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Coming home

I was reading in Archaic Revival: “The experience must move one’s heart, and it will not move the heart unless it deals with issues of life and death. If it deals with life and death it will move one to fear, it will move one to tears, it will move one to laughter…” Earlier, my friend Jean sent this message: “Magical it all is. Is it life or is it death that is a mystery? Perhaps both?” Yes, and everything in between.
So fine to find one of these little temples. Dry, strong walls.
What else could you want? Photo Kim Ki Sam 
Coming home
Near Lang Vei, where I slept with rats. Photo R. Merron
There was a last formation somewhere near Danang – 30-something Marines standing together where there had once been 180. The ones who were not there had been killed or wounded too badly to return to combat or wounded three times (it was a three and you’re out deal) orbeen too sick to fight (with malaria, etc.). All of us in that formation had been wounded at least once. We were what was left of C Company, 1stBattalion, 26th Marine Regiment, 5th Marine Division. We had all gone together as a landing force, first been truly blooded at the DMZ in Operation Deckhouse (Prairie), fought for months at Dodge City, fought on Highway 1, and ended up at Khe Sanh. I had also gone on TAD (Temporary Assigned Duty) with 1st Battalion, 9th Marines and several other units in the Hill Fights, the “First Battle of Khe Sanh,” Gio Linh, Con Tien, etc.
Resuscitation failing. Henri Huet
And now here we were, 30-something of us – sallow, skinny, nervous… real warriors – no muscled up or tanned or beer-bellied or tough guy REMFs (rear echelon mother-fuckers) in thisformation.
They flew us first to Okinawa where we did what we always did when we could – got drunk and so on. I had a moment of glory in a brothel when I hit some old REMF lifer (actually he was probably all of 30 or 35 years old) hard enough that he literally went through the wall and then somehow, I and my mate, Carver, got away from the Shore Patrol (military police). It was the perfect end to my tour of duty.

Cigarette! Photo Oliver Noonan

From Oki, they flew us to Camp Pendleton, where I drank endless glasses of cold, cold milk, ate chocolate cake, and those sorts of things. The mess hall for returnees actually had a juke box that was playing over and over again,
Groovin’
down a crowded avenue
Doin’
Anything we’d like to do
We’re gonna talk and laugh our time away…
Peace. Photo Associated Press
We were given the opportunity to re-up (no takers on that deal!) and processed out of the Corps. Adios mother-fuckers.
I flew to Dallas. There was none of the airport harassment one heard about. In my mind I was scary looking, but probably I just looked like a nervous, skinny guy who wouldn’t look anyone in the eye – because, in my mind, I didn’t want to frighten anyone.
Welcome home. 

MD Anderson moments, words seen walking around San Francisco (Viva la Vulva!), thoughts on Madame George

Castro Street

Photos are of words seen while walking around San Francisco – “the city without an end.” Click photo and drift on through the slideshow.
——————

Sitting in the lobby at MD Anderson Cancer Center (with a friend), a few feet from a baby girl about two years old, sick with cancer – like a poster child for chemo, like a flower, like a dream. People walking by, many with their own problems. They look at her and I’m looking at them and I can see some of them sending waves of love and sorrow to her and her Mom and Dad. Oh!
——————–
In the secret space of dreams
Where I dreaming lay amazed
When the secrets all are told
And the petals all unfold
When there was no dream of mine
You dreamed of me.
——————–
Somewhere else in the lobby a woman leans over. A lovely view. I smile at her, she at me. A break in the day.
——————–

MD Anderson is overwhelming. More hope and fear and love and and and and than can be imagined. And at the same time, a familiar and comfortable environment for me. I feel such pride in my students who work at MD Anderson, at Parkland, at Children’s, Baylor, Africa, India, all those places – saving lives, giving hope, feeding the poor, cleansing the lepers…
——————-
Last year the city installed plaques on Castro
honoring gay men and women of note

Walking along Castro, behind a couple sharing a vape. He was wearing a Humboldt State University Marching Lumberjacks jacket. A plaque set into the sidewalk commemorates a week in 1998 when the Castro gay community newspaper (Bay Area Reporter) had no obituaries. In the 1980s into the 90s there had been an average of 12 obits every week as AIDS ravaged this community more than any other.

The street is alive tonight. On the corner at Castro and 18th where the shrines are, a couple is singing and playing guitars and laughing. I put money in the guitar case. At the bus stop there was a car with trance going and I walked over by it so I could hear the music better. An older man in the car was smoking a joint… 

Then a little kid almost ran out in front of another car. A man standing at the bus stop said, “That was close” and I’m like, yeah! The man and I talked a little. He and his daughters were going to the Haight. He asked me if I know where the Jefferson Airplane house is. I said, I wasn’t sure, maybe Page, but somebody will know. I looked it up when I got home – it’s at 2400 Fulton. The little boy who lives in the other apartment on my floor wanted me to watch him ride his bike. This was his second day of riding and he got going pretty good. Another Saturday afternoon in The City.
When you fall into a trance… Madame George
On Market Street

There was a time, before “I Heart Radio” – gag, when sometimes you would turn the radio on and hear something like Madame George or Sugaree or Visions of Johanna. These are great songs from the past, but the point is, you can’t hear current corollaries to such greatness on the radio today – despite the fact that there is a whole lot of greatness happening today. I’ve been listening to Madame George for days now – this version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mceI44LrEKk

At the N (light rail) stop at Duboce and Church

I think I have some – some – understanding of Madame George (which, btw, was originally conceived as Madame Joy). It feels like it’s about us – all of us who came up in the strait-laced 50s and into the counter-culture 60s. And it feels like Madame George herself is a means of expressing ideas/feelings vs. a person the  song is about.

Lord have mercy, I think that it’s the cops!
Maybe it’s about you, me, Al, David, Leslie, my mate Jeff, your friend Janet, our times (times like no other, before or since).
And that smell of sweet perfume comes drifting through
The cool night air like Shalimar
Yes, Viva la Vulva!

As for Madame George herself, maybe she’s us, too, through time or maybe something else. It’s about what we had…

And as you leave, the room is filled with music, laughing, music,
dancing, music all around the room.
It’s about what we lost… and now we have to go… We have to go…
Say goodbye, goodbye
Get on the train
Get on the train, the train, the train…
This is the train, this is the train…
Whoa, say goodbye, goodbye…
Get on the train, get on the train…
(CK)
——————-

David Robbins (sent by Jean C.): “I could listen to Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks” forever and never grow tired of it. Listening to it somehow connects me to a deep truth, old as the universe itself. I’ve more than once found myself listening to the album and falling into a reverie, completely lost in its time; weeping uncontrollably, grabbing my chest to slow my breathing. I don’t know what it is exactly about this album. I don’t think I ever will. I feel it so viscerally, that it has become me. I am a writer, who can often write about music with skill, but I will never touch even the outskirts of what makes “Astral Weeks” so timeless, and so majestic. There’s a courageousness in Van Morrison’s deep search into the slipstream. “Astral Weeks” flies headlong into love, finding a melancholy so true it rips your heart out. I’m bruised by the beauty of “Astral Weeks”. The world isn’t the same once you’ve really heard it. The album shows us how everything in this world is tinged with a meaning deeper than we can fathom, and that we need to embrace it. All of it: death, love, hurt, despair, elation, decay, passion, tragedy, nature, spirituality — and to ultimately find connection with all things”.

I came up out of the subway and was greeted
by this poster – I asked myself, How am I doing?

———————

Jean C.: To me, for now, this is what I think: Madame George is an essence, a very exotic phenomenon. She is both male and female but most of all she is someone whose nature encompasses us all. Like you said she is US. She is YOUTH.
———————
VM: Here is what Van said: “It’s like a movie, a sketch, or a short story. In fact, most of the songs on Astral Weeks are like short stories. In terms of what they mean, they’re as baffling to me as to anyone else. I haven’t got a clue what that song is about or who Madame George might have been.
Imbedded in F (street car) stop 

The original title was “Madame Joy” but the way I wrote it down was “Madame George”. Don’t ask me why I do this because I just don’t know. The song is just a stream of consciousness thing, as is Cyprus Avenue… Madame George just came right out. The song is basically about a spiritual feeling.”


Down on Cyprus Avenue


In a wall. Marilyn Chin is a beautiful romantic
With a childlike vision leaping into view
Clicking, clacking of the high heeled shoe
Ford & Fitzroy, Madame George
Marching with the soldier boy behind
He’s much older with hat on drinking wine
And that smell of sweet perfume comes drifting through
The cool night air like Shalimar
And outside they’re making all the stops
The kids out in the street collecting bottle-tops
Gone for cigarettes and matches in the shops
Happy taken Madame George
That’s when you fall
Whoa, that’s when you fall
Yeah, that’s when you fall

When you fall into a trance
A sitting on a sofa playing games of chance
With your folded arms and history books you glance
Into the eyes of Madame George
And you think you found the bag
You’re getting weaker and your knees begin to sag
In the corner playing dominoes in drag
The one and only Madame George
And then from outside the frosty window raps
She jumps up and says Lord have mercy I think it’s the cops
And immediately drops everything she gots
Down into the street below
F Line stop


And you know you gotta go
On that train from Dublin up to Sandy Row
Throwing pennies at the bridges down below
And the rain, hail, sleet, and snow
Say goodbye to Madame George
Dry your eye for Madame George
Wonder why for Madame George
And as you leave, the room is filled with music, laughing, music,
dancing, music all around the room
And all the little boys come around, walking away from it all
So cold
And as you’re about to leave
She jumps up and says Hey love, you forgot your gloves
And the gloves to love to love the gloves…
To say goodbye to Madame George
Dry your eye for Madame George
Wonder why for Madame George
Dry your eyes for Madame George
Say goodbye in the wind and the rain on the back street
In the backstreet, in the back street
Say goodbye to Madame George
In the backstreet, in the back street, in the back street
Down home, down home in the back street
Gotta go

Somewhere in Inner Sunset

Say goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
Dry your eye your eye your eye your eye your eye…
Say goodbye to Madame George
And the loves to love to love the love
Say goodbye
Oooooo
Mmmmmmm
Concrete graffiti on my street. And it’s true! 


Say goodbye goodbye goodbye goodbye to Madame George
Dry your eye for Madame George
Wonder why for Madame George
The love’s to love the love’s to love the love’s to love…
Say goodbye, goodbye
Get on the train
Get on the train, the train, the train…
This is the train, this is the train…
Whoa, say goodbye, goodbye….
Get on the train, get on the train…





Last love letter

This was the last love letter I sent to Leslie – just under three months before she passed away, more than 50 years into our relationship.
When we first started work with refugees
Dear Leslie
Written in the car parked in front Of Lucky Dog Books (Paperbacks+): I’m driving along through Hollywood Heights. Stopped at an intersection and flashed on someone running the stop sign and running into me. Listening to U2 – songs of mercy (who sings about mercy?), sorrow, joy, transcendence – Mothers of The Disappeared, Miss Sarajevo, One Love.
Leslie at memorial for Feather, hand in hand with
Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence at Duboce Park
Oh Leslie. I’m thinking how you and I have lived The Dream. Our whole lives working for a better world, for justice (you’re a warrior, no doubt), for suffering people, for beauty – living a world of love, navigating our way through what I truly believe were the most incredible times in history – civil rights, women’s rights, sexual revolution, psychedelic revolution, gay rights/marriage equality and the list goes on and we were there/we are here, together, each in our own way, making it happen.

January 2015, San Francisco
And now, whatever it is that’s happening is as mind-opening as anything that went before. I feel kind of like you’re taking us on a ride and I’m in awe. Not always an easy ride LOL. I feel zero need to label it or do anything other than experience it and I love thinking about it.
Leslie in a jeep in Burma, on the road to Maymyo
About the fact that he and I were warriors and then psychedelic, and now dancing beneath the stars, Jeff says in that hard voice, “There ain’t many in this class.” And I say about your and my individual paths and our paths combined where we did IT ALL, “There aren’t many in this class.“ Few have done it as fully as we have.
So I thought about a car slamming into me and I thought, if I die today, I AM fulfilled. And I thought, if we never have sex again, I AM fulfilled. I hope none of this happens for a long time, and I know, backslider that I am, I’ll be grumbling again before long. But the bottom line is – and I’ve said this before – Thank you for this astonishing life. It’s been everything I couldn’t have even imagined.
Beep-Beep! Here she comes!

Other people’s words… What moves you? Die knowing something. Do things that matter to your heart.

What moves you most in a work of literature?
Advice from my 80 year-old self
“What moves me is, I think, the trifecta of memory, love, and the passage of time. The close observation of character, of the moment as it passes – suffused with love. The writer who says: Here I stood! I loved the world enough to write it all down.” Sarah Ruhl in a NYT interview – http://www.sarahruhlplaywright.com/
—————-
“Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare; pry; listen; eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.”
Walker Evans, who took archetypal photographs during the Great Depression (see one below)
—————-
I came up from the underground MUNI and there was this poster (Do Things That Matter to Your Heart) from an art project by Susan O’Malley: Advice from My 80 Year-Old Self: An Artist’s Bittersweet Legacy of Real Wisdom from Strangers Ages 7 to 88.
And I thought, “How is it going (Am I doing things that matter to my heart)?” And I answered myself, “Pretty well. Yes.”
Walker Evans photo
In writing about this poster, I found the following on the Brain Pickings site: “Just as the answers (posters like these)— some profound, some playful, all disarmingly sincere — began appearing across the San Francisco Bay Area in O’Malley’s public art installations, an unforgiving testament to the very premise of the project struck: One winter Wednesday, 38-year-old O’Malley fell unconscious and died a week before she was due to deliver the twin girls with whom she was pregnant; despite the emergency C-section, the babies also perished.”
Susan O’Malley’s words: “I started this project because I needed to listen to my 80-year-old self. At the time, I spent sleepless nights wondering, Should I leave my grown-up job with a paycheck and benefits to pursue my artistic passions? This ongoing dream felt terribly irresponsible, scary, and uncharted. But with the rapid illness of my mom, who was only in her 60s at the time, life suddenly felt too short not to take a risk. How would I feel at 80 if I did, or did not, make this choice? Before I had the courage to truly take the leap though, I turned to the words of strangers to help me navigate the way.”

Point Reyes, March 2016

———————

“This ain’t no disco; this ain’t no fooling around.” Talking Heads

A beautiful person (looking into her mind), beautiful people

“We are to love in deed and truth, not just word and speech … we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” Dan Foster
(Some of the below names are changed for confidentiality.)
3/19/2007 – An email from Leslie to Diane & Marisa
Hi friends,
Maryam was discharged today about 1:00. I saw her yesterday and had a long visit + began trying to make arrangements to have A____ (brother) admitted at Green Oaks as his condition continues to deteriorate. Maryam and Nabilah both want him hospitalized and put back on his meds but he has continued to refuse to go into the Baylor ER altho staff have assured the family that he would be admitted. I did not go to the apt today as they were waiting for the Hospice Nurse so I don’t know if Nabilah and her husband who arrived yesterday were able to take him to Green Oaks after I left yesterday- that was their plan when I left about 4:30.
Leslie in her office, 1982
So see how this sounds for a plan:
Tomorrow while Nora and I finish with patients and close the clinic, maybe the 2 of you could visit her and see that everything is in place with Hospice (I have the # for Vitas but don’t know what Social Worker and Nurse are assigned). I will plan to go on Friday and over the weekend. We need to visit whenever we can- she has begun to have increasing symptoms as the cancer spreads throughout her body. Two days ago, she began having severe pain in her right leg, a result of it spreading to the bones in that leg, and yesterday she began to have difficulty swallowing. So Min predicts that she has only a short time (when pushed for an estimate, she told me 4-6 weeks and maybe less). As the cancer progresses, Min says that she will decline rapidly so we need to schedule ourselves to go by any day we can. If we share and you take Thursday/Friday beginning next week, I’ll take the rest. It is a great comfort to both Maryam and Nabilah to have us so I think we must do whatever we can.
I’ll bring the phone numbers and address tomorrow and we’ll work out the details. Diane, Maryam loved the flowers that you brought and tells me often how much she loves us.
If either of you are praying people, now would be the time. My heart breaks for this family, scattered all over the world, who in the end don’t even have their Muslim brothers and sisters to support them. To my knowledge (and Min’s) there has only been one visitor from the mosque in Richardson and that was at least 2 weeks ago. Of course, we haven’t discussed the irony that this beautiful Muslim girl would die surrounded by a Jewish Dr., his Hindu Nurse, a fellow wounded soul from Burma and her Christian friends from Agape.
I’ll see you tomorrow. Thanks for your help.  

Leslie

——————–
We ought to lay down our lives for one another
Lay down our lives for one another
Lay down our lives
For one another

One year

On our front porch

It’s been a year. Oh, Leslie. I miss you. I’ve loved you all my life – since we were 16 – for 55 years. I can’t believe how lucky I am. My heart is full – full of love, full of gratitude, full of grief. I adore you. You are the best thing that ever happened to me. Oh, what a life we had. It’s hard to believe how good it was – how full of love, how true – nothing was undone, nothing unsaid, nothing unfulfilled. 

Our happy little family. You, me, David. Talk about love! Through deeply magical times, through everyday times, through hard times, you loved him and are loved by him in full measure. With a year of your life left, he gave you (and me) a whole city – San Francisco, the best city in the world. And now, he’s taking good care of me. You taught me everything I know about being a parent – a good father, thanks to you. Sweet Leslie, we have a Son for the ages.

How we wish, how we wish you were here.

With David in Beautiful Hue – our favorite place


I was thinking a few weeks ago that you probably thought adoration was your due. When the roses were in bloom, I would scatter rose petals where I knew you would walk when you got home, on the sidewalk, up the steps, across the porch and to the front door, and I think you were like, that’s about right – and so it was. 

I can’t say who – the announcement isn’t mine to make – but someone you loved is pregnant. It’s a girl(!) and her name will be Leslie. Someone you helped in elementary school is graduating from Jesuit and has scholarship offers (>$40,000/year) from St. Edwards and Baylor. I’m in touch with your friends and they are all doing well. Your Son and his husband are well. Your husband is doing better – after all these years I love you as much as I ever did. 

January 2015


It’s probably against the rules, so I’m not actually saying that we’re scattering your ashes in the beautiful National AIDS Memorial Grove, and on Haight Street where so many people were so kind to you, and at the magical 37 bus stop, and in the Castro – places that you loved and where you were welcomed. And of course among the roses and perennials at our home. 

About 10 hours before you passed away.
Edematous, but look at you – Hi Leslie!


We had a beautiful life together. And then, in the past few years, it got even better. There were times in those last few months when it got hard between us (I didn’t understand what was happening). Then, somehow, we both surrendered and love came down like a shimmering fall of beauty and truth. Real. And then, as our time ran out, we were pure – ahhh, Leslie, how we loved.

You died as you lived, loving and loved.

A new Leslie!


The pain is unbearable. Stabbed to death every day – and still grateful, still loving, still adoring. 











National AIDS Memorial Grove – in the meadow, on the hillside, among the redwoods. Leslie!


.

Keo

January – ceremony in Keo and Chouen’s bedroom

(Notes from my blog and what was written for the funeral.) Keo was born in Cambodia in the Khmer Rouge years. As a baby, she didn’t have enough to eat, no medicine, no home, so she was often sick. Her father was taken away by the Khmer Rouge not long after she was born. Through the miracle of her mother’s love, she lived through the terrible Khmer Rouge regime. Her mother, Roeuth and her grandmother, Lon carried her from Cambodia to Thailand. From there, they were sent to Utah, and from there to Dallas. 

Keo and Chouen were married in 1994. At first, she and Chouen lived with her mother and grandmother. Later, she and Chouen lived separately from her mother and grandmother, but still very close. Keo worked in several different jobs and everywhere she went, she made good friends, some of whom are here today. Keo and Chouen traveled to their homeland, Cambodia in 2005. Although there have been hard times in her life, she has lived a good life. She has loved and been loved.
Many people have helped and the family extends their deep gratitude. I want to also say the names of three other people who were long-time friends and with Keo until the end: Suasaday and her husband, Jimmie, and Suasaday’s Mom, Keo Thorn.


I made some notes over the past 6 weeks when Keo was so sick from the cancer. I hope these will speak to the question of who she was and what kind of person she was.

December 2015. Keo began talking… sometimes whispering, sometimes a little stronger. She talked a long time about her life as a poor refugee child – what it was like for her learning a new language and customs, going to school, helping her grandmother take care of neighbor children, struggles in school, and her hopes and dreams. 
Altar set up immediately after she passed away

She graduated from high school and passed the TASS. She went to work in a factory, where, being so young, she was given a hard time by older workers and had to fend off unwanted advances by other workers and supervisors. There were gangs in some of the places she worked and there were many problems.

These were gripping stories. She would start a new one and I would be kind of holding my breath, hoping that she wouldn’t be hurt and every time, she made the right decision. 

She also talked about visions she had – being baptized in the clear water by Jesus; being protected; making the decision to leave the gold behind. She said, “I was born this way.”

January 2016. Three weeks into seeing Keo as life slowly slips away from her body. Three weeks since she first said, “I’m ready to go.” 

I thought about Jesus’ agony in the garden of Gethsemane right before he was crucified. “Remain here… watch with me,” he said to his disciples. They didn’t do it. 

February 2016. Keo continues to waste away. A couple of days ago, I said to her husband, When I first started coming here, I think I was very helpful. Now… I’m seeing something beautiful (and so sad).

  • Something beautiful like with only a couple of exceptions, every time I come in, her husband is sitting or lying on the bed with her, massaging her legs, cradling her, wiping her lips, loving her. Her mother is there, too.
  • Something beautiful like seeing Chouen sitting against some pillows and Keo (she couldn’t weigh more than about 65 pounds now) propped up and leaning into his embrace.
  • Something beautiful like it’s all so clean, no smells, no tv, the altar moved from place to place depending on which way she’s lying (oh, so small now) on the bed… this is sacred space.
  • Something beautiful like love and faithfulness as real and palpable as the walls of this room we’re in right now.
  • Something beautiful like her husband and her mother touching her in ways I know are to memorize the feel of her.
March 2016 – ceremony in living room
She was born in hell – and her mother kept her alive through the Khmer Rouge years and across the border and across America and 39 years later here they both are on this bed in a room overlooking a playground.
————–
Keo passed from this life in March 2015. And in the end, the sum of her life is integrity. A lovely, sweet person, who loved and was loved.
Her husband and her mother were with her, holding her in her last moments – just as they did throughout her illness. 
Matthew 25:23 (the parable of the talents) speaks directly to what Chouen and Roeuth did: “His master said, ‘Well done, good and faithful servants!'” Chouen and Roeuth, In the most difficult times, you never gave up, you never quit, you never faltered. You were the embodiment of love and faithfulness.

Things I love, at the corner, dreaming, something beautiful, the Old Golden Land, I’m on the way, Beanie!

At the corner of Market and Church
Once again, some of the photos will have nothing to do with the text. I was thinking, what photos would I like to look at in a year or five years?
————-
I love (or like a lot)… babies, puppies, flowers (especially fragrant ones), parents being sweet to their child, pretty women, baking bread, San Francisco… At first I thought I would make an inclusive list, but stopped at what is here. Of course there are people, but I already write about them a lot (Leslie, David, John, Jeff, others). I love each one of you, named here or not.
————–
There was a woman on the cold January downtown corner near First Presbyterian. She had that skinny, jittery look of methamphetamine, complete with gurning around an unlit cigarette hanging out of her mouth. A man walked to the corner. He had tardive dyskinesia with tongue thrusting and grimacing (surely from too much Prolixin or Stelazine or whatever drug). I saw him give the woman a light with all the smoothness of a man in a tuxedo in some kind of old-time upscale night club.
————– 
Sourdough with currants, pecans, cinnamon

Yesterday I was listening to Neil Young singing about a dream his wife had – “It’s a dream, only a dream, and it’s fading now…” and I felt my own meaning to the words and was so so sad to think that maybe all this with Leslie was a dream. Now I think, if it was all a dream, what a dream! 
————–
My friend continues to waste away. A couple of days ago, I said to her husband, When I first started coming here, I think I was very helpful. Now… I’m seeing something beautiful(and so sad).
Something beautiful like with only a couple of exceptions, every time I come in, her husband is lying on the bed with her, massaging her legs, cradling her, wiping her lips, loving her.
Something beautiful like seeing him sitting against some pillows and her (she couldn’t weigh more than about 60 pounds now) propped up and leaning into his embrace.
Something beautiful like it’s all so clean, no smells, no tv, the altar moved from place to place depending on which way she’s lying (oh, so small now) on the bed… this is sacred space.
Something beautiful like love and faithfulness as real and palpable as the walls of this room I’m writing in right now.
Something beautiful like her husband and her mother touching her in ways I know are to memorize the feel of her.
She was born in hell (Cambodia 1975) – and her mother kept her alive through the Khmer Rouge years and across the border and across America and 39 years later here they both are on this bed in a room overlooking a playground.
————–
Speaking of vision quests, I recited/sang this to her yesterday:
Keep on walking where the angel showed
(All will be One, all will be One)
Traveling where the angels trod
Over in the old golden land
In the golden book of the golden game
The golden angel wrote my name
When the deal goes down I’ll put on my crown
Over in the old golden land
I won’t need to kiss you when we’re there
(All will be One, all will be One)
I won’t need to miss you when we’re there
Over in the old golden land
We’ll understand it better in the sweet bye and bye
(All will be One, all will be One)
You won’t need to worry and you won’t have to cry
Over in the old golden land.
(Robin Williamson)
—————-
Sourdough with currants, pecans, cinnamon

After I left their apartment yesterday afternoon, I went on to Baylor emergency for the abdominal pain that’s bothered me for about a week. Trying for a couple of days to decide if I should go. Then I asked myself, what would I say to someone in my situation? It’s a no-brainer: Go. I went. I have acute pancreatitis. Haha, I’m glad I went! Liquid diet for a few days, then small, low fat meals, no alcohol (no prob – I quit that 40+ years ago), those kinds of things. Way better than cancer of the pancreas!
Actually, I didn’t completely give alcohol up. A few years ago walking along a street in Saigon, Leslie saw a sign saying, Beer – 10,000 dong (about $.50). Let’s go in, she said. From then on, that became an evening ritual for us… in Saigon, Hanoi, Hue, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Dallas. Good times. 
Lying in the room, waiting for sonogram results, thinking, it was just a day ago that I was thinking about pancreatic cancer. And that now there is some chance I may have it (and relief that I didn’t). Sometimes Leslie and I would call one another Beanie or Cecil. Lying in the ED room, looking into the distance, looking toward the Old Golden Land, and I’m smiling and thinking, “I’m on the way, Beanie!”
In the garden

I may be a one-woman man.
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“I’ll try to be around and about. But if I’m not, then you know that I’m behind your eyelids, and I’ll meet you there.” 
(Terence McKenna)

I want to be like Mary Magdalene

I was coming twice daily as life slowly slipped away from her wracked and wasted body. Three weeks since she first said, “I’m ready to go” and now she’s whispering, “I want to die…” and “Why can’t I die?” Her suffering is infinitely sad and unnecessary. That’s the way suffering seems to go so often. I notice that despite the sadness I don’t seem to completely connect with it. I wonder if I’ve lost so much I don’t have that much connection left.
I remember in Vietnam when I became impervious to the horror, I thought…
It was dark by the time I got into the perimeter of a Marine battalion on an operation at the DMZ. I reported to the commanding officer, who told me to stay with the command group. Some of them were asleep by then, so I lay down beside them and slept the night through.
In the morning I discovered that I was sleeping next to some dead men wrapped in ponchos and laid out next to the command group. Their gear was lying piled nearby and I found a C-ration can of cinnamon roll (my favorite) in one man’s pack. I had started to eat it when some Marines asked for help lifting bodies onto the back of a quad 20 tracked/armored vehicle. There were two men on top of the vehicle and two of us below and I was holding the cinnamon roll in my teeth as we lifted the first man up. His body was tilted up and I was below and a dark liquid ran out of the poncho and down my upraised arm and I couldn’t let go or the body would have gone to the ground and the liquid slid down my arm, down my side.

It was the heart of darkness. The horror. So much for impervious.

Photo of photos of condemned children
S21/Tuol Sleng in Phnom Penh

 

Later it got worse, when the bodies and ponchos started to cook on top of the engine vents as we fought through the morning.

When I first started seeing my friend after she had become so sick, she would ask me to stay and I would. When she went home from the hospital I committed to coming twice daily to her apartment and I did. At first it was a lot of time and a lot to do. Later, there was less to do, but I’m still coming because I said I would. Now I’m only a witness to her suffering.

I thought about Jesus’ agony in the garden of Gethsemane right before he was murdered. “Remain here… watch with me,” he said to his disciples. They didn’t do it. I deeply don’t want to let my friend down like the disciples let Jesus down. I want to be like Mary Magdalene, the one who didn’t give up, the one who watched with Jesus through the awful suffering and through the end, who was witness to the suffering, the one who stayed. (And I get it that three weeks isn’t very long.)

Days of innocence, of family secrets; being beautiful; mostly good days

Annual cover, Thomas Jefferson High School
Except for the yearbook cover and the last photo, the pictures here are from Leslie’s iPhone… the world through her eyes.
Days of innocence; days of family secrets.
Everything was perfect back then and it was of utmost importance to maintain that myth – within individuals, families, communities, cultures…
Of course there were true good parts too, sweet things, beautiful things. Leslie and I fell in love during these days – when we all really did look kind of like the photo on the annual cover. We fell in love in that environment, that consciousness.
Then along came youth culture, the consciousness revolution, the sexual revolution, civil rights, women’s liberation, the war, the peace movement, all of that – we were the first rock & roll generation. It was a decade like no other before or since in the history of the world!
Now, there are still family secrets, but now there are places to go for help. Now it is a crime for teachers, doctors, nurses, etc. to not report suspected child abuse. Now there is awareness. Now the interview with the child and the police is not a bleeding nightmare for the victim (Respect and Love to Det. Lt. Walsh and Asst. DA Karnutsis – sorry about the spelling. They made it happen in Dallas). For the times they are a’changing.
A photograph of love
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Now I know what a Majestic Feeling is.
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1967… I would hear someone say, “_______ is so beautiful.” I’d think, “She’s not so beautiful.” Or someone would say, “He’s a beautiful person,” and I’d think, “What! He’s a guy. A guy can’t be beautiful.” But then my mind opened and I realized she isbeautiful; he is beautiful; and most incredible of all, I am beautiful!”
When you find out who you are,
David in our Noe apartment, fall 2014
Beautiful, beyond your dreams
If someone had asked me if I ever dreamed myself as beautiful, I’d have thought they were crazy. Yet somewhere deep inside, from the beginning, deeper than consciousness, deeper than words I did dream of being beautiful. I awakened and became beautiful (you know, now and again).
At the same time, Leslie was showing me, loving me how to dobeautiful… and I was reaching out, reaching beyond my misperceptions about myself and thus my misperceptions about others.
Another factor in the awakening was war. I came out of that war wounded, sick, soul-sick, skinny, tense, with violence barely below the surface – yet in all that, committed to somehow never lose track of the war, never lose track of being alive.
For the ones who had a notion,
A notion deep inside,
That it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.
One of our hangouts – patio at Thorough Breads
These things worked together in the creation of who and what I might be: the war-driven drive to be fully alive, Leslie’s love and the example of her life, and the changes in my consciousness.
How could anyone ever tell you, you were anything less than beautiful.
How could anyone ever tell you, you were less than whole.
——————-
People say things. Sometimes I’m staggered at what people have endured and how some things resonate all through people’s lives. Sometimes it’s extraordinarily difficult, even impossible to “choose to be happy.” Here’s to the ones who have endured – and to those who didn’t endure. And a Curse on those who cause such pain.

On Market Street

I wrote this in 2008: I was in the Parkland Psychiatric Emergency Room, in one of the little interview rooms with a woman, her daughter, her granddaughter, and one of my students. Their story was that the grandmother had learned that her husband was molesting her granddaughter – just as he had molested her daughter. “He’s not going to get away with it again, God-damn him.” There is a curse – the real thing.  
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Two hard days the past few days. Otherwise I’m doing pretty well. There have been days in the past few weeks that I’ve actually not been more than ready for the day to be over(!).
2015
Today I finished cleaning the house for Christmas. Part of the cleaning was moving everything off Leslie’s shrine so I could dust and rub the wood with oil, then put everything back. Of course everything in/on the shrine is of the greatest significance and I was sad and grateful and lonely for some hours.

I’ll be out shopping or whatever and see so many couples. It’s like that’s our natural state – in relationship.