...consider death

A Consideration on the Death of My Father

         (written after his passing on Jan 20, 2018)

Well it may be shocking to us, but he was ready.

The word is Thanatopsis: derived from the Greek 'thanatos, (meaning death) and 'opsis' (meaning view or sight), invented by American poet William Cullen Bryant, and meaning 'a consideration of death.’ The poem it was created for was a favorite of Walter’s, though I might say it was a more of a perseveration he had on death:

          

The graves, the pictures of graves, the coffin I helped him build, the poems upon poems about death, the gravestone designed, the Day of the Dead imagery and trinkets, the shelves of books on burials, rituals and perspectives on death, Poe’s ubiquitous presence over his project, and the passing comments in conversation.

“Someday I’ll be gone” he’d allude. “I could die any time.”  And we’d reshift in our seats, growing ever familiar with his Danteian obsession. But there’s something I grew to respect about it—something honest and unabashed, like a child unafraid to call the king naked. It was his opus, in a way. Death. His great Love. He celebrated her, he did not tuck her into a corner of the fearful mind, pretending she didn’t exist with her terrible scythe until those unfortunate times in life when she forces her presence upon you like a sudden dark, cold rain—an old friend passes, a family member. No, he brought her into the light and appreciated the beauty in that blink of time when eyes grow empty but hearts do not. As many poets did before him, like Bryant, like Poe, he spent time pondering that solitary moment, and what one was doing right before it, and what happens right after. “I hope I’m alive when I die.” He wrote.

Walter looked upon gravestones, these obvious physical markers—with epitaphs so poetically concise for a entire life lived--and he recognized life unfinished, because the people underneath them were unforgotten. There was some hope in that. He honored all those poets when he gathered us in mirth around marble and exhumed the words of sleeping linguistic engineers. He revived their legacies and encouraged us all to do the same. Has Edna St. Vincent-Millay’s life truly ended, or Margerie Frost’s, or any of theirs, if The Dead Poet Guy celebrates their words?

I spent six weeks in the Poemobile with this artist, traipsing around the American West where I now live, finding the graves of poets passed. D.H. Lawrence snuggled in his shrine in the mountains of Taos, New Mexico with his feline companion. Others in traditional plots. Some scattered to sea. And in that time, I began to see my father in a new way, or perhaps just more fully. See, I was no longer his child, I was his companion and co-worker, and saw him less opaquely.

Walter was a deeply passionate man. He had an energy that was always brimming, a kettle near-boiling. He was inspired each day, ideas like children at an amusement park. And this energy was infectious to those he pin-balled passed: the waitress at the truck stop restaurant; the motel clerk on some ghostly stretch of highway; the daughter of a poet she thought everyone had forgotten. His project invigorated people all over the country because someone didn’t forget. Because someone was celebrating “my favorite poet.” He was our Nation’s literary Vasco de Balboa and our Matthew Parris: discoverer and historian. Always seeking, finding and logging, a cartographer for the pilgrims of poetry.

But he was a pained man, too, a man I often watched trapped in some frustrating chaos of chords, bags, tasks, needs, equipment, plans, sleep, health, expectations. There was a darkness he could not shake, that haunted him like Poe’s “demon in my view”, and he lived with it for so long. It was a veil between intention and perception, a thinness of heart, a shackle to speech. In the hardest moments I saw in his expression the face of a prisoner, trying so hard to find the eye of the storm, to breathe easily, to sculpt his ideas into form. To find for once that everything was where it belonged.

But in a way it was. My father belonged where he was in life. He belonged in Dedgar, in China. He belonged in his chaos, his creativity. He belonged in his projects, his love, his quirky expressions and surprising visits. He had a lot to live for, and was not eager to pass, but when the time came he too was right where he belonged. He was ready, even if we weren’t. Thanatopsis: his perseveration on death. Perhaps, it was his perspective on death. His relationship with her.

 

I imagine, as he waited on his step last week for the ambulance to arrive, he knew what was coming. I imagine he recognized his old friend and her scythe and greeted her as he had so many times at so many cemeteries. They were old friends after 600 graves. But this time she removed her hood, letting her locks fall off her shoulders, and she looked at him with those clear eyes that saw him for who he truly was. Behind her stood the muses and Walt Whitman and his father and she extended her soft hand and Walter reached up and left his pain and his legacy, behind.

…get the hell out of dodge

It’s been day after day, it seems, in deceptive listlessness. Like plains rolling into farms rolling into fields—the experience one has crossing Kansas—these recent weeks have been monotonous, though anticipatory.

My travels back from Nicaragua went as anyone’s would. I was able to spend my final hours on the stoops of the Ometepan locals, a joy I often miss on the fenced porches of the States. It takes a certain kind of life to end the day sitting outside, peaceably, watching children pass, conversing with neighbors, content with stillness. In Palestine they understood this secret pleasure. So too did those in Nepal and Jordan. I was reminded of my sweet life in the West Bank as I tried to speak Spanish, both jokingly and seriously, which are hardly different to the local. I sat through dusk into darkness; the volcano silently faded into the navy night and a host of starlight broke through the sun’s waning cover. Paradoxically, the conversation was light, but the contact much deeper, like Michelangelo’s God touching Adam. These moments of connection are so delicate, intricate, even beautiful, and they occur wherever we are able to really meet with someone as ‘other-worldly’ as a Nicaraguan, or United Statesian or wherever-ian.

However, I had to say adios beneath hopes of return and a smoky volcano. I rode the ferry across the choppiest waters I’ve ever experienced and I marveled at the fact that we docked. For a moment there I honestly had no idea how or when we’d stop and what we were going to smack into and from where I will jump to save myself. Good thing I don’t have an iPhone to get wet—I thought (yes, these are my concerns). Luckily the plane ride was smoother.

The PoeMobile gearing up for departure

Home was freezing, my back peeled completely from a burn and I discovered I had developed shingles across my side. So when folk asked me how was Nicaragua, I found myself replying with a kind of love-hate paradox. But I didn’t have time to dwell on it, really; it was packing time! My father were to be off to the West on another leg of the Dead Poet Tour—this one exploring from Santa Fe to L.A. to Seattle. And there was much to do.

As I write this, on our way to our first stop in Taos, New Mexico, we are in the windy, cold, precipitous tedium of Western Kansas. The phrase “get the hell out of dodge” was first said in reference to Dodge City which we just passed through. It makes sense. Three titillating days of sunshine in Kansas City and Wichita spoiled us. Now all I am hoping for are the sunned clay homes, mesas and cacti of my imagined Southwest as we chase the horizon.

Westward Poe!

Ever westward. Towards occidens, the setting sun. It is a historically poetic direction in which to explore. Eden was in the East, and so lay our beginnings. From our exile until Lewis and Clark, until now, even, we have been headed West. It seems it is as Kerouac says, the east of my past with the west of my future. It is in the west our days end, unreachable but chase-able. And so in the hand of Discovery is the hand of Dusk, and they are inseparable.

So let’s get the hell out of dodge and head westerly. There’s nothing here for us anyway.

…take a nap

It has been three weeks since I have seen the streets of Khalil. I’ve clicked my heels, there’s no place like home, and now I’m playing catch up from the almost sleepless tornado here. Boy was it quite the storm.

It began in Freeport, Maine as I rushed home from saying good-bye to one last person so that I could collect my belongings and catch a bus in Portland. In total, I was stateside for two-and-a-half weeks…not long to see 51 people (not including the congregations of two churches), or to spend significant time on the phone with 9 others. If I only had a twin, it could’ve been more.

A teary good-bye with my mother ended my stay in Freeport; Wesley drove me to the bus. And there Tim and I boarded a bus to Boston where we sat and ate and had the last Dunkin Donuts we’d have in a while. Train 67 to Virginia finally called for boarding after an hour of waiting and we got on. It was 9:30 pm. Some sleep greeted me on the overnight ride, but between uncomfortable body positions and frequent stops, it was stunted, at best. But it got worse. At 2:15 am we chugged into Penn Station in New York City and were kicked off. Now the plan was to ditch our luggage in the temporary baggage storage and hit the town (or find somewhere to nap), but the dreams were rudely abrupted by a sign which told us that the luggage area wasn’t open until 5:15. Three. Whole. Hours. Ok, we thought, I guess we’ll wait in the station. Perhaps we’ll get some sleep…But janitorial duties said no to that. Sitting upright, trying to chase sleep, thoughts quickly turning into dreams and back again, was how we spent our time. And all the while the kind janitor kept waking us all up and moving us out of his way. I wasn’t angry, but I wasn’t happy. I finally found some floor-space and, using my bag as my pillow, slept soundly until Tim woke me up 45 minutes later; it was his turn to sleep.

Five-thirty came and we escaped the waiting-room prison without our heavy bags and we couldn’t have felt freer. I lunged for the subway eager to get moving. The A train took us to the tip of Manhattan where we boarded the free ferry to Staten Island. This was my father’s idea, and it was perfect. The sun had yet to rise as we passed Lady Liberty; the view was beyond phenomenal. I couldn’t have imagined a better morning.

On Staten Island Tim and I strolled for a bit, passing sleeping couples wrapped up in each other’s limbs, but soon found a bench to sit on. I was itching to write (it must be a gene that my father passed down to me that makes New York so inspiring…perhaps there really is no place like home). I sat down, looked across the waters and wrote this:

Sunrise on Staten Island

Ahead the skyline’s hazy,

So familiar yet so unknown;

The Queen of Freedom’s silhouette

Is grayer than her stone.

A orange blur plays hide and seek

With an undefinéd sky;

The only thing I know for sure:

That plane which soars on by.

Soon enough sweet clarity

Will split the foggy veil,

While rising tides inch up the shore

And ferries take their sail.

Morning always ushers hope,

At least, it does today,

As rising towers join Lady Free

In a hopeful, free hooray.

Feeling satisfied with my creative release I suggested we get back to the other island; sunrise over the city must be beautiful from the boat.

And it was.

On Manhattan it was time for coffee so we found our way to a small coffeeshop and I used the internet to reserve tickets to see the World Trade Center Memorial. From there we leapt a couple of blocks uptown to the visitor’s center to pick them up, then slid back down to where we were to actually enter the memorial. Over twenty minutes of security passed before we walked the serene green and solemn fountains. 

How appropriate it was to leave the space empty where once stood a tower. Nothing can replace them, nor the lives lost, whose names are forever etched into the stone border. It was truly magnificent, especially with the new towers rising quickly around them. When this project is finished it will certainly be a marvel, however arrogant as well. Ah, the American way.

Lack of sleep was catching up on us as we left the sacred ground, so we stopped in a park by City Hall to rest before the lunch date we had with my cousin. I was approached by a nice lady who I judged for a proselytizer. I wondered how I could let her know I was on her side without letting her down, for I wanted rest. Tim wonder—fell asleep. But I quickly found that not only was this nice woman a Jehovah’s Witness, but she was also more than prepared to convert me. A half an hour must have passed before I could accept the invitation for her literature and escape the relentless, cunningly coy preacher-woman.

The relationships of the rest of that day were a bit better. I saw an old friend from Forham University, who I have great affections for, I zipped up to Times Square to have lunch with my cousin, who I have great affections for, and I had some coffee at a diner with my friend from the Bronx, who I have great affections for. My heart was full as I collected my luggage and got on the A train once again for the hour long ride to JFK airport. Had I been alone on the train I might’ve found some sleep, but that was not going to be the case. The train was packed from start to finish and I was on my feet the whole time, exhausted. Two-and-a-half hours later we were boarding our plane and taking off and by that time, I was thirsty for sleep. It would be an overnight flight to Kiev, Ukraine, a perfect place to rest, but AeroSvit is certainly no British Air. The temperature on that plane was just low enough that even the little sleep one could have had in the discomfort of those seats was denied me. I resolved to pacing up and down the aisles finding small vents which pumped out a fairly pathetic warmth. It was enough to satisfy.

Church 1

We rolled into Kiev at noon their time and God-knows-what my time. I was ecstatic to get into the sun and let my marrow warm up. It took more time than it needed to get into the city, but our brains weren’t on full capacity. We had an eleven hour layover so we decided to get out and explore and even though I was running on a long nap’s worth of sleep, the day was a success. Kiev is not the most beautiful city, but we visited an area dense with old, golden-domed churches and little street shops selling beer and trinkets.

Church 2

Church 3

It wasn’t until the return to the airport that my bubble was burst. We transferred flights from AeroSvit to El Al, the Israeli airline and their security was not about to let us waltz on the plane unchecked. It was a good thing we were three hours early because it took them that entire time to empty all of our belongings on a table and sift through them item-by-item. Occasionally an object would be brought to our attention: “Whose is this?” “Uh…mine.” And then we would answer questions about its purpose and why we own it. We each got a full-body check that included dropping our drawers like we were in the doctors office; at least the young man performing this task was nice about it. I wasn’t sure if they would let us on with our all-too-truthful answers about our intentions in Israel, but we were admitted: the very last two to board.

Anxiety kept me up on that trip, but at least it was only 3 hours long. In Ben Gurion, the airport at Tel Aviv, we went through three similar hours of questioning in back rooms with intimidating women who scowled behind sharp glasses and spoke threats through deceptive questions. But finally we were let in with both a tourist’s visa and warnings about our stay here. I gladly accepted and left. All I wanted to do was get out of the airport and find my way home.

Tel Aviv sunset

But Tim and I stayed in Tel Aviv, relaxing on the beach waiting for his “suspicious” luggage to arrive, which it didn’t. So after a sweaty, fitful night in a hostel we headed southeast to Khalil. I left Freeport at five in the evening on Tuesday; it was noon on Saturday. With a 7 hour time difference, that’s 72 hours of travel.

There is no place like home. And 12 hours of sleep never tasted so good.