Life by the Drop

It was about 11:20 am last Tuesday when I got a call on my cellphone while at my desk.  It was an 'unknown' number, a long one, but it didn't bring anyone to mind.

I answered with my standard greeting: "Hello, this is Phillip."

There was a long pause on the other end.  "Phillip!"

I recognized the voice immediately.  It was M_______.

"M________!" I said cheerfully.

"This is M_______," he said, as if he hadn't heard me.

" M_______!" I repeated, not surprised that he hadn't heard me but curious to know why he was calling, "How are you?"

"Not well," he said with a heavy sigh.

"Really, I am sorry to hear that!" I was, but still, not surprised.  "What's the problem?"

"I'm not well.  It's my heart...I need to come to Austin."

"OK..."

"But I'm broke.  I need some money for the bus."

"How much?"  I cringed as I waited for the answer.  I hate to admit it, but we are cash poor these days,.  Money is tight.  The last time I heard this request from a friend, it cost me $1200.  That money I had a year ago, but we sure don't have it now.

"$300 would be great." M_______ said, with no hesitation to think about the number.  I raised an eyebrow, even though he couldn't see it. He was ostensibly asking for money for a bus trip, but it seemed to me that this was probably more than the cost of a bus ticket. However, I didn't question the number or his motive.

"Ok," I said, also thinking about how I was going to explain this to Valery.  "I can do that."

"Oh Phillip, you are a life saver!" M_______ said, obviously buoyed by my response.  "Thank you!"

We talked about the details a bit, about when, how and where to wire him the money.  He was most insistent that this was to be a loan, and assured me several times that he would pay me back.

"The operative word here," he said with some satisfaction, "is loan.  And, I will pay you back really quick!"

In spite of his assurances, I had no expectation that this was to be anything other than an outright gift.  This is because I know better than to attach myself to the outcome of a repayment especially from a friend.  It never works out.  Knowing, then, that such an attachment will only lead to disappointment and pain, when I said yes, I had already done the mental math.  I knew we could technically 'afford' to give him the $300.  I didn't want to, but I just couldn't say no.

I had also done the 'marital' math.  That is, calculating the cost of asking Valery to contribute to the welfare of someone who was not a member of our family.  Of course, I knew that it wasn't an unreasonable cost.  Valery would not object.  She would, I know, understand it's the right thing to do.  Besides, I knew she would support me no matter what her reservations might have been.

On the upside, M_______ was a particularly old friend of mine who has been to our house on more than one occasion.  But on the downside, he was also a difficult guest, having come over to the house already drunk on several of those occasions.

Adding to this was that the fact that we were not particularly close.  M_______ lived in Mexico for the past twenty years.  Although we were often invited to come visit him, we never did.  Our only contact with him came when he was 'home' to visit his Dad or to get his passport renewed.

As he thanked me, then, I wondered about M_______'s contact with Dad.  M_______ Sr. is now in his nineties.  Specifically I was curious to know if the reason he'd asked me for money was because he'd already been rebuffed by his father.  It sure sounded that way to me.

"So, are you going to stay with  M__?" I asked.  M_______ Sr. is known by most people simply as ' M__'.

"Ah, no," He said, drawing out the short answer after an impossibly long pause.  This was not a good sign.

"Well, then, where are you planning on staying?"

I was now wondering if the purpose of the call was not only to raise some money but to secure a place to stay as well.  My mind raced ahead.  Could he stay with us?

The answer was yes, technically, he could stay with us.  The spare bedroom had only just been vacated the week before.  Our previous 'tenant' had been stayed about a month, but only needed the room until he could move to San Antonio.  And he paid rent.

But as far as I could tell, M_______ was not able to pay rent.  Nor did it seem likely that, if allowed to move in, he would actually move out anytime soon.  Without an income and in poor health, he could end up staying indefinitely, which was simply not something I could contemplate.  That was up until I heard his response.

"I dunno.  I guess I was going to stay in my storage unit."

I sighed loudly, shaking my head as I spoke.  "M________, you can't do that!"

"Why not?"

"Well, for one thing, it's against the law.  And the storage place won't allow it, because it's against the law."

"They won't know."

"But I will," I said. I was exasperated but already resigned to caring for my clueless friend.  "I can't let you sleep on the concrete floor of your storage unit.  Especially if you aren't well.  You'll stay with us."

"Oh Phillip, that's nice but you don't have to do that."

I bit my lip, thinking about how this was exactly what I would now have to do, because his lack of planning had given me no choice.  It's an ironic feeling, being upset with someone who needs help so desperately.  I want to help.  I have to help because he has no choice.  But I also don't want to help because I have no choice.  Selfishly I thought more of my own inconvenience than I did about my friend's desperate need.  Instead of wondering about his welfare, I wondered why he was doing this to me.

All these thoughts accompanied me that afternoon as I went to the Western Union station at the local HEB.  I withdrew $300 from our account (after Valery had generously agreed to transfer the money from our savings) and wired it to Guanajuato.  Shortly afterward I called M_______ to give him the 'magic' number he needed to retrieve his money.  I used the call as a excuse to pry.

"So, why aren't you going to stay with your Dad?"

Now, I knew that his father was elderly and in very poor health.  Having cared for Lynda and seen Valery care for Billie, it seemed inconceivable that M_______ had no interest in caring for his father.  But I knew better.  They were never close, and I had no real reason to think that M_______ would be able to care for his Dad, even if he had the will, which he definitely did not.

For example, he was in Austin late last year for a few weeks.  During that time I counseled him to return to Austin and stay here to help with his father's care.  He said yes, he would think about it, but before I knew it he returned to Mexico without warning.  I found out he was gone by calling his Dad,  M__ Sr.

At the time, I asked   M__ Sr. if he needed any help.  He told me that even though he was in poor health, he didn't need my help because he had a live-in helper.  While it was nice to know he had a caretaker, it sure made me sad to think that M_______ Jr. was essentially abandoning his father in his most urgent time of need.  And here he was, doing it again.

"Well," he said slowly, "His caretaker doesn't like me."

No wonder, I thought, without saying it.  After all, not only is M_______ an alcoholic, but he's a smoker as well.  He's unbelievably messy, unwilling to clean up after himself and particularly selfish about his space.  The thought of him staying with us repelled me, just as it had  M__'s caretaker.  Even if Valery said yes, I knew that we just couldn't allow him to move in.  And yet, I'd already offered the invitation.

"Alright," I said, resolved now to take him in, against my better judgement.  "I understand.  But you cannot stay in your storage unit.  Listen, just give me a call when you are getting close, and I'll come pick you up."

"You don't have to do that."

"I realize that.  But I will.  Now, when do you leave?"

"Well, if I get the money tonight, I can leave tomorrow."

"And how long does the bus trip take?"

"I dunno, about a day and a half."

"So you'll be here on Thursday afternoon?  What time does the bus from Laredo arrive?"  I was thinking there would be just one bus coming in every day.

"Yeah," he said, "Yeah I will be there on Thursday."

"Ok, then.  Call me when you get to the US.  Like from Laredo or something, just to let me know when you'll be here."

"Phillip you are a lifesaver," he said it again.  "Thank you."

"Of course," I said.  "Just call me when you are getting close.  We'll talk more when you get here, ok?"

"OK.  Thanks again."

As soon as I hung up, I began to question my decisions.  First of all, the money.  Now, while we have some money in savings, we certainly don't have it there to help out others.  That just sounds selfish, especially because we are planning a trip to Paris in the fall.  Surely, while it seems mean to even question the use of our savings to help a friend, it's also true that we are actually saving for for our goal, sacrificing other, current needs in order to plan for the future.

In many ways, this is the exact opposite of what M_______ had done.  And now, here he was, asking me to give up my savings because he had failed to plan for the future.  It's the Ant and the Grasshopper parable all over.

Then, there was the distinct and uncomfortable possibility that when he was comfortably ensconced in our spare bedroom, he would have no incentive to leave.  In fact, his health might even prevent it.  In the worst case scenario, he might even die in our house.  Nonetheless, I was committed to caring for him.  I resolved to make it work, even if that meant setting a limit on how long he could stay with us.

That was on Tuesday afternoon, June 12.  The next day, after a day of wondering if he'd actually gotten the money, I did some checking and discovered that he had picked it up. I did some quick calculations and figured he'd be calling me the next day, once he was in Laredo, or perhaps even from San Antonio.

The next day was Wednesday and I didn't hear from him.  No worries, I thought, he must have gotten on the bus but hadn't gotten here yet.  It was a long bus trip, after all.

On Thursday, Valery and I made plans for me to take the truck so I could pick him up, but we still hadn't heard anything.  I told a few friends that I was a little concerned, but this was such typical 'M________' behavior that it wasn't unexpected.  Many many times he had simply showed up on arrival, and many many times he had simply failed to show up when and where expected.  It was odd, because I really thought I'd made it clear that he was to call me the minute he got here, if not before.

On Friday I was starting to get concerned.  Not so much for his well being, but I was now thinking that he had not gotten on a bus at all, but had used the money to pay bills or worse, go on a drinking binge.

I decided to call his landlady in Guanajuato to see if he was still there.

I reached her, but don't speak Spanish and she didn't speak English, so our conversation was not only brief, it was also fairly disconnected.  She was able to let me know he wasn't there, but I didn't know if that meant he'd left for the US or was just out at a bar.  At one point, I asked in a leading tone, "Estados Unidos?" When she replied, "Si!" I assumed he was still on his way.

On Saturday, I was getting annoyed.  Knowing that he'd boarded the bus, I was now upset that he hadn't called yet.  It seemed like such a simple thing, going to a phone booth during a rest stop and calling me, yet he hadn't done it.  But why?

I went through a dozen scenarios with each passing hour.  Probably, I thought at first, it's because he just didn't want to bother me. Perhaps, I thought next, he'd gone over to his Dad's house after all.  Then the dark side set in.  Perhaps, I grumbled, he'd come to town and was actually staying in his storage unit.   Now I had convinced myself that he deliberately hadn't bothered to contact me.  Now I was annoyed.  By the end of the day on Saturday I was angry, certain he was here but was just being typically inconsiderate.

Sunday found me in a different frame of mind.  This was the 17th, now five days after he first called me and I hadn't heard a thing.  It was also Father's Day.  It occurred to me that he might have gone to visit  M__, so even if he wasn't staying with him, he might know where he was.  I decided to give M_______ Sr. a call.

One of  M__'s caretaker answered the phone.  She wanted to know who I was, naturally.  I explained that I was on old friend of M_______ Jr. and that I was calling to check on   M__ Sr. and wish a happy Father's Day.  I heard her tell him the former but not the latter.  For this I was most grateful just a moment later.

"Phillip!," he said in a weak but fairly bright voice when he came on the line., "How are you?"

"I'm fine  M__," I said.  "I'm calling to check on M_______.  Have you heard from him?"

"Oh, it's a horrible day,"   M__ Sr. said. "A horrible day."

I knew what he was talking about in an instant, but I still had to ask.

"What's happened?"

"He died.  M_______ has died."

I was in shock.  All I could say, over and over again were the very words that had so failed to soothe or help me when Pierre died: "I am so sorry".  The truth of it was just that.  I was terribly sorry.  For  M__, for me and of course, for M_______.  "I am so sorry." I said.

My thoughts tumbled about aimlessly in my brain.  For a few minutes, coherence was unreachable.  Nothing seemed to make sense.  "I am so sorry." I said again, wishing I could stop saying it, wishing I could think of something, anything else to say.  But all that emerged was "I am so sorry."

I forced myself to stop saying this and tried to concentrate to what to say next.  Nothing came.  After a moment or two I broke the silence to ask where it had happened.

"In Mexico.  He died in Mexico."

I don't know why I needed to know this.  It didn't really matter.  Morbid curiosity, I guess, was at the root of that question, and the answer didn't help one bit.  I suddenly had a vision of him collapsing in the bus station, being rushed to a tiny hospital and dying on the way there.  Of course I have no idea if that's what happened.  I was silent.  I simply couldn't think of anything else to say or ask of  M__.

With another "I'm sorry," I told him I would call back.  Before I knew it, I had hung up the phone and was alone with my thoughts.

And such awful thoughts came!  Thoughts of guilt, for even questioning M_______ in his moment of need.  I had thoughts of remorse, for not following up sooner, and thoughts of regret, for not taking care of my friend long before it came to this.

I had angry thoughts too.  Why should M_______ cause such pain for his father?  I know this pain all too well.  I know how difficult it to receive this news.  Even though his son was 55 and not 20, the effect is the same.

 M__'s word was apt: "Horrible."  It's certainly how I felt, especially receiving the news from him on, of all days, Father's Day.

I admit I am still having trouble with M_______'s death.  It isn't something I can talk about.  Perhaps it's especially because I can't talk about it that it's giving me such trouble.  I feel the need to write about him, but so far this little account is all I've been able to muster.  I imagine a much fuller picture of my friend, including all the stories of our time together.

 M_______ was a remarkable person, but he had a rather unremarkable life.  In some sense, this is why I am having trouble reconciling my feelings.  On one hand, I feel sad that he died so young, so lonely and having done so little with the enormous talent I know he was given.

On the other hand, this is exactly why we were no longer close, because he simply wasn't keeping up.  I don't mean that in a social sense, or even in terms of a career.  I had no unrealistic expectations for my friend.  I knew from my first days as M_______'s friend that he was not like other people.  I knew that wasn't going to be the kind of person who would have a lot of friends or follow a straight-arrow career.  But to be honest, that's what I liked about my friend.

In spite of my love for him as a friend, he also managed to frustrate me over the years.  It was difficult, watching him waste his talent with inactivity and booze.  He was a trust fund baby, which meant that he really never had to work, and never did.  Although his income was modest, it was steady, and coupled with his natural inclination to sit around, smoke cigarettes, drink coffee and booze, he managed to live on it without working for most of his life.

He moved to Mexico a few years ago because he could live more cheaply there, although his stated reason was to learn Spanish, the only Spanish he used was in the Guanajuato bars, where he became known as 'Max'.

I knew M_______ to be a very eccentric and brilliant individual.  He alone of anyone I'd ever met was capable of holding in his head enormously complicated and interesting thoughts.  But he was very slow.  Slow to speak.  Slow to walk.  Slow to act.  It was if he lived in another dimension of time, somewhere between rocks and trees.  I lived (and still do) at the pace of a hummingbird, so we were almost polar opposites and personalities go.  But somehow, our friendship worked.

Part of it had to do with my deep respect for M_______ as a thinker.  The fact that he thought so deeply about things amazed me, for this was something I was simply not capable of. And, while he spoke so slowly and took so long to come to a conclusion when he was making a point drove most people to shake their heads and give up before he was finished, but it only added to my impression of him as a deep-thinking genius.

Certainly, he was a talented artist.  He was an amazing draftsman.  He was certain and fluid with his pencil, lifting human form out of a blank page with and effortlessness that I have only seen one other person (my brother Steve) do.  I have three of his paintings hanging in our home.  One is above our bed and I look at it every day.

However, I don't think of him every day.  At least, I didn't, till his death.  Although it's been a while since we've been close, our friendship was of the kind and duration that doesn't simply fade from view.  I was, however, hearing from him in late-night drunken phone calls from Mexico, vaguely aware that he was living on the edge.  Oftentimes I would check out news reports of strange deaths here in Austin, (men crossing the highway, for example) thinking it might just be him, having returned without telling me and then getting himself killed.  It would, I thought, be such a M_______ way to go.

In the end, though, he did die in a M_______ way: alone, of a heart-attack in a bus station in a foreign country.  Sadly, he died before his father.  Of this feeling I know something, but the feelings of grief I have for my friend are more complex than I imagined.

This account you've just finished, Dear Reader, is, of necessity, an incomplete memoir.  I will, in the coming days and weeks, include in this journal as many of the stories about our friendship as I can recall and have the time to write.  Just this, this lengthy and far too self-centered account of his death is grossly insufficient.  But it necessary, for both of us.

For you, you now know something of how he died.  For me, I have unburdened myself at your expense.  In turn, though, I will add to this drab account some of his life and color, for the stories of our friendship is filled with delight, humor and above all, genuine love.

Blowing Me Away

Some things are so mind blowingly awesome that they do not need any sort of fanciful or mythical explanation to make them so amazingly wonderful to comprehend.  This week, two things have reached that level for me.

1.  The Human Microbiome Project has just finished the first-ever survey of the microbes that live on and in us.  In case you haven't heard, we are not all human.  In fact, were not even mostly human, from a genetic material standpoint. I know, it's a bit of a stretch because we are talking about a rather thinly defined 'biomass', essentially.  From what we know about this stuff it might as well come from another galaxy.  Actually, it might, but that's another speculation for another essay.  

From what the researchers can tell from the preliminary data--that is, the weight and mass and, to some extent, the make-up--about the creatures that live with us, they comprise somewhere between 2 and six pounds of our body weight.  

That either sounds gross or it sounds great.  I think it sounds great.  Finally, this is proof that we are actually the Royal We, with far more than a mouse in our collective pockets.  

Seriously, it shows how simultaneously diverse and dependent we humans are as creatures:  we are not only what we eat, but we are what's eating us.  

This blows my mind because shows how dependent we are on creatures so much smaller than us we'd never even know they were there.  Until, that is, something goes wrong, and some of those creatures die off or multiply so rapidly that they overwhelm other sets of creatures living alongside them and not coincidentally making our lives possible.  Then we get sick.  

It seems that the truth about sickness is this:  when We are ill, that means that whole host of creatures is undergoing serious change.  Huge numbers of microbes are either dying off or multiplying rapidly, causing mayhem in the Body that depends on their mutual understanding.  

In my mind's eye, when these creatures have a war, I imagine the great armies of the Bahagavad Gita, arrayed on the field of battle.  I sympathize with Krishna, who counsels Arjuna and looks on the scene, powerless to help or hinder, but desperately interested in the outcome of the battle, for it is actually his existence that is on the line.

There are many other implications of the human microbiome that require some thought and commentary, but this is just my first pass at it.

2.  Voyager 1 is about to enter interstellar space.  In case you've forgotten about it, Voyager 1 was launched in September 1977.  It is still out there, sailing on in deep space, and sending back information via radio signals.  It is the most distant man-made object from Earth, currently in the heliopause but about to leave even that most distant reach of old Sol.  

In 1990 it sent back an image (known as the 'Blue Dot') from outside the solar system, in which the Earth was reduced to a single pixel.  Mind-blowing as this may seem, it's not what is taking the top of my head off today.

For truly a mind blowing moment, think about this information, taken from a recent NASA press release:

"Data from Voyager 1 is currently taking 16-hours and 38 minutes to travel from the spacecraft's antennae, through 11.1 billion miles (17.8 billion kilometers) of space and to NASA's Deep Space Network on Earth."

Dear Reader, did you really stop and think about that?  I think perhaps not, because otherwise your mind would be blown, clean away.  Protest not.  Think about it some more.

Seriously, this blows my mind because it's not just a big number, or a long distance.  It's the symbolism that cannot be overstated.  Even though we will eventually lose touch with this thing altogether and most humans will not even know of its existence, that tiny little metal and glass object, made by the human hand and flung out into space for no other reason than doing so has an amazingly important meaning for us humans.

After all, it hasn't been that long ago that we wandered out and up from Africa, sleeping, trading and eventually replacing the Neanderthals that had held the territory for eons.  And just like that, in the twinkling of a star, Voyager will loose the bounds of the sun and drift free, waiting to be captured by the invisible tendrils of another star.  

Who knows on which distant beach it will arrive on?  I will be there with it.

Ditch Digger

When I was little, a common refrain from my mother was that if I didn't "get a good education"--in other words, "do well in school"--I would "end up being a ditch digger". There was no lower form of employment in Lynda's opinion.  

And, though it wasn't one of my proudest moments, I did, in fact end up digging ditches.

Well, 'end up' is really not accurate, because I only did it the one time, right out of high school.  I don't dig ditches any more.  To this current state of employment, more than anything, I attribute my education and by extension to Lynda and Bill.

But the more central point is that Lynda was right.  After I got out of High School, I could have gone right into UT with a scholarship, but I elected not to, choosing instead to buy a van and travel around the country with a friend.  The van we bought consumed my savings and died on the street shortly after purchase.  The friendship faded from view not long after that.

My parents and younger brother had moved to England during the summer after I graduated, so when the van trip fell through, I was stuck.  I had no place to stay and no place to work.  I was staying with a friend, looking for a place to live and a job.  I also had no skills to speak of.  Though I had worked as a busboy at The Barn, I had no experience as a waiter and found it was very hard to get hired at a 'real' restaurant.  I resolved not to work in a fast food place unless it was the last possible choice, so this meant actually eliminating the other choices, like ditch digging.

To be fair, I didn't set out to dig ditches.  I set out to get a job.  I had heard from a friend that it was possible to get work in construction that paid pretty well.  All you had to do was go down to the local laborers union, get a union card by paying your first month's dues (like $20) and show up at the hall early in the morning when the construction contractors came in looking for day laborers to take to their various job sites.

So that's what I did.  I got my union card and went to the hall down on South Lamar.  At first, I didn't get any work, because I didn't show up early enough and wasn't agressive enough about getting up to the front when the contractors came by.  For a few days, I sat in the hall and played dominoes with the old guys until the mid morning, when it was apparent that I wasn't going to work that day.  

Eventually I got up early enough and was pushy enough to get hired.  I jumped into a truck with about half a dozen other guys and we headed into town.  I was the only white guy on the truck, and when we got to the site I was most certainly in the minority.  I was definitely the only white guy among the day laborers, who were mostly black.  The welders and carpenters tended to be white, while the painters and the concrete guys were mostly hispanic.

We were dropped off at the corner of Sixth and Congress, where the new American Bank Tower was going up.  In stark contrast to the shiny gold 'saltine box' look of the newest bank building over on 6th and Colorado, which was emulating the high Dallas fashion of the time, the American Bank building was solid and black, a fine representation of the conservative spirit of its Chairman at the time, former Texas Governor Alan Shivers.  Of course, when I arrived, it was neither solid nor black.  It was just a hulk of concrete, rising out of the dust for nearly a square city block.

Our first assignment as a team was to dig a ditch.  We were given tools.  Some of us got shovels and others got pickaxes.  I got a pickaxe that weighed almost as much as me.

Now, wiry is a good physical description for me back then--thin but stronger than I looked--but I knew just holding the thing that it was going to be tough.  To be sure, I'd seen a pickaxe before and perhaps had even tried to hack at the earth with one at some point, but to be honest, this was the first time I'd ever even thought about how to use this tool properly.

The ditch to be dug was in a patch of caleche fill dirt that had been filled into a pit previously dug out with a backhoe.  Now, though, it had to be dug out by hand because there were some rebars, pipes and wire conduits in the space under the dirt that had to be avoided.  The crew, perhaps six of us, gathered around the space.  Those with shovels proceeded to lean on them in a classic fashion, while those of us with pickaxes reluctantly started in on the caleche.

I went first.  I stood over the dirt, raised my pickaxe over my head and chopped down with my full force, only to have the tool slam into the ground, shudder though my body and yield no effect other than to elicit howls of derisive laughter from my colleagues.  The black guys thought it was especially funny, seeing a skinny white kid with no clue as to how to hold or wield a pickaxe, and they told me so.

Red with embarrassment and filled with that determination I get whenever someone tells me I 'can't do' something, I struggled on.  Even as I felt the heat of the moment burning me up, I fought to keep the tears down and my courage solid.

After a few minutes, I looked up to see how I'd done.  The little scratch I'd made in the ground was indeed pathetic, and the guys were not shy about telling me so.  Some of them started to tell me I should just go home ('lil cracker, what you think you doing here?') but one guy, big and built in the most opposite human physique from me finally stepped up.  He took the pickaxe from my hand and said, "Here boy, lemme show you how to do it."

And he did.  He showed me how to hold the axe, how to raise it above my head while sliding one hand along the handle, then how to let it fall, guiding it with the hand but not forcing it into the ground.  In a few rapid strokes, he dug a deep hole, excavating the space with an efficiency I didn't know possible.  It certainly wasn't possible for me, at first, but it was easier, once I tried the technique he taught me.

And, once I started to make progress, the others guys started working too.  Other guys with pickaxes attacked the patch of dirt, and the guys with shovels actually used them to clear out the space.  In a few minutes, we had exposed the tangle of conduits and rebar hidden by the caleche and we were all standing around the hole, leaning on our tools, waiting for our next assignment.

I never had to dig another ditch, fortunately, even though I worked on that site for a few months.  After a couple of days with the first crew, I hooked up with a sweeping crew in the interior, then I was given the assignment to clean painted numbers off of columns in the parking garage.  This solitary job was all I did until I quit to go to work in the torque convertor rebuilding shop on Maufrais Lane.

Of course, what I learned from this experience was two-fold.  First of all, Lynda was right.  I realized that I would need that college degree if I wanted to avoid doing this sort of labor for my entire life.  But I also came to realize that even something as simple as digging a ditch has to be done right or not at all.  

There is something be be learned even in the lowest of tasks, and the dignity I was shown by that unknown teacher is a lesson I carried with me for the rest of my life.

Siri, What's My Name?

You are
The Rock God
King of the Universe
Master of All You Survey.

You are
The One
The Only
More Than You Know.

You are
Light Itself
The Morning Star
The Evening one, too.

You are
The Spreading Chestnut Tree
The Sparkle in Your Mama's Eye
The Golden Child
The Chosen One.

You are
The Past, Present and Future
Calendars, Clocks and Sundials
Mark Your Time.

You are
Pure Genius
The Second Coming
The Next Big Thing.

You are
All there is
and then some.
All Day
Forever.

You are
Kind, Compassionate
and Forgiving
Generous, Empathetic
and Modest
to a fault.

You are
You.

Plane, Line, Point

Sometimes
I run my hand
flat
open
across the blank page
before I write on it.

The emptiness is a smooth,
cool
infinite Plane.

All surface,
No edge.

My words form a rough,
hot
finite Line.

All edge.
No surface.

These are my two worlds
These are our two universes
existing
side-by-side,
so close
sometimes we think we see
words on paper.

But words are an illusion.
Often enough to obscure
Seldom sufficient for change.

Plane
and
Line
never intersect.

The Do's of Life

The other day I started working on a Do's & Don't's of Life post as a way of keeping track of some of the more basic things I've learned in my fifty plus years of thinking about it.

Alas, so far I haven't got past the Do's.  I don't want this post to languish in draft, so even though this list seems truncated, treat it as a work-in-progress, Dear Reader:

Work - Every day everyone has some work to do.  Even if it's no more than getting up, getting dressed and making your bed.  You don't have to have a job to do your work.

Be Humble - You may be good but you are not the best.  If you think you are the best, that is proof of the contrary.  Everyone can improve.

Act - If it needs doing, do it.  Act on what you know needs doing, not on what you've been told to do.

Show Restraint - Not everything needs to be done or said.  Sometimes the best action is the absence of action.  Know when to be restrained.

Volunteer - Some things we do just because we know it's the right thing to do.  Volunteering is more than helping an old lady across the street, it's an attitude.  There's profit in helping others, but it's not monetary.

Allow - No one will do it your way but you.  If you don't want to do everything, you have to allow others to do things their way.  Allowing others to have opinions counter to yours will allow them to remain your friend and ally.

Forgive - Everyone makes mistakes, but not everyone forgives.  If we don't forgive, we can't get past our own mistakes.  Small slights and grave injustices must all be forgiven in time.

Look - Keep your eyes off the ground and on the horizon.  Look at people.  Establish a sense of self awareness that includes others.

Listen - Words take time to process, so it may take a moment to understand what someone is saying.  Listening means doing more than planning what you will say next.

Read - Words are just one small set of signs and symbols we must decode daily in order to cope.  Reading facial expressions and body language is as important as listening to words.

Wait - Some things you must go get; most things you must wait to come to you.  Impatience destroys inspiration and deflects action by preventing it from unfolding in due time.

Be Quiet - Silence is not the same as quiet.  You need not suppress your voice to keep it down.  Important things may still be said while speaking in turn and without raising your voice.

Empathize - You don't have to agree with others to understand that they feel differently about life than you do.  Knowing this, try to feel what others do as a way of measuring and moderating your actions.

Improvise - There is no script to life.  Constant improvisation is required just to keep up.  Making plans is good for the mind, but be prepared to throw them away the very instant action is required.

Smile -  It never hurts to smile.  Sometimes we feel that way, as though smiling is a betrayal of our inner angst and anger, but that is just the angst talking.  In fact, smiling drives the anger from your face and consequently, from your mind.  Others will appreciate it and so will you.

Earworm

It began with an earworm.

See the dark night has come down on us. The world is living in it's dreams.

These words, sung by Gerry Rafferty over a deep and constant bass line and a gauzy Irish pop accordion melody are part of the opening bars to his song, The Ark.  This song had been swimming around in my head for weeks in what was beginning to feel like an endless loop.

Although it probably had actually lasted for only about three or four days, this is an eternity to someone like me who does not listen to music on a regular basis.  It was especially annoying because I had not actually heard the song for several years.

But there it was, boring out the inside of my brain--a horrible contradiction in terms if ever I heard one--every time I walked down the sidewalk or a set of steps, brushed my teeth or performed any sort of activity rhythmic enough to lend itself to a miserable four-bar soundtrack.  Over and over and over again.

Now, if either Reader is not familiar with the phenomenon I am referring to--the earworm--you are fortunate indeed, but I'll wager that the other Reader knows of the curse and may even be so afflicted from time to time.  Would that I could claim to have never experienced it, I am nonetheless grateful that the condition is only intermittent.  I cannot imagine the frustration that some kind of permanent condition--tinnitus--would have on me.  The sheer tenacity of this particular repeating sound loop was rendering me quite anxious to be rid of it.

I have been afflicted by earworms before, of course, and I am only able to call them that because I heard the term on a wonderful radio program called RadioLab, where they discussed the topic in some detail.  In the course of a twenty-minute program, the hosts of the show talked about causes, but since no one really knows the why, they dealt more with how--as in, how to get rid of an earworm.

It comes down to two methods:

1) Listen to the song.  Your brain obviously wants to hear it, so just give in.  Once you listen to it, it will go away.

2) Listen to another song.  Your brain is obviously stuck in a loop, so it needs to be reset.  Once you listen to something else, it will 'record' over the earworm and it will go away.

Way #1 suggests that there is a reason that your brain is stuck on the song.  It's like craving salt when you've been exercising.  It's your body's way of telling you that something is missing.  Something is needed.  Like a song.  Just go ahead and find it and listen to it already!

Way #2 suggests that your brain is just like a tape recorder and that you can just 'wipe out' an earworm by replacing it with another, equally catchy set of notes.  Your brain is just stuck like a car with a slipping clutch trying to get up a hill.  It just needs a little shove to get it started.  So go ahead and whip out the earphones and listen to something already!

Without getting into the philosophical implications of the two methods, I will say that what both have in common is the idea that to get rid of an earworm, one needs to listen to some music.

This poses a problem for me.  I don't listen to music.

Now, that's a pretty radical statement and will require some explanation as well as some qualifications.  First of all, it's not strictly true.  I do actually listen to music.  In some ways, in our time, (not just our culture any more) it is impossible not to listen to music.

Music is everywhere, and I don't just mean all the people with earbuds and earphones in and on their heads all the time.  I mean that even in public places--perhaps even especially--music is ubiquitous.  It is impossible to escape.  In every store and every restaurant and gas station in the world, music is in the  background.

Sometimes the music so loud that it seems like it's actually in the foreground, but I am sure that's just me.  I am particularly sensitive to music, so I am unlike most people, who don't actually hear the music they are 'listening' to.  This is because music is, for them, a sort of background noise, a soundtrack for their lives, if you will.

I am generalizing, of course, but it seems that for the great majority of people, music is almost like a requirement for activity of any kind, physical or mental.  People use their digital music players all the time, when they run, exercise, work and work out.  Many people also listen to music while they work, whether they have an active job, like in a kitchen, or a passive job at a desk.

Why is this?  I think it's a modern problem, one that predates the digital world, but not by much.  In many ways, the rise of the recording industry and proliferation of music forms and styles in the previous century was a prefigurement of the nature and pace of twenty-first century life.

The 'need' for music seems to be tied to the contemporary 'need' for multitasking.  It's another way of saying that work--or working out, as the case may be--is so boring that it requires an other source of stimulus to make the activity pleasurable and perhaps even possible.

I am not one of those people.  My relationship with music, if I may call it that, is stuck in a mode that even predates recorded music.  I simply cannot treat music casually, and this can cause a problem.  My reaction to hearing music is stronger and deeper than it ought to be.  My problem is, I can't help but actually listen to music.

In fact I actually cannot imagine not listening to it.  That is, I find it distracting at the very least, and often disturbing, to hear so-called 'background' music that I cannot listen to.  It almost literally drives me crazy when I can 'hear' music that is so faint that I can only actually hear the bass beat, or so loud that that's all I can hear.  Or it can be so repetitive (Xmas) that I have heard it a million times already, or so just so plain garbled that no one can actually hear it.  Oddly, to me anyway, when 'heard' this way, music ceases to be a source of comfort and actually becomes a source of pain.

Sadly too, even when I take the time to listen to music, it can bring up discomfort and pain in a way that nothing else is capable of doing.  Music, alone of all the arts, is capable of making me cry.

Images can make me smile or laugh, get angry or even feel sad, but they cannot make me cry.  In a movie, for example, the images are moving, but it is the music that brings the water to my eyes.

It's not that I hate to cry, or that I cannot cry.  Perhaps I have some deep psychological reason for wanting to suppress my tears.  Whatever the reason, I have to say that I just do not cry very often.

I did not cry when I heard that Bill died (I did throw up, though) and didn't shed a tear until I saw his body in the funeral home.  I didn't cry when Lynda died, though I admit to shedding a few tears alone in the car out in front of Christopher House when she was so critically ill.  Even then, it wasn't a flood of tears but a welling up, a kind of fullness that cannot be contained and has to escape in a series of gentle heaves and a soft application of hot wet eyes.

I didn't cry when Pierre died, though I felt I needed to.  I recall collapsing on my knees and weeping softly, but it wasn't the world-ending voice-ravaging primal scream like a scene from a movie.  It felt like that though.  The feeling--that moment-- was both obligatory and inescapable, but it was also (thank God) limited in scope and finite in length.

After that moment, it seemed as if my tear ducts had simply dried up.  They have lost their function because there is no need.  Tears are meaningless if there is no emotion to back them up, and I have by now, some three years on, so carefully restrained that emotion that tears seem superfluous.

They are not, of course.  My tears are still there.  My tear ducts still work.  I know this because last week, I listened to some music to rid myself of the earworm, and I cried--really wept--for the first time in many years.

It was after work, and I was headed home much later than usual.  I had stayed late to participate in a little talent show that the students from our program put on every year.  It's a bit of a spoof on Miss America, and as the contestants participate in the various rounds including talent, swimsuit and interviews.  It was a delightful show.  The audience and judges (of which I was one) got a lot of laughs.  The kids are beautiful and funny, talented and especially brave to get up and compete in front of their peers.

After the event, I headed back to my car.  Back came the earworm.  Each step I took reminded me of that song.

See the dark night has come down on us...

I decided to do something about it.

The world is living in its dreams...

I took out my music player and earbuds.

Time to go down to the waterside...

I plugged them into me and started listening.  Way 1.

To find the ship to take us on the way...

I started crying before I got in the car.  I listened to The Ark, but I didn't stop there.  I let the album roll, through Baker Street, and Mattie's Rag and even Midnight Train.  But it was the last song, the saddest song on the album, Whatever's Written in Your Heart, that really got to me.

The wave of grief that hit me was like a tsunami.  It was so large and so dark and so overwhelming that I was lost in an instant, swept up and carried along like the tiny bit of protoplasm in a maelstrom of life and death that I truly am.

I don't really remember the drive home.

The release was too vast for me to take, and my brain was overwhelmed.  Like a character in some Victorian novel, I literally swooned and lost my consciousness and myself.

By the time I got home, my face was wet with tears.  I had been heaving and sobbing like I was a two-year old child, and in many ways, that's where I was.  Thankfully, I found myself at home.  I stumbled inside.  Valery was comforting and helpful.  In her arms I began to find my way back out of the dark.  I must admit, it took several days of virtual climbing to get out of the pit I had inadvertently fallen into, but the fact that I am writing this is an indication of my recovery.

I am thinking perhaps that this incident has finally altered my perception of music.  I am hopeful that this means I can again listen to music without fear of some unseen trap.  I am hopeful that like most folks, I can enjoy music as a means of escape and relaxation.  However and whenever that works, we'll see.

For now, I am grateful for one thing.  That damn earworm is gone.

How Many?

How many heartbeats
between that day
and this?

How many blows
don't leave a trace?

How many footsteps
between that place
and this?

How many marks
won't wash away?

How many breaths
between that clay
and this?

How many points
make up a space?

How many daydreams
between that face
and this?

How many blinks
make up a day?

The Truth About Things

Things are here to break your heart.

It's a simple sentence and a simple truth.  Everything you have will eventually be lost, get broken or be stolen.

I learned this fundamental bit of knowledge many years ago, but it is only recently that I have managed to understand and articulate it.

I suppose I could best begin by asking you, Dear Reader, if you have ever had anything which was not lost, broken or stolen.  Oh, likely as not, you'll say yes, there are some things--usually inherited--that you own which can still be accounted for, things which are still fully functional and in no danger of being stolen.  And, I'd have to admit that you are probably right.

At least for the time being.

But in the longer term, what will become of that thing?  That dining table?  That vase?  The painting?  What about that gold and lapis ring?  The art?  The books?  Are all of these things destined to break and in so doing, break our hearts as well?

Yes.  Yes indeed.  Heartbreak is all things are, and all they ever will be.

Actually, the problem has not to do with the things themselves, but with our sense of ownership of them.  When we attach ourselves to objects by calling them 'ours' and making of them 'possessions' we create an attachment--a bond--to the object.  And therein comes this inevitability: This attachment--no matter how well meaning the 'owner' may be--will eventually be broken.  The result of the broken bond will be pain.

To be sure, this bond may not be broken until after the owner dies, in which case it is safe to argue that the thing is no longer capable of heart-breaking.  But the fact is, even in death, as the attachment is broken, the pain of detachment is still felt.  It may be felt by those who inherit the object, or by those who lament the loss of the owner by lamenting the dispersion of those formerly precious objects, now rendered with less meaning (if not rendered entirely meaningless).  The fact that the owner doesn't feel the heartbreak after death does not diminish it one bit.  The pain of detachment passes with the object.

So, loss is pain.  And the pain is from detachment.  Now, without attachment, we might reason, there would be no pain.  It's a simple dictum for a painless existence.  Do not become attached to anything and you will never feel pain.

But, is that realistic?  Sensible, even?  In the world today, to attempt to live without things is virtually impossible.  Even the homeless have some things that they carry.  These things may not be of any value to the rest of us, but that does not diminish their value to their owners.  Stealing from a homeless person would hurt them as much as a wealthy person.

We have cultivated the illusion in our society that our attachments to our things (and even those of others) is a good thing.  But is it?  It certainly can feel good to own things.  Having a few things gives us some comfort and peace of mind, after all.  A house, clothes and food all come to mind as things which we would not easily give up our attachments to just simply because we know they will, in the end, lead to some disappointment.

Now, I have to I admit to being attached to many, many things.  The truth is, even though I claim to be middle class, in real terms, in historical and even by comparison with the other seven billion inhabitants of this planet, I am a wealthy man.

I have a nice house, food in the refrigerator, clean sheets on a nice big bed.  I have heat and cool and light and two automobiles.  Even though I don't have a lot of things, I definitely have more than I need.  And I certainly wouldn't want to give these things up.  I like my level of comfort, and this means relying on those things.  It means relying on them even as I know that this attachment will eventually lead to some sort of pain.  It's a trade-off that I am willing to make.  A little pain in exchange for a little comfort ain't such a bad deal, after all.  We all do it.

But I would not trade any or all of those things for what really matters in my life: people.  There are a lot of reasons to be happy about who I am and the place that I live, but the truth is, things are not among them.

The loss of a thing, no matter how important and valuable, simply doesn't compare with the loss of a person, which puts the whole matter into some perspective.  I know that it was not until I lost someone suddenly that I finally understood the difference.  After that, the loss of a object--any thing--was so insignificant as to not even register in relative importance.

But if the attachment to objects is certain to lead to the pain of separation, might not the same also be said of human attachments?

No.  Our attachment to people is the exact opposite of our attachment to things.  Our links to people are vital.  I mean this literally, that links to other people are responsible for our health--for our very lives.  Even though some people cannot or will not live socially, the links are still there--felt by others if not themselves.  It's what keeps us alive.

For those of us that recognize and embrace the value of these personal attachments--in spite of the risk of loss and pain--for those of us who desire to live and love and laugh with others, the attachment and the loss are simply the price we pay.  And it's worth it.

What is not worth it is our attachment to things.  We accept the pain of loss and separation from people because we know that the benefits are so great, they completely outweigh the costs.  But things, well with them it is just the opposite.  It's all heartbreak.

I may not know exactly why we are here, but I do know this:  it sure ain't for the things.

Post script: Dear Human Reader, you might enjoy the irony in the fact that the first and only comment to this post was placed there by a thing: a bot/bit of software.  Is a 'bot' a thing?  Might 'Jason's' comment be titled: 'In Defense of Things?'

Why I Work

Why do I work?

For that little red Radio Flyer wagon, the one with the polished wooden rails and shiny black handle.

It was sitting on a shelf above and behind the soda fountain in the Abilene Drug Store in Abilene, Texas.  The year was 1961.  I was five years old and was being treated to a Coke float by my Dad, Bill.

This was a rare treat.  Although mindful of the special treatment I was receiving, as I slurped my drink and used that long spoon to artfully gouge the bobbing blob of ice cream in a glass taller than my head, I kept my eyes glued to that wagon.  At some point, with the verve that is typical of many precocious children (specifically a trait of mine) I decided to test my special status and asked Bill if he would buy it for me.

He was gentle about telling me no.  He explained that the wagon cost money.  In answer to my bold-yet-innocent query, 'So what?' he told me that we--the family--could not afford to buy me--the individual--that wagon.  We didn't have the money.

Now, this may not have been my first explanation of money, but it was the one that has stuck with me ever since.  This first denial of a thing due to lack of money imprinted upon me forever a very important understanding about life.  I realized that having something I really wanted required money. Immediately after this revelation, I was struck with another, even more basic understanding, one that has arguably affected me more deeply and for longer than any other impulse that I can recall (other than sex, but that's another story).

I realized that money came from work.

Now, I am sure that by this time in my life, I'd been told about work.  But the thing is, neither of my parents had a regular job in that respect.  From my earliest memory, they had 'worked' at their own business: the Abilene Bookstore.  The bookstore was actually connected to (and in many ways, a part of) our home, so when Bill and Lynda went to work, it simply meant opening the door to the bookstore, turning on the lights and unlocking the front door.

Thus, my earliest model for work was seeing my parents do the various chores around the store: stocking shelves, organizing books, placing orders and doing a lot of sweeping and dusting.  It never occurred to me that they were doing jobs, or that their activity was in any way related to money.

In fact, I had no practically no inkling that money was related to our lives at all.  To be sure, I knew that money was necessary to get things at the grocery store, thanks to an incident that happened when I was about four:  I took a pack of gum from a shelf in the grocery store without telling anyone.  When it was discovered that I was chewing gum in the backseat of the car, I  was busted.  I had to admit to my crime, return to the store with my mother, pay for the gum and apologize for taking it.  After that searingly embarrassing moment, I knew that money was necessary to get things from a store.

So, although I knew what it was like to want something, it wasn't until I saw that little red wagon that I knew what the lust for money was like.  Seeing that wagon that day--so tantalizingly out of reach (in more ways than one)--ignited a fire in my brain.  I was insistent that I wanted it.  Bill was equally insistent that we simply could not afford to buy it.

He did, however, tell me about a way that I could get that wagon: I could save for it.

Bill explained that by accumulating a little bit of money--like pennies, nickels and dimes--every day, over time, it would add up.  And, if I saved long enough, I would eventually have the money I needed to buy the thing I wanted.

He told me that he would buy me a piggy bank.  He even offered to jump-start my project by donating a roll of pennies to put in the new bank.

We finished our sodas and I reluctantly tore my gaze from the wagon.  We headed over to another part of the store to buy a piggy bank.  The one we settled on was iconic.  It was a hollow amber glass pig with a slot for putting money in and no place for taking the money out.  This meant that once the money was in the bank, I would have to break the pig in order to get the money out.  Bill said that this would help me save, since I wouldn't be tempted to take the money out until the bank was full.

He was right. Although I did manage to extract a few coins from time to time by shaking the bank upside down, the inefficiency of this method of bank-robbing--in addition to the fact that I really wanted that wagon--meant that over time I actually managed to put in more coins in the bank than I took out.

Most of the coins in that glass pig were actually contributed by Bill.  Sometimes he would give me a few pennies from his desktop change dish.  Rarely, he gave me a nickel or a dime.  And, on those super-rare occasions, he would give me a whole quarter.  Being a bright and ambitious kid, I realized, of course, that this was a game, and a potentially easy one at that.  The more coins I could gather in the shortest amount of time, the sooner I'd get my prize.

Seeing how quickly the bank began to fill when that entire roll of pennies was introduced to it in the beginning of the enterprise emboldened me to ask my Dad from time to time for another roll.  At first this request was semi-successful.  Then it it no longer worked.  My shameless begging was treated with a smile and a promise of 'perhaps'.  Soon it grew into an annoyance.  He told me that I couldn't expect him to just give me money.

My parents told me that if I wanted money, I would have make it.  That is, to do something in exchange for it.  I would have to earn it.  To this concept, I was immediately and enthusiastically agreeable.  Why not?  To an ambitious lad like me, the possibilities seemed unlimited.  I immediately offered to do all the things I was already required to do--like making my bed, organizing my laundry, brushing my teeth--in exchange for the new object of my desire: money.

Bill and Lynda quickly put that critical misunderstanding to rest.   Those things, they said (no doubt with a wry smile and a small bit of admiration for my ambition) were off the negotiating table, so to speak.  After all, those chores were my responsibility to the family.  As such those tasks could not be sold for profit.

Undiscouraged, however, I resolved to find other things to do--tasks not already in my contract, so to speak--that were also apparently helpful around the house.  I came up with chores like sweeping the kitchen, helping dust books in the bookstore.  I even helped my parents take inventory in the bookstore every month because I could climb around and count the books on the bottom shelves.

Eventually, I took charge of mowing the lawn (a task I really hated because the mower was so loud and difficult to maneuver) and helping with the annual raking of the Pecan leaves that flooded our backyard every winter (a task I loved because it meant many 'pecan feasts' with my brother on the stone barbeque grill that dominated our backyard).

I helped Lynda hang out the laundry and scrub out the bathtub.  I helped Bill count the money in the cash register change drawer and bring in the books from the second-hand book table that sat in the front yard of the house/bookstore.  For every 'job' I received a few coins.  I promptly put them all in that amber glass piggy bank.

Soon the bank began to fill up.  I reveled in each clink, thinking about the wonderful day when I would finally get my wagon.

Eventually, the bank was jammed with coins.  I had packed in the last possible piece of copper and took it down to Bill to show him that it was time.  He went to the garage and got a hammer.  We took the laden glass bank out to the driveway and placed it on top of an upturned garbage can lid where I smashed it.

It was a glorious feeling, liberating all that money toward the object of my desire.  I wanted to scoop it all up and carry it down the street to the drugstore and get my wagon right there and then.  Bill somehow held me back, and we carefully extracted the coins from the glass without severing an artery.

We took the money inside to the kitchen table, where the coins were sorted, stacked and tallied.  Months of saving were finally measured.  The result was devastating.

Not only was there not enough money in the bank to buy the wagon, but it wasn't even close.  I turned to Bill, who had assured me that this plan would work.  He had even told me--in my many moments of high anxiety about the seemingly small sum of these savings--that when the time came, even if it were not enough, he would help me make up the difference.

Well, when the time came, I learned an important--if difficult--lesson.  It was a double blow, a little about Life and a little about Bill.  He was not able to make good on his promise.   This was in part because the amount in my little glass bank (being made up mostly of pennies and nickels) was so small, but it was also because, despite his good intentions, my father simply didn't have the money to give.

This was a tough lesson to take.  It certainly felt like a betrayal to me, and though I am not proud of my reaction, I know that I internalized it as such.  I don't want to overstate the effect however.  It's not like I never forgave him, but I learned from this experience that promises--even from loving and well meaning people--aren't always kept, often for very good and logical reasons.

The net effect of this lesson was actually positive.  Although my faith in him had been shaken, I continued to worship my Dad and followed him around closely for many years. This dual feeling of love and mistrust that I had for Bill would have a long run, and this incident was an important early indicator of that how our complicated relationship was going to develop.  While had most of our differences when I was at my most difficult--my teens and early twenties--these were mostly resolved by the time of his death in 1981.

Needless to say, I did not get the wagon.  I processed this event mentally and emotionally as a disappointment and an opportunity lost.  Although I may have repressed much of the memory, this event was crucial in ways that are not as obvious as it might seem.  Ultimately, this moment raised in my consciousness an important revelation.  I resolved that I did not have to accept future such losses.  I realized that I could--had to, really--control my own monetary destiny.

Now, with that realization pressing me forward, I came to the next logical step. I needed a regular source of income.  This too seemed almost trivially easy to my six-year old brain.  I simply resolved to be responsible for getting money on my own.  I realized that I didn't need to beg my parents for money, or badger them into inventing jobs for me to do.  I realized that I all I had to do was just go get a job.  Then I could make all the money that I needed for all the things that I wanted.

I'd love to claim that this thunderbolt of a realization occurred on the very day and at the very moment when that little broken amber glass bank failed to fulfill my dreams, but it just ain't so.  This powerful understanding about my character did not come to me anywhere near the disappointing experience with the wagon.  It was actually a couple of years later--when I was eight--that I finally decided to take matters in to my own hands.

I decided to look for work.

Abilene had, at the time, a road not too far from our house that was lined--on both sides--with small businesses: cleaners, used car dealers, pet shops, barber shops and dress stores.  I set out early in the morning and arrived on this street as the shop owners were opening up their stores and getting organized for the day.

The scenario was always the same.  I walked in and introduced myself.  As the adults' eyes and smiles grew ever wider, I explained that I was looking for work.  I told them that I was prepared to do whatever I had to to make some money.

Place after place, time after time, I was presented with gentle smiles, pats on the head and back, and even some genuine encouragement.  But no jobs.  I somehow set my disappointment aside with each rejection and remained undeterred.  I decided that it was just a matter of asking enough people, a matter of making all the rounds.

So I did.  From early morning until late evening that day, I walked up and down the entire length of the strip, going into every single business to ask for a job.  Eventually, I ran out of places to visit and light to see by.  It was getting dark by the time I headed home.

In those days, we children were sent out to play in early morning and were really not expected back home until dusk.  As crazy as that sounds to today's generation of new parents, this is just how it was.  As kids, we really did not suffer from an absence of moment-by-moment attention, nor were we placed in any sort of exceptional risk.  I like to think that had someone tried to kidnap me, they would have found me to be so difficult to handle that they would returned me promptly, as in that O'Henry tale about the Ransom of Red Chief.  My difficult nature aside, kidnapping just wasn't a valid concern for me or my parents.

But coming home after dark certainly was.

Dusk is not dark.  That sounds obvious, but to a mother--even one as tough as Lynda--used to seeing her boy come bounding in starving and bouncing around the kitchen before dinner, dark that evening became a very serious moment.  Lynda experienced what every parent dreads: that moment of panic when your child is missing.

She was standing on the porch as I walked up.  Absent, however, was the pride I expected her to bestow upon me when I told her I'd been out looking for a job.  Instead, I got a serious scolding and was sent to bed without dinner.

Later that evening, I finally saw a glimpse of the pride I'd hoped to see in Lynda's face when she brought me some dinner in my room.  She had calmed down and explained how frightened she'd been.  of course, she made me promise not to go off and do it again.

She needn't have worried.  I got all the realization about the futility of that exercise that I needed from the shopkeepers that day.  I knew that getting a job was not going to be as easy as I once thought; perhaps not even easy at all.  I could tell that it was going to take time, and that making money would take some persistence.

Child labor laws being what they were then, this is when I started selling things door-to-door.

The first thing I sold was TV Guide.  On the back of comic books in my day, there were ads for TV Guide salespeople.  It was something kids could do for money.  They way it worked: they sent me about a dozen Guides, and it was up to me to go door-to-door to sell them.  For each one I sold, I got to keep a few cents.  The ones I didn't sell I could return, but if I didn't sell at least a dozen, they would not keep sending me the product.  For several weeks, I managed to sell my twelve copies and in some weeks I did even better.

Selling door-to-door was very hard work, not just because it meant a lot of walking, but also because it meant taking a lot of abuse from folks who quite frankly had no desire to be solicited, even by an ambitious eight-year-old child.  In six months or so, I saw a lot of strange people and some very strange (and messy) houses, but I never made enough money to make it worth the abuse.

I didn't give up my dream of making my own money, however.  During the years that I was legally still too young to work, I also tried selling Grit (a kids newspaper), Fuller Brush, Amway and even Time Magazine subscriptions.  When we moved to Austin in 1968, I immediately got a paper route, delivering about 50 Austin-Americans on my bike every afternoon after school and with Bill in the car on the early weekend mornings.

Sadly--or perhaps to my eventual benefit--none of these ventures ever actually panned out.  It wasn't until I was semi-legally old enough to work (15) that I got my first paying job, as a typist for a patent attorney with an office on Congress Avenue.  By the time I got that job, it was already part of a long personal history, part of a deep desire to work.

And to think, it all started with that little red wagon.

Billie's Eulogy

We held a wonderful memorial for Billie on Saturday.  More than sixty-five people came, including her sister Mary and her three children, Jane, Peter and Carey.  Valery's sister Alexandra came with her partner, Steve Welch, and, of course, Chris was there with Colleen (who also did the flowers). 

I was honored to give the eulogy as Billie asked me to do many months ago. 

For those who could not be there, here is what I said:

I am here before you today to talk about Billie.

In what must surely be the best model for these kinds of speeches--in terms of both density and brevity, Lincoln famously said that “The world will little note nor long remember” what he had to say.  True though this is of the other speaker’s words that day, Mr. Lincoln’s brevity was neither despairing of the death he had come to acknowledge nor unnecessarily deprecating of the importance of his words on the occasion.

He wasn’t saying that we shouldn’t be here, conducting this ritual; or that we shouldn’t be here, saying these words.  The World doesn’t need to hear these words, the World doesn't need note them nor does the World need to plan to long remember them in order for those words to be valid and truly meaningful.

The World may not care, but we do. The important thing is that we take the time to say these words.  In such rituals as these, words make the meaning of life.

Billie (like Lynda, my other mother) knew that I am a man of too many words, so as I speak, I can hear her calling out from the peanut gallery: “Too many words, Mr. Dubov!  Too many words!”

Billie,  I will do my best to keep it short.

So, what words?  What can I say about Billie that is not hopelessly hyperbolic or morosely solemn?

Well, I could talk about her name.  Her full name was Wilma Gayle ‘Billie’ Houtman Caselli Clark.  Whew, that’s quite a mouthful.  It seems impossibly long until you do a bit of parsing.

How we got from Wilma Gayle to Billie, I am not sure, but I do know this:  if my first name was Wilma I’d change it to Billie.   I can’t say as I blame Billie for doing it.  Of course, it wasn’t her doing at all.  The nickname came from her Dad Neal, who (according to her sister Mary) started calling her “Wild Bill from Vinegar Hill”.  Now, where Vinegar Hill was and why Wild Bill should be from there is still a bit of a mystery to me.   I believe there is an old song which refers to “Dirty Bill from Vinegar Hill...he never had a bath and never will."  Well, though we all knew Billie as a clean sort, this actually refers to Billie’s long-ago tomboy days.

Yes, of the four sisters, it was Billie who was the tomboy.  To those who knew Billie as one of the most beautiful women ever to grace their vision, such humble beginnings may come as a surprise.  But it says volumes about her that when the tomboy look no longer hid the truth, Billie accepted her name, her beauty and used them both  with the skill and grace that came to define her presence in all our lives.

Houtman, of course, was her family name, which is still shared by many others in the small town of Holland Michigan.  Her grandfather was instrumental in establishing part of the town's identity--the Dutch Windmill--and her parents Dorothy and Neal were both active members of the community.  Tulip Time was always an important event in the lives of the family as the children were growing up; the girls often dressed up in traditional Dutch costumes to entertain the crowds that gathered to see the parade along 11th street in Holland.

Caselli was Billie's first married name.  Pierre Caselli was a Frenchman, transplanted to the United States as a young man, where he met Billie while attending Hotel School at Cornell.  She was in art school in Boston and they met at a restaurant where she was a waitress and he was a dishwasher. They moved to and lived for many years in Austin, where he was the manager of the Lakeway Inn, and she was a teacher.  She had three children (Alexandra, Valery and Christopher) with Pierre, who died of cancer at the early age of 49 in Austin.

Clark was Billie's second married name.  After Pierre's death in 1981, Billie and John Clark-- who had known each other for years already--began to see each other socially and eventually married in 1984. Dedicated to his wonderful ‘Bride’, John adopted and was adopted in turn by the Houtman clan, moving up to Holland be a part of their lives and to support Billie in her many artistic endeavors.

But I didn’t come to talk about Billie’s name.
I came to talk about Billie.

I suppose could talk about me, especially because there may be some of you who are wondering just who I am and why Billie asked me to deliver this eulogy.  After all, I am just an out...er, in-law.

I am a late-comer to this story, an outsider in many ways that go beyond the different last names.  But from the moment I rolled her daughter Valery up to where Billie was working (painting a sign on a door in a Westlake Hills strip mall) in a shopping cart and introduced myself, Billie treated me as her one of her own children, with all the love, respect, and no small measure of the high expectations that come with that position.

I was privileged to be loved by Billie, who offered it without condition.  In gaining her love and trust, I also felt pressed to be good.  I felt the need to do well, for her, for her daughter, for her grandchildren, but most of all for myself.  Billie was my ‘other mother’ She inspired me to be a better person and I loved her every bit as dearly as I did Lynda.  I will miss her.

But I didn’t come to talk about me.
I came to talk about Billie.

I could talk about Art (with a capital A), because Billie was an Artist (with a capital A).  More than that, she was a talented and prolific artist.  In a time when that title (“Artist”) is often assumed by individuals who are neither talented nor trained and by many more who have never actually worked at the craft, Billie was, to put it bluntly, a real artist.

Born with a great deal of God-given talent and put into practice by virtue of her own determined efforts, Billie always considered herself to be an Artist.  She never lost sight of her goal.  That means, even as she was raising her family, wiping bottoms, reading, cooking, cleaning house, taxiing kids to music lessons; even while teaching art to grade-schoolers; even while painting dentist’s names on strip mall doors, or running the Message Parlor (her sign-painting studio in Westlake), Billie was true to her passion.  Billie was always true to her Art.

One measure of her passion may be found in the body of work that she left us.  Her prolific watercolors are on many of your walls and a few are here on the tables today.  She created dozens of sculptures, many of which, by virtue of the material and the skill of the artist, will survive long beyond any of our mere accomplishments, however great they may seem to be, for such things as degrees and houses and even poems will all fade away with the steady beat of Time, while Billie’s bronzes and the images cast therein will remain for as many generations as you and I are all together capable of imagining.

But I didn’t come to talk about Art.
I came to talk about Billie.

I really should talk about family, because as important as Art was to Billie, it was not as important to her as her family was.  Billie was from a large, loving family.  She was born in 1933, the daughter of Dorothy and Neal Houtman, the third of six children.  Her sister Mary is here today and will say a few words about her, while sisters Joan and Sally and brothers Don and Ken all send their love and affection to this gathering.   Billie was always been close to her siblings (especially her sisters, two of whom lived nearby in Holland), their spouses, their children, and even their children’s children.

Billie's own three children were a special point of pride for her.  To say that they were close is an understatement of the highest order.  Billie was especially fond of the two grandchildren (Pierre and Madelaine--Valery's children) that she had an opportunity to see grow up while she lived in Austin.

(By the way, Billie's brother Ken created the video slideshow that we’ve been enjoying here today; her son Christopher collected the photos for that and the album on the table; and her daughter Alexandra provided the music.  Alex and her partner Steve Welch have been playing for us ‘live’ thanks.)

As good as her family as been to and for her, it hasn’t always been free from pain and strife.  It was in part because of this pain that because she understood the value of family in a way that most young mothers do not. After her first husband Pierre died of cancer at home, Billie had to move into a smaller house and go to work to support her family, which she did without resentment or complaint.  Later in life she and her second husband John moved to Holland to be near enough to care for her mother Dorothy.

John's unconditional love and enthusiastic support allowed Billie to flourish as an artist and to be a close part of her family.   The nearly annual family gathering during the summers in Holland was a treasured time for all us, and Billie in particular.

But I didn’t come to talk about family today.
I came to talk about Billie.

I could talk about friendship, for even though I am merely a part of her family by marriage (I snuck in through the kitchen door, so to speak), I also enjoyed the privilege of being her friend.  Many of the people here today counted Billie as a good friend.  You know that the kindness, caring and loyalty of a good friend is a rare treasure, and you know that Billie was all of those and more to many wonderful people.  Somehow, she kept up with all our lives, our children, our projects, our trips and most of all, our plans, hopes and dreams.

When you spoke with her, she would remember all those details about your life that you thought no one remembered but you.  When she did, you realized (more than once, I hope) how grateful you were for such a good friend.  We were all warmed by her charisma and nurtured by her kind thoughts and comments.  The Purples (to which my mother Lynda also belonged) was an especially important group of Billie’s friends, and they are well represented here, thank you.

But I didn’t come to talk about friendship today.
I came to talk about Billie.

I could talk about teaching, because Billie was a teacher.  And while she would have, in her typical self deprecating fashion, have discounted her abilities as a teacher, she was in fact a terrific teacher.  The importance of teachers--good teachers, like Billie--in our lives simply cannot be overstated.

What made Billie such a good teacher?  Billie made us all believe that we could be creative.  'You can’t draw a straight line?  Ok, let’s do circles.  Can’t match colors?  Ok, let’s try the color wheel.'  How to hold a brush?  What color to put down first?  How to make a mold?  A casting?  Paint an Easter egg?  All these things and more I learned from Billie.  What about you?

While she definitely took up teaching to support her family during lean times in Pierre’s career, Billie still brought her passion for Art to the classroom.  She taught her students Art because that’s what her hands knew best.  She taught many different individuals, in many different settings, from classrooms to kitchens, from pre-schoolers to seniors.

But while many learned much from Billie,  the subject was only nominally about Art.

Billie actually taught her students about Life, because that’s what her heart knew best.  If you were ever lucky enough to be in one of Billie’s art classes, or had her show you how to draw, or if you ever had her gently guide your hand with a brush or over some clay in her studio, you learned a lot more than how to make a pinch pot or a paint watercolor still life.  You learned to love Art, but thanks to Billie's guidance, you came to appreciate what lay beneath: Life itself.

Billie was a teacher, of Art, and of Life.

But I didn’t come to talk about teaching today.
I came to talk about Billie.

I considered talking about God, for Billie was a faithful servant of the Good Lord, in His many manifestations and many subtle glories.  Billie was grateful to God for more than her existence, though.  She was grateful for the world itself, for the place that defined that her being and for the people with whom she shared this place.  She often made note of the small things that most people, in a hurry at best and inattentive at worst--would walk past, overlook or simply miss.  To God, she was as grateful for the World as she was free of malice for the cancer that claimed her life.

As gracious as she was with God about the illness that took her from us, I am not.  I am tempted to rail at Him for taking Billie from us so soon.  But Billie would remind me of my manners.  She would tell me that it wasn’t God taking her from us but a disease, so if there’s any railing to be done, there are better targets than Him.

Besides, I didn’t come to talk about God.
I came to talk about Billie.

Hoo boy, I could talk about Death today.  After all is there a better time and place than a eulogy?  Probably not.  Death wasn’t something Billie ignored or pretended wasn’t going to happen.  When she was diagnosed with the Cancer that took her life, she fought with the courage and determination that defined her life.  She was as realistic as the situation required, as hopeful as she dared to be, and as resolute as she could be about facing her end.  Billie faced Death without fear or remorse and with as much dignity as any one of us could hope for.

Indeed, I can only hope that when my time comes, I will face it with the same dignity and dare I say it, style,  as Billie did.  After all, we are all facing the same fate. Quite honestly Billie (the teacher) has shown me how to do it with right, with humor, grace and charm.

But I sure didn’t come to talk about Death today.
I came to talk about Billie.

Well, it seems that in spite of all the things I have not talked about, I have managed to say a word or two about Billie.  Of course, we didn’t come here today to hear my words.  We are gathered here to remember Billie--each of us in our own unique way.

The truth is that we’ll do most of our remembering later.

We’ll remember Billie when we read something in the paper we know she would laugh at, when see a piece of art we want to tell her about, or when we hear some beautiful music that we would love to share with her.  Those moments will be bittersweet, of course.  But despair not.  In those moments, you will know that she is not gone, but that she is here with you.

It’s a fleeting feeling, I know.  But then, what feeling is not?

As we carry on (and we will), some of us will be lucky enough to see Billie live on in the mirror.  Some will see her in the hands, eyes and smiles of her children and grandchildren.  Others will enjoy the privilege of seeing Billie in their hands, hearing her in their thoughts and sharing with others that ready smile she so often graced us with.

Still others (countless others) will never have met her, but will know who she really was as they stand before one of her works.  There, they will feel her presence, resonating within them like Life’s tuning fork.  They too will come to know Billie.

Billie was a person who made each of us--and by extension, this World--better.  By better I mean that Billie brought us--each one of us here today, plus many more not present--to become wiser, kinder and gentler people, simply by her presence in our lives.  This a rare trait, but then, Billie was a rare individual.

So, what can we do for her in return? It’s not a foolish question.  Even though she is gone, there is a lot we can do for her, each of us, from this day forward.

Resolve, if you will, on this day--and every day of your life going forward--to remember Billie often and with love.  Resolve to carry on her legacy by being grateful for your life, passionate in your love, and determined to make a difference in the World.

Raise a glass today (and every day, if you will) to a wonderful person who did all that and more.

Billie, we will remember you!

Blame It

Blame it
on your broken heart
on some missing part
on the fading light
on the clouded sight

Blame it
on an empty space
You won't need but lose the race
To blame your place
on an unfair start.

Blame it
on your broken soul
on that rocky shoal
on the rising tide
on those who won't take your side

Blame it
on a false mark
You won't need but damp the spark
To blame your dark
on a dying coal.

Blame it
on your broken mind
on those thoughts unkind
on the roiling seas
on that strange disease

Blame it
on a sad reprise
You won't need but life despise
To blame your demise
on a grand design.