DON'T LIKE THAT ONE? DIG THIS ONE.
Glenda -
I sent Graham a questionnaire asking him all these things I wanted him to tell me his thoughts on concerning politics and he only had to check true or false, fill in one, one-word blank and he sent it back today. Tickles me to death. I'm lucky I got it back, really. He don't write much (enclosed a thirty-word note) and at the bottom of the test's first page, I put "all assholes turn the page." He turned it, not me.
Anyway, Nick is even having a struggle to help me with the work and he's been teaching since, hell, 1950 or something strange. I think time and reflection can help you comment on something. Just tell me any thoughts you have as time goes by and we walk together through this life, which is so beautiful, really. If you can just stay cool within, back in the sacred place. No one can successfully assault that place but you, once you're grown up. They can try, but you can fly.
"Every time I try to correct her work habits, she goes into a coma!"
"Fire her now."
I'm so glad you got that job, just for the money's sake. I hope you like Elmore Leonard. He's not a detective writer, really, he's an observer of humanity, and you'll find he's a genius, I'm sure.
I called Mom yesterday, thinking about her, and when she asked if there was a reason I called for, I said "I was wondering about how your car is doing. . . I saw a Monte Carlo today and . . . well, I just started wondering about . . . your car. How is Eric's car?" It was funny. I just wanted to listen to my mommy talk to me, and she knew it. It made us both happy just to yak on the phone. We were both depressed, and it lifted us both up.
Mike -
I remember Nick was your former professor Nick Crome, from Antioch. Can't remember what he taught. I remember when you and I ate greens and vinegar with him and his wife and stayed the night at their house and the next day you said he told you I had the hots for him. I can now say I was astounded, seeing as how he has died and won't get his feelings hurt.
I remember so many years of your talking about Graham. Never met him, never knew the spelling of his last name. Pronounced ‘Wizner.' You sure did love him. Hope he is well and happy, either here or with you. I know his father did not live this long. Mom has descended deeply into a confused place, now, but on one point she retains laser-like lucidity: She misses you.
Michael. I found an article online that says a French archaeologist found a bowl over two thousand years old that refers to Jesus Christ as "Christ the magician." It mentioned that the Wise Men referred to in the Christian Bible and alternatively called ‘Magi' were also indications that magic was alive and well in the days of Jesus. The article said that Jesus was considered a major practitioner of white magic, in his life.
I have been reading the Bible one chapter a night for a few months now, can't say why, but I am getting a wildly different take on the stories there than I had when I heard them as a younger person. I just can't believe the stuff I am reading is the stuff I thought I had already heard. Here is why I mention it: In the story of Moses in the book of Exodus, it speaks of magic. It tells about how Moses kept performing feats through God's might, but the Pharaoh would just keep refusing to release the Israelites from bondage. Now I am reading it again after hearing it all my life that way, and here is what I am catching that I missed before. God tells Moses to go tomorrow to the Pharaoh and perform some feat, like turning a river to blood or tossing down his staff so it turns into a serpent, or suchlike. Moses does as he is told. The Pharaoh sees the impressive feat performed, and consults his magicians. His magicians tell him they also know that trick, and they show him how they also can give the appearance of turning a rod into a serpent by tossing it down, or how they also can do the other ‘tricks' Moses is performing. Each time Pharaoh is reassured by his court magicians that this seeming magic Moses is performing is nothing special, he takes the hard line with Moses and refuses his demands. It is only when Moses at last gets medieval on those firstborns that the magicians stop saying ‘Oh that old trick.' They suddenly refuse to make eye contact with the Pharaoh and hurry off to see if that's their phone. That is when Pharaoh gets scared and, albeit temporarily, relents.
Listen: I spent the month of November driving out to sit by a huge tree and work on a short story. Last visit was on November 19th. Went back day after Thanksgiving to polish the final draft, and the TREE HAD CRASHED DOWN AND DESTROYED LIKE A HALF A SQUARE BLOCK OF ITS SURROUNDINGS. Could not believe it. Got the hell out of there and went home to revise on the couch, even though I hate to write at home. So I am reading through the short story one last time, and my heart damn near stopped when I got to the last lines of the story I had been sitting under that tree writing as it prepared to take its leave. (sorry.) The last lines were: "But there's an ache in my gut and it already feels like an enormous tree has fallen down in there. Fallen with a splintering thunder and taken everything with it that it encountered on its way down."
I was gobsmackedtohell. Intense, indefinable feeling took me over when I found the tree so gone. It must have been centuries old. Same inchoate intensity seized me when I saw what I'd written as I sat in the final hours of its shade. Then all that seized-state coalesced into this one impression: The tree was in a spot where nobody probably EVER sat down under it. After all the time it had lived, and all it must have seen, it had reached an isolated juncture toward the end. But God sent somebody to while away the hours with it in its final days. The tree received the gift God presented, and took the opportunity to say "Goodbye."
They say talking to plants makes them grow and that plants react to positive and negative sounds. If that is so, then how unlikely could it be that this old tree said goodbye to me? Nobody wants to leave with nobody to say goodbye to. No less shocking than the idea it was just a coincidence, says me. If my theory is right, then I am sorry I did not realize it was talking and I was hearing it, so I could have answered and said "You will be missed."