The Hook

Life was not a valuable gift, but death was. Life was a fever-dream made up of joys embittered by sorrows, pleasure poisoned by pain; a dream that was a nightmare-confusion of spasmodic and fleeting delights, ecstasies, exultations, happinesses, interspersed with long-drawn miseries, griefs, perils, horrors, disappointments, defeats,humiliations, and despairs--the heaviest curse devisable by divine ingenuity; but death was sweet, death was gentle, death was kind; death healed the bruised spirit and the broken heart, and gave them rest and forgetfulness; death was man's best friend; when man could endure life no longer, death came and set him free.
- Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth

It is a platitude that you don't appreciate what you have until you have lost it. Then again, as my brother pointed out, platitudes get to be platitudes because they're true. (That's why my brother is the smart one). I miss my Dad. I miss his voice, a lot, because he had a beautiful voice, and I miss there being someone on this Earth that really gets me. On the other hand, it just may be that I miss him less now than I have for the last 43 years, because I feel his presence with me. I can't see him, I can't hear him, but I can feel him, and I know he's happy. He loves my farm, he loves the music I chose for his visitation, he loves me, more than I ever knew. He loves being free again.

My dad has always loved the absurd. He used to tell my brother and me about how Vaudeville performers, when deemed unsatisfactory by the audience, used to get "the hook," which was sort of a giant sheep's hook that suddenly emerged from backstage and pulled the performer off the stage by main force. And whenever my father witnessed a particularly dismal performance, of any kind, he used to comment, "give 'em the hook!"

Well, Dad got the hook. Not him, so much, as his body. The failures, the betrayals, the generalized debilitation, the whole human comedy playing out on my dad's battered frame, just wasn't funny anymore. But Dad was a trouper. The show must go on, and he fought as hard as anybody can fight to make the show go on.

I don't know how the Invisible Life Forces managed to convince my dad to go already. Dad had the quintessential Taurean disinclination towards prodding and an almost superhuman capacity to resist it. I have a strong suspicion that Saint Peter, out of sheer desperation, may have come down and whacked him with a tire iron when nobody was looking. In ICU, Dad complained of a bright light (with the adjective "damn" implied) that was irritating him enormously. Since all the lights were off and the shades were drawn, I prayed that God might try music instead, and maybe He did.

Or maybe, while floating around above his hospital bed looking in vain for some sunglasses, Dad just said, with a decisive chomp on a pipestem, "Give him the hook, boys!"

My dad has a new body now, and a new life, and he's not, strictly speaking, my dad anymore, because he's back to being just who he is without earthly roles and obligations. And I have to learn to relate to him on that level, just as a fellow soul, and yes, a Republican soul, because, let's get real, Dad might have a spirit body and a different name and he might exist in another plane but he's still a conservative.

I mean, death is birth. You leave the baggage and keep the essential. My dad's music, his sense of humor, his integrity, and his conservativism are part of his soul's true nature, and you wouldn't have it any other way. The pain, the fear, the worries, the misunderstandings, all got the hook, along with the body.

Have fun, Dad. You deserve it.

The Big Wave

Many times, my father has told me a story about how when we were on vacation at a lake , a big wave came from nowhere and engulfed me. Each time he tells the story, his shock and fear seem to live in him once again. His face also expresses another emotion: hurt. As he tells of that awful moment, my Dad's brown eyes look like those of a faithful dog that just got kicked for no reason. The bottom line of the story, which is that I was fine (if a bit wet and unhappy), seems to have made far less impression on my Dad than the awfulness of what might have happened.

That was forty years ago, give or take a year or so. I was two or three; now I am 43. And now, the positions are reversed. A big wave has come and engulfed my dad, a wave of impending mortality, and I feel the same impotence and shock and yes, outrage, that he must have felt all those years ago in Michigan.

My dad and I are very much alike. You could say two peas in a pod, but my father has never particularly liked vegetables. When my brother, aged five, looked at his plate and commented, "Another damn pea!" it was generally felt that he had heard it from my dad. To say "two beers in a case," or "two nocturnes in a suite," or "two gutterballs in a row," might come closer to the mark, because my dad and I share a pedestrian taste in food, a romantic taste in music, and an amazing mediocrity in athletic pursuits.

I haven't gotten to spend much time with Dad. Divorce, distance, remarriage, and more distance had the effect of driving invisible wedges between us. My dad had a child with his second wife, and that child seemed, to me at least, to lay claim to all my father's paternal energies. As the years passed, it seemed that my father viewed my older brother and me more as old college chums than offspring. We would get together, occasionally, in motels, or sometimes just for lunch, and talk about politics and other absurdities.

Each time we met, I had the feeling of never having been apart. I still have that feeling, even though my dad is in a hospital bed, with tubes of various descriptions stuck into him and monitors that tell you everything except what you really want to know. Rather than useless information like pulse and oxygenation, why can't the monitors tell me how many minutes my dad has left on this earth? Why can't it count the regrets, the words not spoken, the hurts that were buried under a stoic exterior, the beers that we never drank together? Why can't the monitor tell me how much my dad loves me, has always loved me, and always will? And why can't the nurse, poking my dad full of holes in search of a "good" vein, because my dad's veins have been worn out by the thousands of punctures from the series of long illnesses, stick him with an IV full of the love and pride that I, with all my clever words, have never managed to express to him?

I think my dad thought that I loved my stepfather better than him, but the two were apples and oranges to me. I loved Tom, and I still do, but we hold these truths to be self-evident, that your dad is your dad. People talk about soul mates, in the fatuous way that they tend to do, about people they met on the Internet a month ago who happen to like the same football team and own the same type of lawnmower. According to them, a soul mate always shares your best qualities, and never has any bad qualities at all, until, of course, you divorce him, but that's another story. What about a person who looks like you, walks like you, sweats like you, even smells like you? What about the person who has been kicked by life too many times to trust in its innate goodness, but still finds the will and the courage to drag himself up again? What about a person who is too proud to say he wants you in his life, too self-critical and humble to think you might want him in yours? Just like you?

William Markel

I don't like labels. Soul mate is a label. So are father, daughter, illness, life and death. I can't define what my father means to me, in part because I'm only just discovering it, in part, because I don't want to. Saying that something is this is tantamount to saying that it's not that. My relationship with my father is not static, it is an evolving entity, and it will continue to be so.

I believe in eternal life. I believe in the continuation of the personality. I believe in reincarnation. I don't believe because it makes me feel better to believe. I do not believe, for example, that I will ever be rid of cellulite, or that Obama's Health Care Reform will solve anything, even though I would like to believe those things. But I do believe in God and I believe in the eternal soul, and I believe because I have done one hell of a lot of research on the subject. I believe because I have had too many experiences with the Unexplainable not to believe.

I believe that my dad and I will always be together, somehow. I believe in a merciful God. I believe in the healing power of love, and beer.

Several nights ago, I had a dream. My dad was in the dream, and I forget who else, and there was also a little girl in the dream, pacing up and down on the bleachers where we were sitting. She kept looking at me out of the corner of her eye, like, "Aren't you leaving yet?" and I realized, at some point, that the sturdy little girl with the bowl haircut and solemn face was me, the two year-old me, the same me that was engulfed by the Big Wave. And I knew, when I woke up, that that me still exists, and she has never left my dad, in all those years that those other mes were wandering around in our parallel universes, busy with other things, things that seemed so important at the time. And that stubborn little chunky clingy possessive me will be with my dad always, holding his hand, to guide him through the Big Wave and bring him back safe onto dry land, safe and sound, in the arms of God, or, as I prefer to think of it, firmly planted on God's barstools, as we always have been and always will be, together.

I wrote this for my dad. My mom read it to him in the hospital, and he demanded to hear it a second time, and then, two days later, he closed his eyes and did not open them again. Sometimes I wish I could have said these things to him face to face, but that wouldn't have been me, and it wouldn't have been him.

Pillars of Sand (Viva la Vida)

I used to rule the world

Seas would rise when I gave the word

Now in the morning I sweep alone

Sweep the streets I used to own

I used to roll the dice

Feel the fear in my enemy's eyes

Listen as the crowd would sing:"Now the old king is dead! Long live the king!"

One minute I held the key

Next the walls were closed on me

And I discovered that my castles stand

Upon pillars of salt, pillars of sand

-Coldplay

If I were a monarch, it would have to be a king, or preferably, an emperor. Either Arthur or Charlemagne. Actually, in the olden times, I would have liked to be Pope. Complete spiritual and temporal dominion.

Being a Queen would not quite cut it. I like The Empress and all, don't get me wrong, but I like the old-fashioned kind of power. Direct, undisputed, king power. Queens have a different kind of power, which is fine, and being Queen would definitely be better than being, say, the Head Janitor, but, if I could choose, I would be King.

There are so many ways to have power. Money. Beauty. Youth. Connections. Physical strength. Love.

I had it all, I lost it all, and I never knew what I had until I lost it. That sounds dramatic. Pluto in Capricorn is dramatic. And it's sad. Endings are always sad, even if they're inevitable, and expected, and far overdue. Who doesn't feel sad at a breakup, or a move, or one of those big life changes?

As to those, I detested puberty. I can barely stand to think of it even now. One day, I was running around without a care in the world, and then, bam. Blood and gore and brassieres and cellulite, and strange men standing too close in museum lines, and a lot of shit that I did not understand or want to. And that book, "Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret" which they forced us at gunpoint to read, just made me sick. The bitch didn't know when she had it good.

I haven't hit menopause yet, but I'm sure that will be sad too. My friends who are there already, or almost, are in denial, and I suppose I will be too, especially since I never had kids. I never had a particularly strong desire to, but I always thought that it would happen, somehow, in extremis, and it didn't. At least, not in this lifetime. I'm sure I've had plenty of kids in other lifetimes and maybe this lifetime is just a time-out. I've always avoided the step-parent thing too. It seems fraught with difficulties.

I was sad when I got married, sad when I got divorced, sad every time I left one country or one man for the next, but I did it, because there's only one way to go in this life, and that is forward. This year, I got sick, and ended up leaving everything in California. I didn't have the strength to deal with it, but there was also some weird streak of illumination that was telling me that the losses were the whole point.

For what profiteth a man if he gain the whole world and loseth his own soul?

I had the whole world in my hands, but I had gotten lost, somehow, down one of those rabbit holes it used to amuse me to explore, always so sure of my own power, of God's protective presence, but in one of those rabbit holes I encountered the void, and I got lost, like Carlos Castaneda in his dreams.

I didn't know up from down, or light from dark, and I was even getting used to living down there, away from the light, and the air.

Evil exists, is the point, although not necessarily in the way you imagine it. In fact, it's almost never the way you imagine it, because then you would recognize it and avoid it. Evil always looks exactly like good, except better. So you keep messing with it, sure that the good must be there, just below the surface, and it isn't. Somebody described eating Domino's pizza as eating more and more of it to try and find the flavor you know must be there, but isn't, and in the end you have a bellyful of pizza and a feeling of deep dissatisfaction. That's kind of the deal with evil. And evil isn't so much an active kind of wickedness as it is a lack of, well, good.

So God, like any indulgent but responsible parent, yanked me out of the rabbit hole and grounded me indefinitely, and here I am.

And I've said these things before, more or less, and it's not like I want to flog a dead horse, but what am I supposed to do if Chris Martin always puts the way I feel into words? Well, not always, there are a few songs on the new CD that I skip, but on their other CD's, each song brings an immediate memory of a person or an event in my life.

My pillars of sand have crumbled, but maybe I can use the rubble to fill the potholes in the castle driveway, so all is not lost.

Viva la vida!

Hello You Wacky Sagittarians

Needless to say, I scared myself to death the other night with my attempt at ghostly fiction. Luckily, God has blessed me with an almost complete lack of imagination, so I am not often tempted to invent spooky tales of wolf-people, or woof-people, as my stepfather pronounced the word.

Which leads me to today's subject: Sagittarians. We are now smack dab in the middle of Sajj and I have a message for all the Sajjes of the world--relax. Breathe. Calm down. Look before you leap. Count to ten. Don't fly off the handle. Don't make a scene. Don't get married again, at least until you've finished counting to ten. Then, walk around the block. Is your potential mate in bankruptcy court? Is he or she still married to somebody else? Don't do it, Sajj, you'll be sorry in about five minutes.

Don't fire your secretary. Don't fall in love with your secretary. Pretend like you don't even have a secretary, unless you want to dictate a letter, and then, you know what? Just type it yourself.

If you're bored, Sajj, and I know you are, throw a party. You're good at that. Go dancing. You like to dance. Go to Madagascar. I bet you've never been to Madagascar. Wouldn't you like to see how they harvest cloves? Sure you would. You could fly through Amsterdam. Amsterdam is lots of fun and they have amazing chocolate.

Or, you could join a cult. I believe that I might just have an opening as a "Follower", but apply now, the slots are filling quickly!

The thing to remember, Sajj, is don't go with your gut instinct. Your gut instinct is wrong. Your gut instinct has gotten you into trouble in the past, hasn't it? You thought you were going to pull a fast one but it backfired, didn't it? So don't do it, whatever it is. Action is overrated. Thought is nice too, Sajj--you can do a lot of fun things in your head without getting yourself into big trouble.

So just relax, have another glass of champagne, and handcuff yourself to something heavy until that funny little itch in your stomach passes, the one you always get before you do or say something really unforgiveable.

We all love you, Sajj, but the Law of Karma is real. Once you get that ball rolling, it's not going to stop until it comes back and flattens you. Remember Wile E. Coyote? He was a Sajj. So if it's a good deed you have in mind, or a kind word, or some homemade lasagna, then go for it. Pull out all the stops. But if you feel like making trouble, just remember the Wheel of Karma, and order out for pizza instead.

On a Night Such as This

All around was stillness, the language of winter. The wind whirled and drove the snow like daggers into the soft belly of the night. There were no stars, no moon, just the faraway hint of a dirty mauve sky. And then, out of the darkness, a knock came on the door.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Are you scared yet? I am. I am scaring myself. This is that kind of winter night, blustery and eerie, a night for haints to walk, which I sincerely hope they don't. At least, not here. If I see any haints, I will direct them to the nearest shopping center for some mall-walking. At this point in the story, a mysterious, lean figure with a cape shielding his face would appear at the farmhouse door.

He would warm himself by the fire, if he were willing to go out to the woodshed and schlep wood, and deal with a possible rodent living in the fireplace, and then he would tell a mysterious tale of a maiden's death yet to be avenged, or some other wrong still unrighted. And then he would ask to borrow the toenail clippers--I am still working this part out--and only upon his leaving would the unsuspecting farmer's wife discover a wolf's claw stuck in the nail scissors!!

I know that the "mysterious stranger is really a wolf" thing has already been done in Ladyhawke but I feel it has rich and as yet untapped dramatic potential.

But wait, what was that? Could it have been....a knock on the door?

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Shave Off Your Burns!!

As I stopped at the local library today to drop off my copy of "Cidade dos Homens" (great film, btw), my attention was drawn by a fashion statement so rare and wonderful that I literally had to stop and stare.

The statement was being made by a person who, it pains me somewhat to admit, must be about my age, i.e. FOREVER YOUNG!!! (Read: early 40's). The most eloquent part of the statement was being made by this person's hair, which was a flowing, waist-length mane of dishwater brown with some serious split ends. The top part, however, was carefully feathered and held in place by bobby pins and a copious use of Aqua-net. You could tell it was Aqua-net just by looking. The effect seemed to be a combination of The Mullet with the look made popular by Warren Jeffs' seven thousand wives, when they have their hair down, which is very elaborate in the front and long and stringy in the back. I gleaned this important bit of information by reading all the trashy mags, and if you need to know anything about Brangelina, ask me first.

I have to be honest here--I have never felt a particular fondness for Jen Aniston, a feeling the movie The Maid solidified. In fact, I had to walk out of the cinema after one of the characters expressed surprise that another character had not seen her own husband's, um, anus. And Jen always has a look on her face as if she'd just swallowed a mouthful of carpet tacks. But what I was going to say is, Brangelina, would you stop acting like anuses, and Brad, lose the Hitler mustache, ok? Brad Pitt seems to have absolutely no mind of his own. It probably comes of having a name of only two syllables. I could never love a two-syllable man, myself, but Angelina seems to think she has enough syllables for the whole clan.

Having had more than one glass of Cabernet Sauvignon, I will admit at this point that Angelina Jolie seriously irritates me. The Italians would say, "she stands on my dick", and, given the literal impossibility of such a thing, me being female and all, I think the expression renders the idea quite well. I have noticed, in an informal survey of my friends and supermarket cashiers, that Angelina Jolie has this effect on most females. I have never met a female person who finds Angelina anything but annoying. I have no idea what male people think, but I have an opinion of the male capacity for discernment that is, alas, on the low side.

Of course, it just may be that the most annoying thing about Angelina is that Brad likes her. Obviously, I am into Symbols, and Brad Pitt is, arguably, The Symbol of the desirable male in the Western world. And therefore, his choice of a life partner has a bearing on all of us females, indirectly. And it has to be said that his choice is something of a disappointment. I mean, I'm not saying he had to like Rita Levi Montalcini, but fuckin Angelina Jolie?? The upshot here is that Angelina is, by process of elimination, in the position of World's Most Desirable Female, meaning that the rest of us women feel at least slightly disenfranchised. So maybe that's why we hate her.

The good news is, Jennifer Aniston is also extremely annoying, and even though Vince Vaughan has gotten to be decidedly chubby, I really think he can do better than Madame Carpet Tacks.

But I digress.

What I witnessed today is an anachronism and I was so happy. I remembered why I love living in Ohio. You can have a Fundamentalist Latter Day Mullet on your head and be taken seriously, by someone. This person also had a mysterious chain hanging off of his belt and I'm sure it only adds to the attraction for the denizens of the parallel universe in which he lives. He was very thin, clad in all black, with some of those white leather hi-top tennies that I'll bet you haven't seen in a while, unless you also live in Portage County. He smoked some kind of smelly cigs and had copious sideburns. It was wonderful!!

I am not being mean, I'm really not. I would personally rather endure Death by Sloppy Joes (my mom, who went out of town for the holiday, left me Sloppy Joes for sustenance, forgetting that Sloppy Joes is not food) than commit such a fashion coup d'etat, but I am a Capricorn, forever condemned by the pissy planet Saturn to a life to be lived in shades of taupe. That doesn't mean I can't envy the other signs, the fun ones, who don't live their lives in fear of ridicule.

Now, having expressed my joy, I must return to my pasta, which is a variation of La Boscaiola. Meaning, we have sausage, a tiny bit of tomato, garlic, mushrooms, and cream, but instead of the peas, we have squash. And oh fuck, I forgot to buy Parmesan, but I have a certain Innocent Flirtation with the Butcher, a thin and intense type with tattoos, so another trip to the store is never as tragic as it could be. If you make this dish, you have to be very careful because the squash is sweet, so it has to be balanced with an appropriate amount of spices and acidity. Key word: Tabasco. Not Frank's. Not hot pepper flakes. Tabasco. Buon appetito!

And let me breathe in freedom

Yesterday, Buddy the dog and I were in my mom's minivan on a deserted road, when a bald eagle flew directly overhead and went soaring out over the lake. I had been lost in my own thoughts and Buddy in his, but the eagle woke us up to an immediate and full awareness of our surroundings. Ok, I'm giving Buddy Black Jack a little more credit than is really appropriate, but he did kind of move and wiggle his tail a little bit and in this world of cell phones and i(Pod)solation, I call that an impressive level of awareness. The bare gray trees, the snow gradually melting in the warm sun, and the utter stillness that you experience sometimes on a holiday, when everybody is at home. And then this magnificent apparition.

Today, not far from where I saw the eagle, I came across a dog dying in the road. He had just been hit by an SUV, and I pulled over and started wildly honking my horn, hoping that someone would come out of the houses and claim the dog. But nobody came.

The SUV, an old model plastered with Obama bumper stickers, slowed down and stopped when it heard me honking. I guess maybe it read an accusation into the car horn but that wasn't the intent.

The dog was still writhing in a pool of blood. I never knew blood was so thick. I didn't know what to do so I just crouched down by it and laid my hand on its neck and spoke to it until it died, in Italian, of course. That's the language for kids and dogs. The SUV guy came up and asked about it and I told him to go knock on the doors until he found the owners, which he did, except nobody came to the doors. They were all out at the sales, I suppose. Here the stores opened at 4 a.m.

The SUV guy came back as I was gently trying to move the dog's body to the shoulder of the road. He just matter-of-factly picked it up by its neck and the skin of its back and laid it down in somebody's yard but I made him move it closer to the road so that it could be seen and claimed.

"It wasn't my fault," he said. I implied heavily that it was and that he should have been more careful. There was perfect visibility and nobody on the road. He got kind of mad. He wanted me to say it wasn't his fault, but it was.

I know I'm judgmental. I was named for a judge in the Bible. If I had hit the dog, I would have judged myself. I wouldn't have said it wasn't my fault. That dog was somebody's joy and now it's somebody's heartbreak.

I was coming from the music school and I was singing in the car, an air by Handel. "Lascia ch'io pianga," which was in that movie Farinelli, about the castrato. It means, "Let me weep, my cruel fate, and let me breathe in freedom." I swear that I was singing that aria when I came over the hill and found the dog. What were the eagle and dog telling me? I don't know. Both times I cried, in my mom's minivan, which aroused the concern of Buddy Black Jack the Dog. Buddy's preferred therapeutic mode is to put his cold, wet nose on some part of your body and wait for you to feel better.

Yesterday, Pluto, the planet of death and transformation, moved into Capricorn, my Sun sign. One of the legends about the Eagle is that it would fly so close to the sun that all its feathers would be singed off, and it would fall to the ground, only to be born again. Maybe the dog was a Capricorn. But I don't feel like divining today. I feel sad. It could have been me in the red SUV, except for the Obama stickers and the fact that I object to SUV's. (I actually like Obama, but I don't like getting yelled at by a sticker). But we all get distracted behind the wheel, we're all in a hurry to go somewhere, we don't think of the consequences until it's too late.

And the owners, why did they let the dog run loose? Maybe it escaped. Maybe it just wanted to be free. My stepfather used to say, when Inga got loose, that he could hear her humming "Born free" on her way to the golf course. Freedom is a need, like food and air. Or maybe the owners were too busy trampling Walmart employees to care where their dog was. But I want to believe that the dog achieved its desire, and now he breathes in freedom.

Lascia ch'io pianga
mia cruda sorte
e che sospiri la liberta'.