% CO2. We are waiting for signals of the probes’s modem to send the first pictures from Mars.) I’m too weak to care about fireworks. My left hand is nearly useless, and I can’t use my right pectoral. Opening bottles is torture. I couldn’t get my Snapple open, and in tears, I resorted to stabbing the plastic bottle and sucking it out the hole.

Yesterday I was still disconvobulated from the night before—Sinéad came down and we went of a drive in the Oakland hills. Too much excitement. I’m shaky. An arsonist setting fire to the Oakland hills right in front of us, reenacting the 1991 inferno. Helicopters and fire trucks converging. At Yoshi’s, Neil and I were so tired we wanted to slide under the table. We were doing Monty Python imitations in the car—old ladies petting the pussy… Neil squares off with his minced sushi admirably well. We still look pretty strange—especially Neil with his bandages, black eyes, cap, frumpy vest and wrinkles shorts—he looked like a boxer on a losing streak.

I managed to swim the length of the pool four times, sans arms. Exhausted I, ate a sandwich only to discover the bread had hazelnuts in it. I washed out my mouth, took my allergy drugs, drank lots of cold water. A benedryl-induced sleep took me through the afternoon (my throat didn’t constrict). I slept three hours. Neil called while I was asleep, and again later. He sounds so tired, he’s in Tiburon with Alison who’s house-sitting. He says, “I’ll see you this weekend.”

7/6 Sunday. Sinéad, Séan and I visit Neil in Tiburon. This seeing him, this attachment, where will it lead? Sinéad noted, “He’s reserved around you. He’s holding back.” He seems so different around Alison, more dependent, less vibrant. I like him less that way. Today I awoke thinking just as soon as he’s out of the clear, I’ll tell him, I’ll make it easy for him—if he doesn’t love me, I’ll remove myself from his orbit. But this accident has bonded us together in such a way that few are ever bonded. Do you go through a life and death experience with someone and then just walk out of their life? We’ve got more living together to do, but I’m afraid for my heart. Am I already in too deep? It’s absurd, you really can’t protect your heart. If he doesn’t love me, then what? The honorable thing would be to let me go, for I now know I can’t be just a friend after all that we’ve been through. I have dreams of removing myself from him—no letter, no calls—but he visits me and I run off into the orchard. Then the erotic dreams take over. There must be another way to deal with this. Should I show up with a man on my arm, play on his jealousy—if there is any—for twice now he’s remarked on how much the landlord fancied me. To what end? Is he playing matchmaker, foisting me off, or is he testing the emotional waters? I hate these stupid games. Such a waste of time and emotion.

(In Novato, I swim at least once a day, rebuilding stamina. The bruise hasn’t gone away even with arnica. I still can’t touch it, not even in the shower.)

7/14 I awoke at Wendy’s. Neil’s house-sitting. Sinéad brought me down on his request. Fixed us dinner. An incredible moment: Séan and Neil at the piano. Séan’s hips are slowly healing, he has to keep still. He was at Stanford quite some time. Neil’s asleep in Alison’s bed so I draw a rune Othelia reversed. Separation, retreat, inheritance. The rune of radical severance from the old life. And it makes me cry for I know I cannot go back to who I was: she died in the crash. Wunjo, joy, the light. You have come to yourself. The shift has occurred. Renounce existing plans, goals. Submit to the rune of restoration of the self properly aligned to the Self. An absence of suffering and sorrow. Hagalaz: Disruption. The psyche need to break free from material reality to experience the archetypal mind. Events out of your control. Expect disruption from the Great Awakener. Radical discontinuity and growth. The universe & your soul demand that you do, indeed, grow!

7/16 Highland Hospital, waiting for Neil’s doctor since 7:30 AM. Fragmented dreams of missed alarms (3 times!) Arthur awakening me in a strange house. Something about mismatched cups for coffee in an odd place. A white room, a touch of blue, as if living inside the china. We awoke to heavy fog. Neil asks, “Is it raining? Is there rain on the roof?’ Deep summer, we don sweaters, thinking of other countries, other states of mind. Why am I here, in this room, in Oakland, reaffirming my vows to stand by this man—at least for the duration. But every time I make a move to leave, to go away, it becomes eminently clear this is where I belong. It’s a deep gut feeling, I feel all wrong elsewhere.

7/16 We’re going to sell satellite disks, I have no clothes. A mad shopping spree at Ross yields khaki pants, a silk top and shoes for under $30! Odd to have him dressing me. I model a basic black skirt slit up to the thigh. No. Too sexy. A maroon jacket. No. He surveys the crumpled kingdom of clothing with a critical eye. I am auditioning for a role in the corporate game and I resist the dress code, uncomfortable with the preppy image, Neil calls my number on it. The security woman wants to know if he’s my father. I say “No, my sugar daddy.” I’m scared about tomorrow. He says “I had dreams about this.” We go home and nap, exhausted from the excursion. Tears again. Will this crying never stop? Is it only the accident? What am I grieving for? The ego, the self, the witness? Neil holds me, resting his poor injured face against my back—he’s not supposed to lean down—the pressure. I’m afraid he’ll hurt himself.

7/17-18 After a shower I watch Neil transform into the role of sales rep, the odor of aftershave like a parade of adoring fans. The mantra repeats itself endlessly, a mobius strip, time collapsing in on itself, making its limits known. DDS Satellite training, a piece of cake—just like doing CPITS. The model’s the same, the patois is different. When making an ax handle with an ax, the model is always close at hand. Thought I was going to faint walking down the stairs. My lungs hurt. I meet an Irish guy I immediately like. Says he’s from Dublin. Turns out Neil knows Lofty. Who doesn’t he know?

I’m still in pain. Hours later, the aha! factor—I undo the bra during the seminar, the pain diminished. It hurts to wear a bra. I ban mine in the bathroom, my ribs too unstable for the subtle pressure. All those women with their hair and (bras) and make up … I feel the impostor. Neil says it’s time to change outmoded perceptions with the wardrobe in order to grow, check out those enclaves of resistance… He’s right but I’m still uncomfortable. He’s making me stretch—a new experience.

7/19-20 Selling DDS isn’t hard, it’s educational. I’m shocked to find I actually like it. What’s hard is the standing up for hours on end. I learn to tone down the presentation to conserve energy. I met a man from Dublin (Ireland-I was in Dublin, CA!) who said “You must be from Cork, judging by your name.” He bought another unit and I wished him well. “Beannacht loive.” Sending him off with a farewell in the ancestral tongue—so long banned it nearly became extinct. Blessings upon you. To Berkeley to pick up Neil, we’re so beat, we barely make it home. It takes days to recover from exhaustion.

7/22 Thurs. Dream Journal: We were selling DDS systems, a deluxe package that included the coastline… We were in a airport, between borders, Neil disappeared into the throngs. I found him in a hotel, which was an airport lounge. No chairs, just couch beds all in a row. He was curled up, asleep, no place for me on the narrow couchette. The family on the left had taken several extra spaces with luggage, parrots, a spider monkey—the animal odor was overwhelming. I was distressed having nearly lost Neil, and here he was, curled up on his bad side, with no one to watch over him. I removed the cordon ropes, and slept beside him on the floor. Elements: public/ in transit/ between countries, having to fight for space (he was suffering, injured, without protection), no place for me to sleep (no rest), some danger (I might get lost). Where are we going? He sleeps alone, isolate. What am I doing chasing after him if this is what he wants? Making space in his life. What about me? Where do I fit in?

Waiting for my cousin Barney O’Reilly to come. I’ve fixed up the back area into a little patio, I love to sit on an impromptu bench as he showers. You’d think that after a month we’d run out of things to say. We even talk in the shower. I’m feeling a bit rummy from yesterday. Too much work. I’m exhausted, nauseous. Strain also of living with someone who is not my lover, a situation where the rules are skewed. Define it? Stalemate. He obviously doesn’t want a relationship and I am torn by the schism between reality and the dream world. Yesterday I awoke repeating the dream’s advice, “We will be going through a very difficult time coming up where it seems everything is challenged, seems over, finished, but it’s OK, we’ll come out fine. Trust it.” Am I afraid to ask for what I want? Am I merely content to wait? Godot? I fell asleep on the couch, and awoke to him stroking my cheek, my hair, saying everything would come out all right.

7/29 An extraordinary experience while giving Niall a chair massage, I played with energy fields, pulling energy up from his head to see if it would alleviate his headache (2 vicodans did nothing). The magnetic pull was so strong I was able to direct the energy. I didn’t touch him for his head is too injured. The energy foiled grew stronger than anything I’ve experienced, enveloping me as well. He said it was as if a beam of light was shooting out of his head. I had the sensation of pulsing rings of blue light descending down my body until my feet fairly buzzed. (We give each other nightly foot massages, but this was different). He called it the shaktipat. And I realized many of the nameless things I’ve experienced have names in his world. Says my 3rd eye is about to open. Holding my hand in his, he puts his other hand on my head, thumb on my 3rd eye. The energy waves continue unabated. So this is what he means.

Yesterday was a day of real work: we were talking without addiction. Observing each other. Offering truths. No stories to interfere with the process of deepening. Something indeed has shifted. The connection is growing. Our Freudian slips are showing! I mumbled bed-breaking when I meant bread making—which drew a few sniggers. Yesterday, at UC Berkeley, a secretary offered us almond candy, He turned to me and said, “You know what these are good for?” Then blushed. “I’m wondering why I’m telling you this…” “What? Tell me what?” “Well, almonds are good for producing sperm and ovum…” backtracking, “Monks use the energy in their meditation. That’s why they’re celibate.” OK…

Helen Johnson zeroed in on me asking if I wanted to do a degree at Berkeley. I was flabbergasted, My jaw dropped. He said: “Think of it you and me at Berkeley working on our degrees.” Dial a fantasy? Yes! Doors seem to be flying open for us. He’s decided not to move to the dorms but to get a roommate (but he already has one—me.) Maybe if I help him through school, he’ll do the same for me?

Mindlessly shopping in Jack London Square with Neil singing “Heart of the Country.” I keep thinking I’m living inside the mirror that is Russia.

Journal entry, post-op

6/29 Sun. I’ve been in Oakland with Neil since Friday when he was released from Highland after his surgery. Funny, on an impulse, I’d packed my bag that morning, somehow knowing I was to leave, when the phone rang, Neil asking me to care for him—out of the blue. I was not consciously expecting it, but I was nearly frantic with a desire to be with him.

Driving down to Oakland in his car alone was one of the hardest things I’ve attempted since the accident. I couldn’t put the car in reverse nor crank the wheel. I had no upper body strength where they sliced my right pectoral to insert the valve. And my left side was still useless.

Ortho put my arm in a sling, a brace on my wrist. Highland is a trauma center where the addicts, the homeless and those suffering from the fallout of violent crime land to either recuperate, or die. So different from Kaiser. Neil was lucky, a whole cadre of doctors rebuilt his face from the jaw up. But recovery is akin to reliving the pain of the accident. How much more pain can he endure? Not enough Vicodan to last until Thursday. I enjoy caring for him but too many visitors wears us both out. Friends and old girlfriends call—I can tell by the tone of his voice!

Today I fed him mashed yams thinned with broth, introducing food for the first time in 10 days. Ten days into the nightmare… I told him our lives are irrevocably altered, We can’t go back to who we were. Ever. We are like Siamese twins, joined at the psyche. Where does one of us end and the other begin?

Last night he felt too frisky for his own good, serenading me with his broken mouth, jabbering up a storm till all hours. Tonight he’s paying dearly for that excess. Deep exhaustion and pain. I check for fever, worried we’ve introduced too many new foods today. Smoothies too. But I also worry about his nutrition. He needs to knit bones.

Alison wanted me to stay at her house tonight, she’d stay with Neil. But I didn’t want to go. She’s afraid I’ll get burnt out. I appreciate her concern, but I sense a darkness, an irritation—territorial? Something doesn’t quite ring true. Determined, I fight to stay. I’m almost irrational with fear of leaving him—as if my very presence was keeping him alive.

Adele Foley took me shopping for healthy foods—a grueling 2 hour excursion. Shopping at Lucky’s is almost more than I can bear. I slipped on a lettuce leaf, and it took all I could muster to keep from falling, but the pain was so intense I nearly fell anyway.

I now have trouble reading fine print on the labels.( Do I have a concussion too? I took a good bang on my right temple. Neil’s elbow, I think. Reading’s hard in general, I can’t seem to make sense of the words. They either float about, or collectively lose their meaning. My cognitive skills rearranged.) Adele is my eyes. I am determined to get the best nutritional food possible for Neil. B vitamins, connective tissue, healing—all my previous study of biology and nutrition comes into play.

Everything in the 20th century seems to exhaust me: lights, noise, color, chrome, a riot of details all demanding my attention until I’m reeling....

Journal entry, 6/29 continued…

6/29 continued....this was stuff I couldn't bear to revisit, let alone, render it readable, so it stays here, stet.

Neil was worried about the expenses. I repeated back to him what he told me Easter Monday morning, “I’ll take care of you, you’ll never want for anything.” It becomes like a marriage vow. For better or for worse, I will take care of you—to the best of my ability, I will do whatever it takes, Neil. Know that. We live on my meager savings.

Tonight there was the benefit party for Neil at Kate O’Brien’s. Gary Mullan called to say it was a smashing event—that Neil should run for office! I only hope they raised enough for the July rent. (I asked the gods for $1500 to pay the bills; I secured $1000 from Verona.) We eventually got around $800. (Then there’s August rent to consider.) A severe blow: Neil won’t be in the play. Gary Mullan’s stepping in. They delayed the play another week. Maybe Neil will be able to step in during the 2nd half of the run. Daily his speech improves as the swelling goes down. His house is a mess. Daily I take on some little chore, clean one small section. I still can’t raise my left arm.

I had to move the car for street cleaning, a painful experience since I can’t turn the wheel when it’s parked. Though my strength is returning, my upper body is still weak from the surgery. I took the bandage off today, the dressing covering pustules. Here I was nagging Neil to take a bath and I was smelling my own rotted bandage. Old blood and carbolic acid. Today I showed Neil how to lean back in the tub so I could wash his hair… but then I got stuck in the tub and needed his help to get out, no H2O for buoyancy. It struck me that moment how dependent we are on each other to complete simple tasks to survive. A small metaphor encapsulating the larger metaphor. Each of us is alone, crippled without the other.

Both of us, independent souls to the extreme (we’ll gladly cut off our noses to spite our faces), forced to give in, to accept and work with the other. He rejected my offer to wash his hair, scrub his back, but had me comb and dry his hair, clean the blood out of his nose with q-tips. I had to remove my own bandage, it was supposed to come off yesterday and he wouldn’t do it. “Who’d take you to Emergency?” I was pretty annoyed he wouldn’t help me, so I did it myself. Asshole! A good thing too, it was infected. So much for interdependence.

I helped him remove his forehead bandage. Then I realize he’s not an asshole, he’s just frightened, I’m the stronger one. When it comes to pain, women always are. We drove downtown, our first outing together, to do some banking. It took the two of us just to drive the car. Neil put the car in reverse and cranked the wheel for me (he couldn’t still see very well…) and I managed the clutch, gas and brakes, though my left knee’s still pretty unstable. He buys me a latte, but I can’t handle coffee yet. Still too adrenalined out. Still shaking from exertion. I need a nap.

Our days unfold into a pattern: he nags me to eat (I have trouble eating), to rest more, to slow down. I nag him to eat (an easy task), keep track of his medicines, massage him. It helps the pain. He’s a good patient, not demanding as Alison warned. Nor was he “pushing me around.” Why was she warning me? They haven’t spoken to each other since a spat on Friday. He said, “She’s just jealous. She had the chance.” She doesn’t know what my relationship with Neil is. (Neither do I.) His comment about jealousy brought it all back home: the unasked: are we having a relationship? All the mixed messages. This is not the time to press for an answer.

Ironically, for his birthday, I’d offered an afternoon at the Calistoga Spa, a massage, and salmon dinner, but he was being evasive and turned it down and took up Verona’s offer for lunch instead. (Boy, did we all pay dearly for that decision. Some karma!) I was really hurt, for he was pulling back (again). And look at what happened… I teased him because he turned down my offer, so now I’m feeding and massaging him for weeks on end, instead of giving him a simple afternoon’s straightforward gift of my time and energy. Then I wind up living here on an ongoing basis. Ironic.

He has no clue he’s getting the best of my attention. I like the person who I’m becoming around him, having to take care of him. If he wasn’t injured, it would be a very different thing. A part of me is tempted to lay it on the table, tell him he’s stumbling, the so-called dance we began at Easter is faltering to a standstill. That he needs to come to some resolution: either he wants me or he doesn’t. This ambivalence is poisonous. But then I try to be considerate, and think this is no time to lay down ultimatums. Later, when he’s on his feet…

Last night we talked about trust and betrayal—when to cut someone off, our tolerance levels… I told him my limits, but I envy his clarity at being able to say to someone: this is a warning… Meanwhile, I’ve not warned him of his own trespasses, but I am keeping score of slights. Like the time he made a date with me to go to the SF Film Fest, but then stayed with some woman in Gualala, leaving me hanging in the lurch. I was really upset, ready to cut him loose. But then we saw each other again… and again—and nothing’s any clearer. I’m tempted to cut my losses again. But somehow we work through it.

6/30 From my dreams I always knew I’d be living with Neil, but not like this… fixing a pureed dinner of carrots and chicken. (I make chicken soup from scratch to bring my grandmother back into the room). He loves my chicken soup, it reminds him of his mother’s. I have to strain it for he still can’t swallow well. A lump of food or a bone would spell disaster.

Elemental Portraits

Here's a link to our debut performance in 1997. I was in a car accident on June 18th, so I never had my debut. A punctured lung precluded my participation at the events on June 28 and 29. We did perform a preview at the Friedman Center on Mother's Day. It was hotter than Hades. And it was a luncheon. Nothing like the clatter of silverware during a performance.

From the Cloverdale Reveille May 28, 1997

Joournal entry, viewing the car

6/25 Sinéad takes me to Highland Hospital (more like Calcutta without the sacred cows than the Highlands of Scotland) where they moved Neil to operate on his face. So depressing after Kaiser. He looks better every day. Just to be near him, I massage his feet. He sticks his toe into my boob. Feeling a bit better are we?

Yesterday we went to the wrecked car and took our things out, and to banish ghosts. (Blood over the car and my book of Scottish kings we were reading from when it happened. The other day, he drilled me on the dates of the kings, our first attempt at reclaiming our lives.

I couldn’t remember very much, I worry about his concussion, his spinal fluid’s quit leaking. In my Famine book, a list of Scottish kings on Kaiser memo paper—something he’d written down to wile away the hours. I nearly cried when I found it. I took his jacket home and washed the blood from it.

The car was in worse shape than I expected. I noted the bent steering wheel, the broken windshield and the missing rear-view mirror where Neil’s face made impact, the driver’s seat shoved forward from my body. The right fender utterly crushed, the doors buckled (they wouldn’t open after the accident—we had to crawl out the window). The engine dropped down like it was designed to do.)

After leaving Neil (who goes into surgery at 7 AM tomorrow), Sinéad and I went out for sushi in San Anselmo. Things are still pretty foggy. The baby’s pelvis was crushed by Myle’s truck, an accident while we were in LA with Barney O’Reilly, Jr. Dave was in an accident too. Dave takes me back to Verona’s for I ache so much I’m weeping, and I can’t stand the noise of the TV at Sinead’s. I have no reserves left whatsoever. I resort to a Percodan to relieve the pain. Weep uncontrollably in the hot tub.

It hurts to sit up and write. I’m still at Verona’s, dependent on Vicki and Sinéad. Vicki took me home to get clothes, pillows and videos on Fri. She had a Dr.’s appt. in Santa Rosa. I was exhausted from the ride north and the heat. I dozed in the car, in suspended time. The trees, and parking garage seems so surreal.

I visited my chiropractor. He said it looked pretty bad, my back was swollen too. Didn’t want to do anything for a while. Vro’s to come home today. I’ve been tending Herman who’s not so chipper, with a crushed lumbar vertebra.

I begin my mornings with Ibuprofen and a hot tub. My left knee and right ribcage hurt the most—especially my right kidney, where Niel’s knee caught me square on (which probably saved his life, keeping him from going through the window, though my lung was punctured in the process). I can barely walk or breathe. (Vicki and I check Herman into Novato Community Hospital for observation.) I’m afraid to be alone, and so push myself too much: I break out into adrenaline sweats and can’t stop shaking.

I can barely handle clothes on my body, more than half of it is bruised, mainly my left side. Huge hot hematomas on my thigh and upper arm. Feels like I broke something in my left hand. I can only sleep on my back (carefully), and every move is excruciating. Getting into and out of bed is an expedition. The hot tub is my only salvation.

I’m worried about scar tissue forming in my muscles and lung, so I try to do some exercise in the pool every day. Can’t use my left arm yet. My lung is bothering me. I miss two paid performances I was supposed to do with Kirk Whipple in Santa Rosa. I sound like a bellows, breathless, wheezy. No way I could read poems out loud—even sitting down. Peggy Maddock’s husband tells me it takes 6 months or more. I’m beginning to believe him.

6/26/ Alison called to say Neil came through the post-op fine, though it took longer than expected. I begin to weep. My stomach’s been in knots since 7 AM. I said a mantra for him over and over.

Elemental Portraits performances

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.