Hitting the Wall
Barbara G. Howell
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Learning to Hug – Barbara G. Howell There are Deaths We Die and Still Live – Warren Campbell-Gaston Meita – Gaylene Sloane Skating on Blue Ice – John Zylstra Already Gone – Katherine Campbell-Gaston The Hillman Minx—Lesson and Life – Tom Slattery Lessons in Leaping – Emily Betz Close Tom Slattery, a biography – Heather Hall Strength – Ahmie Yeung Who-What-Why-When-Where – Chuck Homer I, Pilot Fish – Robert J. Hoerner Reflections from a Cemetery Knoll – David Prok But for the Grace – Chuck Homer
Carter Marshall – 6, Covers Barbara G. Howell – i, 10, 22, 26 Wendlyn Alter – 5, 7, 8, magazine layout Heather Hall – 19 Chalice is an Independent Arts Publication of Members and Friends of West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, published by the Editorial Board. Submissions of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, artwork and photography are accepted from members and friends of the church. Send all submissions, inquiries, comments, subscription or sponsorship requests to Chalice@wsuuc.org or by mail or in-person delivery to Chalice, West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, 20401 Hilliard Blvd, Rocky River, OH 44116. 440–333–2255. Submission guidelines are available via e-mail at the above address or on the West Shore website. Persons who submit work for publication will be required to sign a release form available via e-mail or in the Story Year mailbox at the church office. If submitted photographs depict living persons, a model release should also be provided. Subscriptions for Chalice through May 2014, are $20. Individual copies are available by donation. A free, on-line expanded version of the publication will be available at the church website, www.wsuuc.org. Sponsorships are $25 per issue with acknowledgement included in each issue. Submission Pub. Theme Deadline Date The Editors of Chalice, Barbara G. Howell Carter Marshall Andrew Watkins
Wendlyn Alter Barbara Walker Paul Marshall
April: A Time You Grew
Apr. 13
Apr. 27
May: Your Greatest Teacher
May 11
May 25
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Barbara G. Howell
I hug. I hug a lot now. I hug “hello;” I hug “goodbye.” I hug because the name of the day has a “Y” in it. Hugging was a lesson hard learned. One fall day in 1997, I did not give my brother the hugs he asked for. Steve was in bed in the guest room at my house on Center Ridge Road in Rocky River. He had been in and out of that bed between his palliative radiological treatments for the past three months. After a most difficult life, Steve had been diagnosed that August with bone cancer. As a patient of the Hospice of the Western Reserve, my brother Steve was living his last days with me. I can rationalize my refusal in a myriad of ways. Times were tough for us all. In spite of his college business administration degree, brother Steve had felt “called” to work as a night gas station attendant at the Clark Service Station on east side of Youngstown; it was the tough side of town. During one of those night shifts in about 1994, he had been nearly killed in a drug-money robbery by a man who had been released from prison two months earlier. Steve had spent more than three months in the intensive care unit of the hospital. He had “died” several times. Our mother and I had spent those months there with him. My job responsibilities had become trivial matters. And Steve’s illness and pain never went away. Three years later, the advanced-stage cancer was diagnosed by my family doctor who was trying to ease some of Steve’s pain. A researcher from the National Institutes of Health told me shortly before Steve’s death that such virulent cancers were common following traumatic injury. Telling me it should clearly be a Workers’ Compensation Claim or a law suit, the researcher explained that, with such enormous injury, the body goes into hyperdrive to heal and mend and compensate. The cancer lying dormant gets the same juice. Steve’s diagnosis was terminal and messy. No money or vindication was going to help. The strain was almost as palpable as the pain. Now, four years after that drug money attack, we were all reeling in its consequences. A new employer was trying to be understanding of my need to give care. Hospice was being supportive. Mom,
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daughter Emily and Aunt Heddy did as much as they possibly could. I was taking Steve to medical visits, doing his home care, administering his pain killers, helping with paperwork and finances and getting help for my mother’s heart condition which was, predictably, acting up. There! My rationalization is done. All of you who have cared for sick or dying loved ones have done all these things. You probably did more. I predict that extra care on your parts because you probably knew better. I failed to take the one additional step that might have made just as much difference as all that other stuff. That day in the fall, Steve was lying in bed, and I was sitting next to him. We were talking about his illness, his absent wife, his pain. It was the emotional and spiritual pain. I listened and empathized and sympathized as much as I was able. I was unprepared for his request as he agreed to try to take a nap and let the meds work. “Could you just hold me?” Steve asked. This was my 60-year-old brother! I was creeped out. No, I was just a moron. I answered that I would just sit there and talk as he fell asleep. I thought it was a compromise. It wasn’t a compromise; it was a mistake! Steve needed emotional support, and I thought verbal communication was sufficient. The results of medical studies suggest that for all our caution about touching, we come equipped with an ability to send and receive emotional signals solely by doing so. An article from the New York Times explains what I didn’t know then. “Participants communicated eight distinct emotions—anger, fear, disgust, love, gratitude, sympathy, happiness, and sadness—with accuracy rates as high as 78 percent. ‘I was surprised,’ DePauw University psychologist Matthew Hertenstein admits. ‘I thought the accuracy would be at chance level, about 25 percent.’” “Oxytocin levels go up, heart rates go down, all these wonderful things that you can't see," Hertenstein concludes. I had been more than willing to give Steve his drugs, to fill out his Medicaid forms, to feed him, but not to help bear his pain. The people from Hospice could have done all that I was doing. At that moment, I failed the test of love. In the 15 years since Steve’s death the next spring, I have cried and beaten myself up over this memory that lives deep in my heart instead of my head. I pray that I have learned my lesson. I cannot change my past error. I can just act differently now. Each time I hug, I hug for Steve. For more information, check out my sources at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/health/23mind.html http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201302/the-power-touch
Facing page: LITTLE US. Brother Steve was five years older than me and always tried to stand tall. This page: TOUCHING. My mother, daughter Emily, and brother Steve share some quality time before his death in 1998.
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There are deaths we die and still live. They are the measured deaths. The man stands against the pantry door and marks with a pencil how much of himself he has lost since the mark of the previous year. There are deaths which we die and still live. There are those who agree time and again with that which denies them until they become what they are not, slipping degree by degree into standardized sanity. Some suffocate in the layered dust of cumulative compromise, each breath of their own life, shallower than the last. Some are pecked constantly by a finite number of middling sparrows until the infinite is drained from them and they are desiccated, like an inattentive fish, not noticing the tide flowing out, dies beached, gasping useless air.
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It takes years to die unhurried, by the inch and by the pound, until one day a vague memory of your original self passes the cleft where you hide from your dream, and, like Moses’ dread glimpse of the mountain god, you will see the desecrated glory of your life. The only cure for small deaths is to die all the way down, and begin again as a dead man, dead woman rising. Rip off the grave clothes of your unlived self and walk nakedly into the life you have neglected. At first it will seem strange and it will be strange. You will eat a lemon and it will taste yellow like the sun. You will hear a familiar song you have never heard before and sing it flawlessly. You will walk and the stones will kiss your bleeding feet. At this moment of rebirth you will be very old, you will be ancient, your blood and bones will remember their future origins, and your iambic heartbeat will drum its welcome of the always arriving past. This will be your life, to press hard against the earth as you stand upon it, to rise up only a little from the soil of its enormous love. —Warren Campbell-Gaston
Wendlyn Alter
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Carter Marshall
Gaylene Sloane In keeping with the spirit of Story Year, I would like to say a few words about Meita Marshall (1917 – 2009), who was a member of our Kent Church and a friend of mine. Meita was a petite, older woman; sharp minded, with a no-nonsense attitude. She was the only communist I've ever known—or at least the only one who'd admit to it. She was fiercely prounion and she liked to sing and write short stories, poems and songs. She also played the harmonica. One of her songs was “Whiskey is my Lover,” inspired by a conversation with a man who turned to alcohol when troubled. A few lines of hers may give you a better idea of what she was like than any description from me. “There is power, wonder-working power, in the fight for peace” is from a song of hers. A line from one of her poems reads, “Though life may give me nary a thing, may I never forget to sing.” 6
Meita (in her own words) liked to write about social topics, life, nature and, most of all, people. She wrote a series of short stories about a woman who took in stray dogs, thinking they were reincarnations of her lost relatives. Though Meita was Jewish, it never occurred to me to ask if her heroine's relatives were victims of the Holocaust. One of the last things she had to say to her family was to hope that they would be able to do what they want, be able to live with sadness when it occurs and that everything would be all right in the end. Note: I sent this short bio to Meita’s daughters. One of them responded that Meita’s mother’s family, who lived in Belarus, were never heard from after the late 1930s. I did a little research on the internet. “Some 800,000 Jews—90% of the Jewish population—were killed in Belarus during the Holocaust,” according to Wikipedia. Other sources say that anti-Semitism continues in Belarus. Extreme acts are not tolerated, but the defacing of memorials is common.
Fiction by John Zylstra The City He sat alone on a bench, in the corner of the bus shelter, stooped, his legs crossed, arms on his knee, staring vacantly at the concrete before him. His gray hair was fuzzy and thin; his face unshaven, somewhat bony because of the concave cheeks, but dominated by the glassy, unforgiving eyes. Wearing a patchy, fake-fur jacket (suffering from its own eczema of sorts), his frayed, khaki trousers were held up by a rope; he wore a dirty shirt complete with a too-short, out-of-style tie of faded blue. A few stray taxi cabs looking for fares, a few pedestrians of uncertain intentions, made up the only activity along the main thoroughfare. Late city bus traffic was sporadic. Two officers in a police cruiser sitting on the curb—coffee orders on the dash— quietly observed the area. Stanley Hagen walked to the bus shelter. In his middle-thirties, not that ambitious, he worked for the government in the capacity of Regional Division Supply Coordinator. The title, though lacking clarity, placed him in charge of distribution, maintenance and replacement of office equipment in a certain geographical area. His salary was adequate, his duties defined, his workload neither strenuous nor problematic. A creature of habit, Stanley walked to the bus shelter every night after his work ended at 12 midnight, and caught the 12:24 to his suburban home, thirteen miles distant. Living in the house his parents had left him, he remained unmarried, neither smoked nor drank and retained a casual relationship with Kimberly Ann Perry, a secretary in his department at work. When Stanley got to the bus shelter, he noticed the unexpected company.
fluorescent of street lights, said something inaudible with a raspy voice, more like a loud whisper. The man wheezed, “Got a cigarette?” Earlier that day, Roy Snelling from Payroll had been around, handing out cigars with the old line, “Have a baby. My wife just had a cigar.” Stanley got out the cellophane-wrapped IT’S A GIRL cigar and gave it to him. The old-timer examined the gift carefully, while Stanley wondered if he’d have been better off without it. He felt sorry for this, society’s pariah. The bus pulled up and Stanley got on, leaving the man and cigar behind. The following day, Stanley bought a pack of cigarettes, to give the man one or two, should he be there. But the bus shelter was deserted. The next day went by, again without the geezer. Continued on page 8
A Useless Gift The derelict, a somewhat eerie figure partly illuminated by the mercury
Wendlyn Alter
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Continued from page 7 On the third day, he sat in the shelter as if he never moved the first time. “How was the cigar?” asked Stanley goodnaturedly. The old man cupped one ear. “Did you enjoy the cigar?!” His mouth opened a little; “Got a cigarette?” Fishing for the pack, Stanley opened it and gave him two. Again, the man meticulously checked out what was given him. The next day, he accepted two more. And then, with regularity, he was in the bus shelter and took two cigarettes each night. Stanley had almost finished a second pack, when on a warm, humid Wednesday night, the man, reaching for the smokes, lost his balance and fell off the bench. Hitting his head on the glass side panel, his eyes rolled and then remained fixed on Stanley’s shoe; he turned ashen and lifted his arm in hesitating manner, whispering: “Friend… You care… I know good when my eyes tell me… Gift for you in pocket…” He began raising his hand toward the breast pocket of his shabby jacket, then gasped and lay still. His soft, wrinkly skin was cold. Suddenly the bus roared past for the driver saw no one stand at the curb. Mildly curious, Stanley tried the jacket pocket and extracted a gaudy-looking ring. He smiled sheepishly—the recipient of the type of trinket derelicts hawk in airports and bus terminals. He pocketed the ring and looked at the dead man. Decision-making had always been difficult for Stanley, and now he really didn’t quite know what to do. He found himself in a bus shelter with a dead man, the last bus out gone, and apparently no one around aware of this awkward situation. “Telephone!” he said to himself. He walked one block to a phone booth. The police weren’t all that interested. He was connected to homicide, which routinely asked if there was violence involved. “Uh… no, why he…” said Stanley, not even having thought of that; and with more clicks, was connected to the City Morgue. “Sir?” Stanley explained the matter. “Your name, address and phone number, please.” “What happens now?” asked Stanley uncomfortably. “Nothing, sir,” came the voice. “You have duly 8
reported a death within city jurisdiction. We will be there in twenty minutes to pick up the deceased.” “Should I wait here?” “If you wish, sir, but it’s not necessary. Your location?” “The bus shelter on Jefferson and Strada, on the north side, downtown.” “Thank you, sir. My name is Walter Calenda. A tape recording has been made of this conversation. “Why?” “Standard procedure, sir. Thank you again for your cooperation.” From the phone booth, Stanley cast a wary eye on the bus shelter. He fished around in his pocket for more coins and called Kim. “What are you doing?” she asked sleepily. “You working late?” “I missed the bus, Kim.” “But you never miss the bus!” she protested. “You don’t want to pick me up, do you?” he lamented. “Baby!” “Oh, c’mon; it’s a nice night. You’ll enjoy the ride.” “All right,” she compromised. “I’ll get the old Toyota fired up. What bar did they throw you out of?” “Kimmy…” he warned. Laughing, she added innocently, “I gotta know where you are!” “Jefferson and Strada,” he said again. “North side. And there are no bars around here. Twenty minutes?” “Two hours and twenty minutes,” she teased. He replaced the receiver and hoped the city people would get there first. Walking slowly back to the bus stop, he soon saw them approaching rapidly from some distance with flashing blue and red lights but no sirens. A man in a white doctor’s coat and two assistants confirmed Stanley calling in and, as if rehearsed, quickly maneuvered the old-timer into the ambulance and thanked Stanley for waiting. Then, just as efficiently, they disappeared again from view. Fifteen minutes later, Kim showed up across the street. She made a U-turn and pulled up by the curb. Unlocking the passenger side, she said, “You must have been bored to death. Are you okay?” She’d thrown a housecoat over the baby dolls she was wearing. He got in, gave her a quick, flighty kiss.
“Bored to death,” he repeated. “That’s permanent.” Kim smiled. “Okay. If that’s too morbid for you, bored to tears.” She shook her brown curls as she zipped through the traffic signals that now blinked an orange-caution sequence. They drove to her apartment. Hearing Kim tinkering in the kitchen, Stanley got ready for bed. He was suddenly very tired, and, still half-dressed, fell asleep across Kim’s bed. When she came in an hour later, she smiled at him. She knew he loved her in an odd sort of way, yet the commitment of marriage was an awesome and permanent promise he could not yet live up to. She’d never been pushy; she sensed his slow, hesitating nature and preferred to live with his true self than a man preoccupied with characteristics not his own. And she was the one who’d always talked him into anything. Eventually, she could sweetly persuade him to marry. He always said, “You girls have a way of doing that anyway!” The Suburbs “You’re the only one I know,” said Kim jokingly on Saturday morning, “that appreciates the way I fix breakfast.” She eased the contents of the skillet onto his plate while he just sat and watched her, still sleepy and trying to get with it. Standing at the sink wearing only an oversized shirt proclaiming VIRGINIA IS FOR LOVERS, Kim splashed around, cleaning the frying pan, and without looking at him, said, “Um, you’re not going to tell me, are you?” “Tell you what?” he asked, dipping his toast in egg yolk. She placed the dishes and utensils in the load rack of the washer. Standing on one foot, her other leg bent, she tapped the floor with her bright red toenails. “There’s something bothering you,” she remarked slyly. “And you’re not coming out with it.” “Oh, can you tell?” He was vexed. “Stanley,” she admonished with that tone of voice when she probed, “three years next month, and you get to know one another.” Teasing, she lifted the shirt just enough to
show a flash of bare rump which she stuck out exaggeratedly. Then, dropping the shirt, she whirled around, pressed the back of her hand against her forehead in melodramatic, old-time movie fashion, and said, “Kiss me, you fool!” He laughed. “You’re never serious, are you?” “And you’re too damn serious. C’mon, Stan, what’re you hiding?” She wagged a finger. “I’ll find it! It may take a little longer, but I’ll find it!” Clearing the table, she put the last things in the machine, added soap, and, kicking out one leg, started the washer with her big toe. “Come here,” he said, in a making-up manner. She padded around and sat on his lap. Her bare arms reached around him and she snuggled closer, nuzzling his neck and gently biting his ear. “It’s too warm today to be serious, Stan. Look, it’s only 10 o’clock and already in the seventies. Let’s go swimming, eh?” “Yeah, okay.” “I’ll get my skimpy dimpies,” she said. That was her word for her swim wear that consisted of just about enough fabric to cover a flea. She walked toward the bedroom and crossed her arms before her to grasp the hem of the shirt, pulling it over her head. She knew he was watching and made a final, bonus wiggle. “Baby!” he called. They went to the nearby municipal pool. Kim’s apartment complex had a swimming pool with so many rules hardly anyone ever used it. As Stanley dove off the high board, he thought for an instant of the old man who’d given him the trinket just before he died. Just as a joke, he should go to some jeweler and ask for an official appraisal; they’d probably laugh him right out of the store. Stanley thought it was a sad time in a way. Purposeless and useless; a time period when, nationally, still, Vietnam scars refused to heal, threatened nuclear warfare stubbornly rode the tide of environmental destruction. Reflecting on these issues, Stanley took Kim to a seafood place that night, a movie, and, afterwards, to a joint called The Kozy Klub. The pianist in the lounge played “Love Letters in the Sand” with lush notes interspersed with scale runs showing sheer musicality, not just that commercially passing grade of cocktail background music. Continued on page 10 9
Continued from page 9 “Tell me one thing” said Kim after they sat at the piano bar. “Were the ‘50s really such a great time? This movie about the kid, it was a cute story,” she waved her hand, “but why again the ‘50s?” Stanley laughed. “Oh I don’t know. People feel it was nostalgic. Good old days. It was also the McCarthy era, the Cold War, Korea, not really a lot worse than what we have now.” She swiped at him playfully. “You just come up with all the bad things. Wasn’t it also rock-n-roll, the Beatles…” “No,” he corrected. “The Beatles were the ‘60s.” Bus Stop “How do they get the holes in the ice cubes?” asked Kim, getting a bit sleepy. “Something tells me,” he laughed, “It’s time to go home, Kimmy!” Sudden Wealth A tall, blue-suited young man with a pale face was the only one at Triad Jewelers, Inc., where Stanley stopped on his lunch hour the next day. Interrupting his task of arranging a watch display case, the tall man looked up. “May I help you, sir?” Stanley placed the ring on the glass. “Can you appraise it? Just give me an idea?” “Certainly, sir.” He put a loupe to his eye and turned the ring. “Platinum,” he said. Except for the outside traffic, it was quiet. “I would say it’s real.” “Real?” He looked up. “Where did you get this?” Stanley waved a hand. “An heirloom. My aunt.” The tall man placed the ring in a small, feltlined envelope and said, “If you could come back at 2:30 p.m., Mr. Collins will be here and give you a better idea. This is an expensive piece.” “That’s fine,” said Stanley, a bit nervously. “I just wanted some idea. Do I owe you anything?” “No sir, but please come back at 2:30. This is very valuable.” Stanley pocketed the envelope, thanked him and left the store. 10
Barbara G. Howell
Back at the office, he called Scavelli-Ellis, the city’s finest diamond house, for what he felt would be a good second opinion. “I’ll connect you, sir,” said the girl. A pause. “Appraisals. Morris speaking. May I be of assistance?” Stanley explained. Morris outlined the appraisal procedure, which necessitated a flat fee and an appointment. “Tomorrow is Friday,” said Morris. “If we have a cancellation, I can fit you in during the afternoon. Your number?” Stanley bit his lip. This even sounded expensive. The next day, Morris called back as if special accommodation had been made. Stanley took the afternoon off and walked the seven blocks. When he got there and made his way across the soft carpeting, he felt rather conspicuous and a bit nervous, taking in the Scavelli-Elite décor which consisted of ruby red and gold repeating color motifs. His meeting with Morris lasted eight minutes. “Ten days,” he said, handing Stanley a ticket stub. Out on the pavement, Stanley determined that would be the 22nd. “Too early to go home and too late to go back to work,” he thought, looking at the ticket stub with the date, time and Morris’ name under the
emblem. He wondered if it was all worth it. Two weeks went by. Kim was suspicious. She sensed that something was going on, and Stan was reluctant to tell her. On a few occasions she probed, sometimes with a stubborn persistence resulting in their arguing, still other times in a teasing manner. Finally, she went out on a date, leaving him to his own devices. But Stanley remained reticent. She wondered if he was working on some project and eventually would surprise her. Then, she thought, she would feel terribly guilty for not having trusted him. Right now, their relationship was strained. Kim had neither the perspicacity nor the ambition to play with Stanley’s mental blocks. Testing the Water “Now, Mr. Hagen,” said Morris briskly after welcoming Stanley back on the 22nd, “it looks like your lucky day.” He had gotten out papers and materials. “Does it?” asked Stanley uncertainly. Morris elaborated. “We had to remove the stone from its mounting and weigh it. The platinum—it IS platinum—added value to the piece which increased its appraisal fee.” He looked up at Stanley with raised eyebrows, indicating a necessary procedure. “This is a D color stone with a VVS/one clarity. It is a 5.9 carat diamond and is practically flawless. It is known as a ‘well-proportioned cut,’ and is worth about $215,000. Stanley swallowed and paled. $215,000?” Morris nodded. “Approximately. Is it insured?” “Well, yes.” “Fine.” Morris nodded again. “That’s what had me worried a bit. Now, here is our certificate in duplicate, two photographs, the ring and your bill. You may use cash or credit card. And thank you very much for choosing Scavelli-Elite.” He stood up and extended a hand. “Yes. Thank you,” answered Stanley, a little numb. Stanley contemplated what to do with this suddenly acquired windfall. He’d found out that certain firms appraising jewelry would also buy such items “at cost.” He was preoccupied with market value and conversion transactions. He thought of the snappy
little Mercedes that had come out this year. A trip to the West Indies with Kim. Investments or stocks or a real estate deal. While Kim put the groceries away, he decided on a shower. Today they played house at his place. Stanley was in the bathroom when the phone rang. “Kimmy, will you get that?” “Hagen residence?” queried a male voice. “Yes, he’s here. Who’s calling?” “This is Detective Beard at Metro Headquarters. I’d like to speak with Mr. Hagen.” She handed towel-clad Stanley the receiver. The color left her face. She knew something was wrong. “Is this a joke?” she whispered. He shook his head. “Hagen? My name is Detective Larry Beard. I would like to talk to you about Clayton.” “Clayton?” “Yes, Randolph Clayton, the man who died downtown a few weeks ago. You were the last one to see him alive, right?” “Well yes. He just died. No violence involved.” “No problem, Mr. Hagen. The standard autopsy was negative. Just a poor soul done in by kerosene. The death certificate has been duly signed.” “Then what’s the problem? Why all the questions? Everything was in order at the time.” “It is, Mr. Hagen. There is only one thing I want to know. Clayton carried on his person a valuable ring of substantial value.” “He did?” Stanley gulped and looked at Kim. “You didn’t know that?” asked Beard. “No, how was I supposed to?” “This is why I called you, Mr. Hagen. The morgue found a description of the ring in one of Clayton’s pockets, but no ring. They had no special interest in the man’s belongings, but then this thing turns up locally…” “The ring?” “Yes, Mr. Hagen. First at Triad then at ScavelliElite. We have alerts out with them in case the piece shows up.” “But the owner is dead,” protested Stanley. “What’s the difference now?” There was a silence at the other end. “The difference,” said Beard simply, “is that Clayton was not the ring’s owner. And quite frankly, neither are you.”
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Attachment is the cause of suffering the Buddha said. I know. Attachments overflow my life, like too many love letters stuffed in a faded torn envelope. Like a river floods its banks after a heavy rain, attachments spill into my dreams waking me with worry, my heart aching, with gratitude, with love. Attached to my wants and needs, my judgments and opinions, the way I see the world. Impermanence Transience Attachment These words taunt me, the lesson hard. ALREADY GONE marks the nature of all things. Sand shifts, footprints disappear. The beach began already gone, the ocean gone. I was born already gone, even sadder, my children, my grandchild, already gone. See how difficult this is, clearing this sticky notion from the mind that causes me to cling to my preferred version of the world even as it passes, breaks apart; 12
the impossibly perfect world I trust and love. I scold myself. “Remember, Katherine, clinging causes suffering, everything comes, goes, rises, falls, appears, disappears. Start simple with the passingness of things; vacations already ended, chocolate cake already eaten, the sunset’s scarlet radiance dark, the birth moment announced. Then the big questions Life? Cosmos? Can I still be attached to God?” I strain to grasp the preciousness fragile now; sound of rain on the tent’s canvas at nine PM, chocolate frosting on my tongue, pink and orange of sunset reflected in the pools of low tide, excitement of first labor pain. I cry, cards from children, a photograph, my husband’s laugh, ephemeral, fleeting Here meaning, wonder, revealed daily. Beginnings begin the end.
—Katherine Campbell-Gaston 13
Tom Slattery It was, as best as I can recall now, late spring or early summer 1958. I was living in Cincinnati. I had a good job and I had saved some money. And one bright sunny day I spotted a robinegg-blue 1952 Hillman Minx in a used car lot. It was not American at a time when my struggles with the Selective Service had turned me antiAmerican. It was a car of the world when I was regarding myself as a citizen of Planet Earth. While the Hillman Minx was a popular car in Britain, that Hillman Minx sedan (called "saloon" in Britain) was probably the only Hillman Minx in Cincinnati in 1958. When I was told that the Rootes Group also made Sunbeam sports cars I felt freed to buy the Hillman because while that was probably the only Hillman in Cincinnati, there were a few of Rootes Group's Sunbeam sports cars with crossover car parts. But that was wishful thinking. In 1958 there was only one major foreign car dealership and garage in Cincinnati. It was attuned to Rolls Royce and MG ownership. A foreign car owner had to use its services. Even more important, all of the nuts and bolts in the Hillman Minx were in a peculiar standardized British size system called Wentworth. The Wentworth system was devised in 1841 as the world's first standardized system for bolts, nuts, and wrenches when steam engines were first being put to use to replace animal and human muscles in ships, railroads, and factories. It was an 14
agonizingly logical system where the bolt head and nut sizes were mathematically related to the screw-thread size so the right torque to tighten it could be applied by a wrench (called "spanner" in British English). But the Wentworth system was neither metric nor in inches. It was just a peculiar British size system all its own and required a set of unique Wentworth wrenches. Metric wrenches and wrenches calibrated in fractions of inches did not fit the car's bolt heads and nuts. Sometimes one could make a close fit, but never a good tight fit. Many times the metric or inch-calibrated wrenches were for all practical purposes useless. But I did not know anything about this as I stood admiring the unique little car and daydreaming of driving it away. Wrenches and bolts were farthest from my mind as soft summer breezes mixed with Cincinnati traffic noises, and if anyone had said "Wentworth," I would have responded, "Wentworth what?" When I finally bought the car a few weeks later I found a partial set of Wentworth wrenches. Still not knowing about their uniqueness, I was careless with them and may even have lost one or two. But from the start when I had bought the car, some of the crucial wrenches and sockets were missing. Sadly, at that point in time I still did not know what a Wentworth wrench was. The salesman had mentioned that they were different and to be careful not to lose them. I had seldom used wrenches for anything. I didn't know what he
was talking about. Not only was it a first car with all of the first car responsibilities that one never thought about before owning a car—like car insurance, car registration, car inspections, car repairs, car maintenance, and parking tickets—it was a peculiar little British car with additional problems. And over the two-plus years that I owned that car, the not knowing caused me the most pain and trouble. Like all first cars, it was an "if I had only known" car, but more so because it was foreign and genuinely different and I was awfully naive. Not realizing these drawbacks and not being able to see into the future, I just wanted that little car. It fit my needs to be defiant and different and it was a cute little car. I kept coming back to the used car lot to casually glance at it and hope that no one had already bought it. After the end of World War Two while wartorn Britain was struggling to get back on its feet, I had developed an attachment for things British. I had sometimes bought Cadbury candy bars, mostly to be a different sort of American who ate British candy bars. When thin-tire British Hercules Renown bicycles went on sale at a downtown department store in the late 1940s, I bought one with saved paper route money and a little help from my parents. I would be different. Other kids had widetired heavy American bikes like those made by Schwinn and Roadmaster. I had a lightweight Hercules Renown—with a gearshift, no less. So with past preferences like that, I wanted that Hillman Minx "saloon." It was different. It was a modest and fuel-saving little four-cylinder car at a time when Detroit was dumping gaudy, tailfinned, gas-guzzling behemoths onto American roads. I would be different in it. It was, for instance, so different that instead of having flashing-light turn signals that we are now so familiar with, it had little illuminated plastic flaps that sprang out from midway between the side windows of the four-door sedan. When they closed back into the side of the car after the left turn or right turn was completed, they made a distinctive "clack" sound that only a former Hillman Minx driver can love. In the early 1950s, automatic turn signals, or direction signals as they were called, were still evolving. Moreover, there were still cars from the 1930s on the roads, and many of those had been manufactured with only one taillight, thus
forbidding modern turn signals. Most 1940s cars had two taillights, but very few had turn-signal systems wired into them. Therefore most drivers still used standardized hand signals to indicate upcoming turns. That meant winding down the side window in rain, shine, sleet, or snow, sticking one's arm out the window to make the signal, and turning the steering wheel with one hand. Flashing light signals were optional and not standardized. Standardized flashing-light turn signals did not become mandatory until the mid1960s. For two years of my life in the 1950s, I drove around with an effectively experimental turn signal system that was to become a dead-end branch on the evolutionary turn-signal tree. Such is life. The sales personnel at the used car lot had of course begun to notice me repeatedly standing on the sidewalk and looking longingly at the Hillman Minx. One finally came out. On the test drive, I found out about the bizarre turn signals and that the British car did not have three forward gears like American cars of the time, but four forward gears in addition to a reverse gear. That car was just plain different. I loved it. The gearshift, as with most American cars of that era, was part of the steering wheel assembly. The salesman (an all-male occupation in the 1950s) guided me into buying it for about $300. That year the average annual American family income was about $4000. So the $300 that I plunked down was a nice chunk of money. I have to guess that it would have been $3000 in today's dollars. I talked the salesman into going with me to get my driver’s license. The Bureau of Motor Vehicles facility was nearby. With the little European car being tested in standard American behemoth parking spaces, I breezed through parallel parking. With that worst part of the license exam over, I zipped through the rest and got my Ohio license. Back at the used car lot I signed the papers and drove my Hillman Minx home. Over the next few months I regularly drove my strange little car to work. I nervously took a couple girlfriends out on dates. I went shopping. I drove it to movies that had been off the public transportation routes and previously had been out of reach. Over the summer I drove it to scenic—and not so scenic—places to paint oil paintings. I Continued on page 16 15
A billion hands woven Crossing infinite space A net of belief Unbroken, enlaced Should I fall, it's intact-I believe it to be. I've learned to leap now, For it's always caught me. I have reasons to doubt My fellow man's grace. No logic proves That I'm safe in this place. Yet I take a breath, shrugging... And take the next step, Trusting faces of strangers When they're all I have left. The unknown, befriended, Brought triumph before! The trouble is choosing And closing a door. —Emily Betz Close
Continued from page 15 drove it to one spot in Cincinnati and painted a church and its surroundings in the Impressionist Utrillo's style. Cincinnati has a European look to it. My sister still has that 1958 painting hanging on her living room wall. For the first several months the car caused me little or no trouble. But like all cars, as time went on it began to have problems. At first I mostly relied on the foreign car dealer and their Wentworth wrenches to get things fixed. But I vaguely recall fixing a few things myself by using an owner's manual that employed British terms. The car's hood, for instance, was a bonnet. The trunk was a boot. The fenders were wings. But the bumpers were fenders. The car had tyres, not tires. The windshield was a windscreen. And it ran on petrol. Simultaneously with all of the normal 16
first car learning processes, I had to become familiar with a foreign vocabulary. Over the two years that I owned the car it was mostly just a car. I used it for all the normal car things. But it was also a British car with those odd Wentworth nuts and bolts holding it together. It was expensive to use the foreign-car repair facility. One time, to save money, I sent away for a new clutch and found a small independent garage and mechanic to put it on. He got it on through creative cleverness, but he had a rich American vocabulary of cuss words for me when I picked it up. When the brake shoes wore down to screaming steel and the wheel cylinders began to leak, I sent away for brake shoes and wheel cylinders. I was broke and I jacked up the small car and fixed it myself. When wrenches did not fit, I
used vise grips. I also found out the hard way that the little British car with its four-cylinder engine was not meant for the speeds and distances of American freeways. The only time I drove it from Cincinnati to Cleveland to visit my mother, I so badly overheated the engine that I blew a gasket and the engine block warped. I had to have the motor head milled. It was not expensive to do this. The small fourcylinder engine was easy to access and repair. In the 1950s, engine overheating was not an uncommon problem even with American cars. Numerous small machine shops did engine milling and costs were not outrageous. But problems due to uniqueness and foreignness just kept coming. On a weekend drive to Columbus to see my sister and brother-in-law, a brake hose popped. The British brake hoses appeared to be made of natural rubber. The brake hose had rotted faster than the reinforced artificial rubber used in American brake hoses, possibly aided by salt spread so abundantly on American roads. As I approached a stoplight on the north side of Columbus that Sunday morning, I heard a loud pop and the brake pedal went straight to the floor. Fortunately, the unhurried Sunday traffic coming the other way had not yet begun to move. I coasted through the red light and endured honking horns. Doubly fortunate was an open-on-Sunday gas station on one of the corners. I seamlessly coasted into it and pulled on the rusted and never-beforeused emergency brake. It worked minimally to slow the car to a halt in front of the car repair doors. This was before the 1974 oil crisis that would end things for many gas stations, and before EPA standards to stop pollution from underground gasoline storage tanks killed off more. In the 1950s there were gas stations on every corner of main streets. And there were multitudes of minimumwage gas station attendants sitting around with little or nothing to do, especially on Sunday mornings. And that was the case with this gas station. A young and obviously bored uniformed gas station attendant listlessly ambled out. It may have been to gawk at the unusual little car. I told him what happened. His boredom evaporated. He had me slowly and carefully drive the
brake-less Hillman Minx onto a lift and then hoisted it up. Sure enough, a front brake hose had a gaping hole. There was no saving it. I needed a new one. The trouble was that there were no foreign car dealers that would have a brake hose for a 1952 Hillman Minx in Columbus. Columbus in 1959 was a sleepy little college town, the third or fourth largest city in Ohio. The nearest foreign car dealers and repair facilities were in the big cities of Cleveland or Cincinnati. But the mechanically inclined attendant was fighting boredom. He found a brass cap that would warp enough to fit the Wentworth threads on the brake system's broken side and screwed it on. Then, so the car would not pull to the side, he put a large ball bearing into the good brake hose and tied a knot in the flexible natural rubber smallsized brake hose. With this arrangement I had only back brakes, but at least I had minimal brakes. This innovative impromptu brake system slowed the car to a halt rather than abruptly stopping it. I dared not drive fast. So I picked up one of the gas station's free Ohio maps and carefully drove back to Cincinnati on back roads and going no faster than thirty-five miles per hour. This drama of gas stations staffed by mechanically competent minimum-wage attendants would happen again two years later with my next car, a 1951 Plymouth sedan. I was in the Army at Fort Lewis, Washington, and had just dropped off some soldier buddies. It was three o'clock in the morning and I was zooming down the freeway connecting Fort Lewis with the city of Tacoma when I heard a loud bang and the engine area began emitting horrible grinding sounds. In such situations one instinctively knows that one has to do things fast. Adrenaline kicked in. I had just passed an on-ramp and was heading toward an off ramp. I spotted the lights of a gas station at the end of the off ramp. I swung wrong-way onto the off ramp, going against traffic by driving partly on the lawn, and got to the top of the ramp. Yes, there was a company-uniformed attendant on duty. Gas was 19 cents a gallon and gas-guzzling cars needed gas at all hours. He lifted the hood. We saw that the water pump axle had broken. When it broke, the fan had Continued on page 18 17
Continued from page 17 plowed into the radiator. It looked like an unfixable disaster. There was a huge gouge tearing open the top of the radiator. In the wee hours the attendant clearly savored a challenge. He went to the back and returned with a rusty used water pump, an exact match for my broken one. How lucky can that be? But the six-inch gouge across the top of the radiator presented another problem. So he stuffed steel wool into the gouge. Then he used a welding torch to heat a bar of solid solder and, pass after pass, dribbled melted solder onto the steel wool. After about a half-hour he managed to use up the bar of solder. But it turned out to be exactly enough solder to seal the gouge. We filled the radiator, and the steel-wool-andsolder patch did not leak. It cost me some surprisingly small nominal sum, and I drove off into the early dawn and made it back to the Army base in time for reveille. The steel-wool-and-solder patch held water for another year until that car and I parted when I was shipped off to Southeast Asia. One more incident with the Hillman Minx just came to mind. While I was approaching a Cincinnati main street from a side street the little British Hillman Minx hit one of those legendary American potholes just as I was slamming on the brakes. The front-end U-bolt that held the steering system to the car frame snapped. The whole front end of the car came crashing down. Unaware of what had happened, the car in back of me launched into a frenzy of horn honking to get me to move. The honking alerted two muscular guys who were walking on the sidewalk. People seem to have been more helpful then. They immediately ran to my aid. They lifted the car by the front bumper and wheeled the small Hillman Minx like a wheelbarrow into a curbside parking spot. As if it were an everyday occurrence, they wished me luck and went on their way talking and joking about whatever they had been talking and joking about. The next morning I got a tow truck to haul it to the one and only British car repair shop in town. The Hillman Minx and I existed in that kind of world. I was young and every day held its lessons in life. And for some of that time, I drove my Hillman Minx to and from a commission-only job selling Singer sewing machines and vacuum cleaners. 18
However, my short career as a sewing machine/vacuum cleaner salesman and repairman ended when one of my demonstrator canister vacuum cleaners pulled down a wall. It happened like this. One day I drove my Hillman Minx into an area that had recently been flooded, to demonstrate a canister vacuum cleaner. One of the sales points was to place a five-dollar bill inside the vacuum cleaner canister, put the canister against a wall, and turn it on. The vacuum cleaner created an adequately powerful enough vacuum to prevent anyone from pulling it off of a wall. As far as anyone knew, no one had ever gotten five dollars richer from pulling a canister off of a wall. Not realizing that this wall had recently experienced flood damage, I went into my sales pitch. My customer was a large, strong workingclass woman, and she was determined to get the five dollars for herself. Five dollars then would have been worth $25 today. I turned on the vacuum cleaner and she braced her feet against the wall, shot me a most determined look, and gave vacuum cleaner canister a mighty yank. Down came the whole dining room wall in a cloud of plaster dust. Flabbergasted into stupefaction, I offered what defenses I could and with my plaster-dust-covered vacuum cleaner beat a hasty retreat to the door, down the steps, and down the walk to my Hillman Minx. I flung the canister into the back seat and drove off. Claims for damages arrived at the Singer retail shop the next day. We temporary and on-commission employees had not been generating great sales. The lady's wall was, of course, covered by store insurance. But for the store management it was the last straw. We temporary on-commission employees were told to retrieve demonstrator sewing machines, turn them in, and pick up our final paychecks. I had several demonstrator sewing machines scattered around the city, one of them to a poverty stricken grandmother-type in the inner city who had been stuck by some bad circumstance with raising her granddaughter. I had let her have a demonstrator sewing machine for months, literally months. As far as I could see, she used it well to make and repair clothes for her growing and active granddaughter. We had developed a kind of code. I would ask if she was ready to buy the machine. She would say
that she was still thinking about it. That meant she could have it for a bit longer. But now, alas, I had to pick it up. She gave me a heartfelt thanks. I was only glad to have been some small help. Not long after that I got a job with a federally funded project researching lung disease in the Rocky Mountain west. The Hillman Minx would not hold up for such a long drive across the North American continent. It had, by then, been damaged by a hit-and-run accident, nuts and bolts had been stripped from using wrong-sized wrenches, and in general the car had become dangerous to drive, especially to drive far or fast. So I reluctantly drove it to a junkyard. The money I got would pay my expenses for my first week on the job. With tears in my eyes I said goodbye to my fine little friend of two years. And when I got to the gate of the junkyard I turned and took one last look at the Hillman Minx with
tears running down my cheeks. It was a hard lesson, but a lesson that I should not have taken so seriously. I never again bought a foreign-brand car. I only bought American-brand cars, built for North American roads, able to drive fast and on long trips, made of sturdy parts and materials, and easily repaired with standard North American tools. But the realization of the hard part of this lesson came as I wrote this. I should not have allowed myself to be so easily scared away from owning another foreign car. The world had been changing. Roads became like North American roads. Cars all over the world became built to standards of North American cars. The British dropped their Wentworth system. And foreign cars, foreign car parts, and foreign car repair garages became ubiquitous.
Story and photo by Heather Hall Tom Slattery chose his condo in Rocky River for its proximity to the grocery, the pharmacy, the metro parks and the other stores in town. He didn’t realize until he moved in and looked out the condo's party room window overlooking the Rocky River that he could see his childhood home on the other side of the valley in Lakewood. After a life punctuated by a series of coincidences, this seemed fitting. Tom was born in 1936 in Cleveland to Matthew Thomas and Mary Elizabeth Slattery. His mother was German-Hungarian, and his father, Irish. He
was one of four children, two sisters and a brother. He spent most of his early childhood in Lakewood in the house he views daily from his condo building. His parents divorced during his teen years and he and his sister moved to Columbus with his father, but his father brought them up to Cleveland for visits every weekend. Tom has been a UU since he was about five years old. His parents were nothing, “secular hedonists,” dropouts from Catholic church. “I remember we were joking one day and I said, Continued on page 20 19
Continued from page 19 ‘we’re unchurch people aren’t we?’ However, they started looking for a church sometime around World War II and ended up at the old Cleveland Unitarian Church on Euclid Avenue. West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church split off from that church, and Tom's parents were among the founding members. “It was inevitable that we would end up Unitarian. It was a church we could go to that wasn’t really a church.” When Tom was a child, his father’s cousin, Frank Siedel—known to Tom, his siblings and cousins as “Uncle Bud”—was known to Ohioans as “Mr. Ohio” because he wrote the “Ohio Story” series, first for radio, then later for a weekly halfhour television program. The Ohio Story was short sketches of Ohio history that few knew about. Siedel had a knack for dramatizing dry history, making his shows hugely successful, and his ability to weave a good story planted the beginning seeds of becoming a writer in Tom. Siedel was not the only famous writer in the family. Tom’s aunt was married to Arthur Miller— yes, THAT Arthur Miller. Miller was a somewhat regular figure in Tom’s life as a child until his teen years when Miller left Tom's Aunt Mary to marry Marilyn Monroe. Tom last saw Miller was when he was 17 in the 1950s, probably around the time Miller was writing The Crucible. Arthur Miller had built himself a large shed for an office away from the house, with no telephone in it so that he was not disturbed while writing, and he could sit in his office and write his plays. Miller wrote in the office for the rest of his life, but Tom saw it just as it was being finished and was quite impressed. “So I had these two successful writers in the family, and I thought, ‘Writing is the way out for me.’" He did not follow a straight trajectory to becoming a writer, however, as he had to accumulate life experiences to build up his writing repertoire. Also, he needed a way to fund his schooling and stay out of being drafted. Ironically, though, being drafted is what enabled him to study writing, as he was able to take advantage of the G.I. Bill after serving two years in the Army. Also, spending seven months in Thailand as part of his service led him to an interest in East Asia and eventually getting his undergraduate degree in East Asian studies. After high school, he worked as a histology and biology technician, thinking that maybe he could get some kind of a technology certificate that 20
would keep him from being drafted. However, it obviously didn’t work out that way. But he did get to work with some bigwigs in the nuclear physics world, landing a job at the University of Chicago because of a complex set of coincidences revolving around a monster snowstorm and the personnel director suddenly quitting. Because they were shorthanded, he got to help with experiments that used Enrico Fermi's cyclotron, three or four stories under Chicago. He lucked into working with the Bubble Chamber Group, a group of physicists that used a new type of nuclear particle detector invented by Donald Glaser called a bubble chamber. A bubble chamber was a vessel filled with a transparent liquid (most often liquid hydrogen) used to detect electrically charged particles moving through it. Glaser was awarded the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physics. Tom's immediate boss, Manfred Pyka, became a sort of mentor to Tom. After serving in the Army as a result of being drafted from that job, Tom went to California to work as a nuclear physics technician at the Stanford Linear Accelerator, where his boss there, Martin Perl, would later win a Nobel Prize in physics. Tom wrote about this experience in a previous issue of Chalice. While working at Stanford, he married a Japanese woman, then worked a series of odd jobs including cleaning planes for Pan American Airlines so that he could qualify for free tickets. He lived in Japan for a couple of years, where he taught English conversation and wrote some short stories and his first novel; then returned home, making his way across the Pacific by working as a wiper on a C-3 freighter, known during WW II as a liberty ship (always finding creative ways to finance and/or implement his travel plans). Over the years, he had taken classes here and there at dozens of colleges, paying out of pocket, as college was not nearly as financially burdensome then as it is today. But after returning to the states from Japan, he discovered he was eligible for the GI Bill and he used it to enroll in his first writing workshop in science fiction and fantasy at Clarion College. After that, he enrolled at Cuyahoga Community College and got his Associate of Arts degree. Sadly, his marriage ended in California and he used the GI Bill to finance more classes at the University of California Extension. But he had something else in mind that he needed to attend to. From the time he spent in Asia, in the Army
—Vernon Law and then later living in Japan, he knew that there were a number of children born to American G.I.s and Asian women. In Japan there was a peculiar legal paradox that trapped half-Japanese children who had no official citizenship from either country. Due to Japanese laws, because they were half-American and born to legally married couples, they were not recognized as Japanese citizens, and because they weren’t born in marriages recognized by the U.S. they couldn’t get American citizenship, either. So they were stuck in limbo. So Tom decided to take a trip to Japan and Korea to find out more about these kids and see what he could do. He took some of his own money and borrowed some from his parents, got a cheap ticket through a Stanford University student group, and flew to Japan and Korea. “By some stroke of luck I was apparently able to get 5000 half-American kids who had been born in Japan, Japanese citizenship.” It wasn’t really luck—Tom did a lot research and tracked down the right people to help him. His work helping these kids, he believes, was what got him accepted to the University of California, Berkeley, and he was able to finish his undergraduate degree there in 1977 in East Asian studies. His first job out of college was back to square one: working as a histology technician at Case Western Reserve University, where a student group published his thesis from Berkeley on East Asian studies in a one-time student magazine, the Timberline Press, which may still be available to read in their library archives today. Tom decided to apply to Central Washington University in Ellensburg after learning that he could receive a Masters focused on Creative Writing there. He had his name in for a teaching assistantship, but a year went by. Then Mount St. Helens erupted, covering the state in volcanic ash and scaring off a student who had been chosen for the assistantship but who apparently was afraid the volcanic ash was toxic, leaving a place for Tom. Tom was sitting in his mother’s house when he received the call asking if he would like the teaching assistantship. So thanks to the volcano erupting, Tom was able to attend graduate school.
It was a special program where you didn’t have to attend many classes, you were assigned a tutor and basically left to your own devices. His tutor ended up having a nervous breakdown and so he was assigned a replacement, a traditional academic who was not terribly focused on creative writing. In spite of all this, Tom managed to get through the program, writing a novel for his Master of Arts thesis. After graduate school, he continued to work odd jobs and went on adventures, gaining fodder for his writing, including driving around the USA for background to write his novel “End of the Road,” one of his two books available at the Westlake Porter Library. On last check, however, "End of the Road" was no longer on their shelves (although "The Tragic End of the Bronze Age" still is), but a copy of "End of the Road" is still available with several of his other books in the downtown Cleveland Public Library. In 1991, he found a comfortable chair in the Cleveland State University library and that year researched what happened at the end the Bronze Age (which he wrote about in an earlier issue of Chalice). After a year of poring over books about the subject, he came up with a theory that a smallpox epidemic ended the Bronze Age and he self-published a book about it. Over the past 20 years or so, Tom has worked on writing original books, modernizing classic novels, and writing nonfiction books, screenplays, a play, many articles, and many cover letters to try to sell his writing. He’s spent the last decade polishing up his books to self-publish them on the print-on-demand publisher iUniverse.com site. A total of nine books were eventually published. He also wrote a modernization of Mary Shelly’s novel, “The Last Man,” which he retitled “The Last Human,” and has posted it along with numerous other writings on the free-to-read websites Scribd and Issuu. Coincidentally, or maybe not so coincidentally, Tom’s whole life reads like an adventure novel. But he can always look out his window across the Rocky River Valley and remember where it began. 21
Even Beauty Has Thorns
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Barbara G. Howell
I rolled along pushing my boulder (from a philistine mine) my mind ablaze as I traversed the asphalt field, pass and yield, mute through the uphill commute lost in the Sisyphean crowd the loud RUMBLE of our daily struggle deafening us to each other's cries we wonder why we trip on lies but persevere... I steer veer to a quieter path, gasp and grasp to question. An ax asks my burden to halve and it splits, gaping lion’s maw sharp dentate awe reveals and refracts light upon acts spread across the spectrum— benediction and requiem flow in simultaneous harmony recoloring my memories until my state becomes apostate to those who still push, blind to the treasure they can never measure that lies crystalized within. —Ahmie Yeung
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Chuck Homer How often have we heard and/or thought… Who am I? What am I doing? Why am I here? When will I get there? Where am I going?
Who are you? What are you doing? Why are you here? When will you get there? Where are you going?
Old men and politicians talk about their legacy! WHY? “Oh, I want to be remembered!” Why? “Well, to show to others that my life, my existence, had meaning.” Others? Did it have meaning for you? “I don’t really know; yeah, I guess so.” Well then, isn’t it enough that it had meaning for you? Who are you? “Who am I? Why am I here? But I don’t know. Where do I go when I die?” These questions come up in my life again and again! Yours? Is it necessary that you go somewhere? Do you really want to live on and on, forever clacking your heels over the same old path, grinding down the same old stones, gazing into the same sky; same pink clouds, forever sitting in the same chair, on the same rock, lying in the same hammock, with the same guy or gal? Have you ever wondered what an eternity would be like? “Well I don’t want to just fade away. The thought frightens me!” My mother had a very simplistic view of death; she believed she would end up in a heavenly place, a place of beauty, a place in the clouds where she’d wear a satin gown, she would be young again and perpetually healthy, she would be with Jesus and they would sing ‘The Old Rugged Cross’ while others plunked around on their harp and she’d watch children laughing, playing, playing, playing… FOR ETERNITY. That does mean forever, you know… and ever! Do you have any idea how long eternity is? What does “FOREVER” mean to you? Is it friend or foe? Aren’t these some of the questions we ask of ourselves over and over as we approach termination, the end of existence, our existence on earth? For me, I’d guess that would be about 10 years from now; about the same time my grandfather and my father drifted off from this earthly plane. What do you think they were thinking at that time they left? Were they afraid; were they aware? Surely they had had the same thoughts about their future as I have had, as you have had! What then? I remember that grandfather hung on day after day—I mean to say his body hung on, as his ‘being’ had ceased days earlier due to a massive stroke. I remember Granma and I having a lunch shortly after gramps was whisked off to the hospital, after we saw him lying comfortably quiet in his hospital bed. The doctor, the intern moving their heads to transmit ‘no hope’ as we watched. I remember sitting there wondering what she would do now with Gramps out of the picture. A somber time. I remember… I was there! I remember my mother’s last breaths. The terror in her face told everything about where she was as she drew her last breath. Dad? Yes, I was there then, too. I remember the beep, beep, peep… peep as the 24
heart monitor sounds slowly died out, and then painfully, ever so painfully, painfully stopped! My breathing slowed with it and with terror in my heart, I froze in place and stopped breathing too. The end signal! Eighty-four years and…? Nothing! Dad had essentially no expression on his face, as his essence, according to the specialist, had died hours earlier; only his most primal functions trailed on to the end. I was there. I was there! Dad was gone and the exit, unlike the abruptness of the word, was slow and peaceful. Kind providence—the kindly care or preparation in advance, the foresight of; the prudent management; the care, guardianship, and control exercised by a deity; divine direction. WHATEVER! What are YOUR thoughts about your death? For all the billions and billions who have passed that way; those billions as we read here and now, who are passing, now, right this second! There must be a lightning bolt, a vapor trail, a roaring, screaming vortex of souls swirling frantically from earth into the heavens—well, the sky above us, anyway, or into nowhere, into nothingness! I’ve never seen evidence of passing. Have you? An anticlimactic event! So silent! Will I pass the same way? Will we? Of course… Why? Why? You’d think there’d be a huge cry, a scream! A mountain would roar and fire would shoot into the sky, a great chasm would yawn open and slam shut so all would know. Wouldn’t a really powerful man—a movie star—a great president, Nelson Mandela or Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, pass with a huge explosion, one that would take out an entire city; at least a city block? Yet... “I’m going—I’m going! All I’ve accomplished in life is behind me! GOD DAMN IT! WHY so much nothing? Fool! What exactly do you believe we are; God’s children? Yeah, right! Wake up! We count only to us— I count to me, you count to you. Beyond that, it’s only our closest and dearest, left behind to clean up the mess we’ve left and remember and feel the loss. Maybe that’s the most important thing about our existence on earth—those we leave behind with the memory of us in their heart. Didn’t we provide their—who—what—why—where—when? Maybe that is all we can ever aspire to be, no matter how powerful on earth—just a who—what— why—where—when… a whimper. The Universe spins on and on, creates and destroys galaxies, black holes. New stars, planets and moons are born, yet it doesn’t even know Who we are, Why we are, Where we are, or even that we existed at all. So What? If the Universe has a soul, I’m unaware of it. We can’t live forever and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to. So I choose to let it be. Just be!
ֶה ְאה ֶא ֶׁהשֶא ֶה ְאה ֶא “I Am that I Am”—a common English translation of the response God used in Exodus 3:14 when Moses asked for a name. It is one of the most famous verses in the Torah. It literally translates as, "I Will Be What I Will Be." I personally favor “I am.” God exists by himself for himself, and is the uncreated Creator. How then, are we that different from that which created us—no beginning, no end? Why should we search for more than what we already are? I exist; I live, I have lived, I’m living now! There’s no need for clarification! And when I’m gone—I’m simply gone. All that remains is what is left in the minds and hearts of those I loved and who loved me. Why would I need more? Why do you need more. Where is the good for me after I’m gone? Life and love is in the here and now. I sense nothing out ‘there.’ Who I am is in the here and now; not yesterday, not tomorrow—HERE and NOW. Why would I need more?
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Milt on the roe And there I was. Existence does not mean survival However In the sea. I do not know how it is elsewhere.
I was ignored. I was not followed. No parasites were devoured by me. But—I wasn’t eaten.
My growing up— You hunt food And eat it when you find it And try to avoid Being food for others. That’s really all there is.
Until one day, Like all other days Which are like all other days Near Harbor Cay, I met a new sort of fish.
To be another’s food is, Perhaps, An honorable occupation, But only if you put the other Higher than yourself. I do not do that.
I also didn’t matter.
His mouth was small, Teeth not pointed, but smooth, Movements slow and awkward, Fins protruding all but uselessly As if they were (Remember, I would have been an amphibian) Arms and legs.
Something stirred deeper within me. “How can something stir at all In a fish,” You ask. Well, I think that in another time I would have been the one To transcend to an amphibian. I am special. So… So, So I decided to become A pilot fish. There is a danger in that occupation If you were not bred for it. The larger fish Which you are piloting May see you as food And not as an administrative assistant. The attempts at my new vocation Met with indifferent success. Life as Cold as Ice
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Barbara G. Howell
I I I I
shall make him mine. came to him. swam under his snout. directed him.
He noticed me. He brushed the water So that I came into his view. He loves me. I love him. We frolicked together. I led, he followed. He led, I followed. We executed exquisite barrel rolls And pirouettes Through the friendly ocean waters. I often came out from below his chin So he could see my beauty. I know he loved me, For he would attempt to touch me With his strange shaped fin And not his smooth teeth. Were they worn from age? I hoped he was not dying. We continued thus For time beyond time And back into time. Then he turned And swam (If his ungainly motions Could be called swimming) Away from my beloved reef Toward lighter colored water. I followed. You go where your love goes, I knew. We all know that.
But he kept on. The protective kelp were gone. The coral gone. The sea bottom only sand, Flat. Giving no protection. How could he abuse me thus? And then, How can I describe it, He upreared himself And stood on those ungainly fins Which might have been called legs Had evolution proceeded. He strode away from me And I quivered in the foam of the surf. I was alone. I am a small fish, But if I cried My salt tears Would multiply the oceans of the world One hundredfold. I shall not cry, however. I had him. For a while He was mine. He loved me. Most have less. Many have nothing. Except to eat. And avoid being eaten. I had my love. That love remembered Avoids all tears. —A fish, as told to Robert J. Hoerner
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I October 27, 2004 Dear Mom, Dad, Aunts, and Grandparents You all were there when I was born My life enriched through night and morn You’ve blessed me then—you bless me still Though you have gone despite my will To have you ever at my side ‘Neath radiant sky of azure blue My longing heart still thinks of you Below the grass of verdant green In still repose you lie serene I loved you then—I love you still Within my soul you all still live And through me to the world you give What you have taught me in this life I share with others in their strife Thanks to you all and may you rest With all the company of the blest II October 30, 2004 The autumn leaves around me blow Beneath the cloud-filled sky The sun (shines forth) between the clouds And warms the earth beneath my feet The wind it beckons to my soul And it invites me not to weep The spirits of all resting here They seem to whisper in my ear All is well where we have gone The journey of earth’s life is done And we have reached our final home No more travail do we endure Our rest eternal is secure You, too, will one day travel on To where the rest of us have gone And from that far and distant shore Will ne’er be troubled any more And you, too, shall then come to know All is well—All is well —David Prok
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When the road gets tough and the world won't bend And the painfulness of the deed won't end, And you're head hangs down 'cause your spirit's bound With the guiltiness that society's found, 'Tis time for us, for you and for me To be able to live as we want life to be, To stand up proud with brother and friend In a world where love is a means and an end, In a world where all can love who you are And take pleasure in your freedom to reach for your star, In a world of respect where your star or mine's Not judged for how closely it conforms to some line. 'Tis the time, dear friend, to shed some tears And to realize that throughout your years Your road's been rough like no one's known And it's long overdue for you to come home. 'Tis the time, dear friend, to realize too That only you can judge the who that is you, But judge with respect, compassion and tears, Love who you are, and ignore those who would jeer. It's these times you discover the meaning of friend, For some rush to judgment as their boundaries won't bend. But other men know that frailties abound And the best of the best of the best run aground. So here you are, Man, looking back at the deed And your spirit is wounded and a spirit can bleed. And I'm hurting too cause I've lived where you've been. Don't turn away, out of shame, from a friend. Man, this is a time to be with your friends. Use us. We're here and we know where you've been. Your spirit will mend with us at your side. Come to us my friend, to our arms opened wide. —Chuck Homer