Eulogy

A buddy of mine died today. He was the guy I felt closest to at Our Daily Bread--we had a good rapport. He was our porter, which meant mostly he sat by our receptionist's desk and did little odd jobs for her. He helped her stuff envelopes, or would bring the mail to those of us in the office, shuffling across the floor. When I'd come in at the start of the day I'd smile and say hi to him. And he'd turn around like he was trying to figure out who I was talking to. And if I was walking through the place I'd hear him sing out "Ann--gela!" But of course if I looked over at him he'd be looking behind him again. (He played this game with his nephews too. Several times a day I'd hear him give that same kind of teasing call to one of them. It was one of the ways I knew all was well with the world.)
I remember probably my first week of working there, or close to it, I sat next to him at the front door in an effort to get acclimated to the soup kitchen environment. He greeted everyone who came in, usually with a nickname. "What's up, Grumpy?" "How's your kid doing?"
"How many of the people here do you know?" I asked him.
"I don't know any of 'em," he said seriously. Then he went back to greeting everybody.
Two things he was known for in particular. One was his Li'l Rascals face. He didn't have any teeth, so he had no problem getting his lower lip all the way up to his nose, pouting it out as he did it so his lower face was all frowny lip. Then he'd turn his baseball cap to the side, squeeze his eyes shut and slump down so his stomach stuck out. He adopted this pose if anyone tried to take his picture, and often he did it just because.
The other thing he did was set off the loon call in the office. Our volunteer coordinator had bought a stuffed animal loon who would give its weird call--ooOOOooo--if you pressed down on its back. This my buddy enjoyed doing. He never grew tired of hearing it. We got treated to a lot of loon calls when he was around. Not too long ago he started doing something new--slowly tipping his head back and opening his mouth wide as it'd go when he set off the loon call, so it seemed like the noise was coming out of his own throat. Then it became an in-joke greeting between us--I would mime his loon call move, he would mime it back to me. This was especially great in the middle of a crazy day (it's always a crazy day in a soup kitchen). My desk is so positioned that I could look out the office door and see him sitting by the front door, clear across the lower dining room. On a tough day I'd catch his eye, tip my head back, open my mouth as wide as it would go--ooOOOooo. He'd do it back. We'd giggle and I would get back to work.
Sometimes I'd look up from my computer and see him standing expressionless in the doorway of his office--no telling how long he'd been standing there. I'd roll my eyes and he'd crack up. Or he'd be behind the door and would slooooowly come peeking out, only to duck right back. (This was another sign he spent a lot of time entertaining his nephews.) I would mimic him then too, playing hide and seek behind my computer, until we'd both crack up. "If I can make you laugh, I know I've done something right," he'd say. He seemed really proud of himself when he said it, too, and I knew this laugh during a tough day was his gift to me, and he was glad to be able to give it.
He had a lot of tough days--he was sick a long time--and there wasn't much I could do to lighten them for him. "I'm not feeling too good, Angie" was something he said often. And sometimes when he'd be walking out of the office after bringing us the mail (holding it out and then snatching it out of reach a few times before relinquishing it), he'd stop and close his eyes and wobble a little before continuing on.
A couple of weeks ago he gave me a little white teddy bear that's sitting now on my desk. "What are you gonna name it?" he asked me later that day.
"I don't know. I don't think I ever really had a teddy bear as a kid. My favorite stuffed animal back then was a rabbit named Bunny Baby."
"Then name it Bunny."
So I have Bunny to remember him by.
He gave our volunteer coordinator a musical snowglobe that he won at one of our weekly bingos. It "snows" iridescent sparkles on a pair of giraffes, and it plays "Everything is Beatiful." When he came in for a visit to the office, often or she would wind it up, and he would dance. So she has that, and the song will make all of us think of him when we hear it.
Everything is beautiful in its own way.

On the absolute last day I can get away with posting this

A poem by Dylan Thomas.

Especially When the October Wind

Especially when the October wind
With frosty fingers punishes my hair,
Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire
And cast a shadow crab upon the land,
By the sea's side, hearing the noise of birds,
Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks,
My busy heart who shudders as she talks
Sheds the syllabic blood and drains her words.

Shut, too, in a tower of words, I mark
On the horizon walking like the trees
The wordy shapes of women, and the rows
Of the star-gestured children in the park.
Some let me make you of the vowelled beeches,
Some of the oaken voices, from the roots
Of many a thorny shire tell you notes,
Some let me make you of the water's speeches.

Behind a post of ferns the wagging clock
Tells me the hour's word, the neural meaning
Flies on the shafted disk, declaims the morning
And tells the windy weather in the cock.
Some let me make you of the meadow's signs;
The signal grass that tells me all I know
Breaks with the wormy winter through the eye.
Some let me tell you of the raven's sins.

Especially when the October wind
(Some let me make you of autumnal spells,
The spider-tongued, and the loud hill of Wales)
With fists of turnips punishes the land,
Some let me make of you the heartless words.
The heart is drained that, spelling in the scurry
Of chemic blood, warned of the coming fury.
By the sea's side hear the dark-vowelled birds.

---
Why do I love this poem so much? For one thing, it sounds so good recited. The line about the "wordy shapes of women"--you start smiling as you say it and the smile comes through in your voice. Try to count how many times a letter ends one word and begins the next: "sea's side," "and drains," "Shut, too"--these combinations force you to slow down, to linger over each word as you speak. And all the alliterations make music as well.
It took me a long time to notice the rhyme scheme, since it's full of near-rhymes. It also took me a while to figure out that each line is ten syllables long.
This site goes into this poem into a bit more detail.

Actual In-Print Writing

A review I wrote of Stephen Catanzarite's book on Achtung Baby is now up at CityBeat.
I had to shorten it to get the word count to something reasonable. One cut broke my heart--I very much wanted to quote Inigo Montoya in the section describing how Catanzarite cites Yeats' "The Second Coming": "I do no' think it means what you think it means."

Peculiar Hypotheses I Tend To Credit

When I was a wee lass my mom and dad took me on a trip to New York because my dad was going to a special training there in the summer. I think this took place in the summer between kindergarten and first grade, which would have made me five, but I don't remember exactly. I do remember that before the trip I had befriended a neighborhood cat, an orange tabby I called Tiger. I was heartsick about leaving St. Louis without saying goodbye to Tiger, and I was sure he wouldn't understand my absence. Sure enough, I never saw Tiger again. When we returned from New York in the fall, my sister told me that Tiger had come by looking for me several times, and then finally gave up.
For many years after that, no neighborhood cat would give me the time of day. I'd try to coax them to me, but they would just run off. I was convinced it was because they had all heard how I'd misused poor Tiger.
I tell this story because there's a cat named Thomas who hangs around my new place. He would always dash into the shrubbery or under the parked cars when he'd see me coming. This went on for weeks until I decided to put some effort into making friends with Thomas. Now that I'm a grownup, I know the way to a cat's heart is through his stomach, so I bought some cat treats. It still took a while, but he's gone from total disapproval of me to wary friendliness to being outright demanding.
And since becoming friends with Thomas, I have noticed something curious. All the strays I've encountered lately have been exceptionally cordial. As soon as I stoop down and do the "here kitty" routine, they come right up to me to be petted--and I'm not carrying around any cat treats, either. I'm beginning to wonder if my childhood theory is right, and cats do spread the word about the trustworthiness of particular humans.

Lectionary Stuff

Here is what we read Sunday at Mass. Some things struck me on this go-round that I hadn't noticed before:
1. Isn't it interesting how there's a molten calf in the first reading and a fattened calf in the Gospel?
2. That numerical progression in the Gospel is great: one out of a hundred sheep, one out of ten coins, one out of two sons. I can imagine the original hearers going, "I wouldn't leave ninety-nine sheep to chase one!" but having no such trouble with the coin story, and then by the time the story of the sons comes around they're totally sucked in.
3. Before we got to the readings Father mentioned how God and Moses sound like parents when a kid has gotten in trouble: "Let me tell you what your son did today...!" First God complains to Moses about "your people," and Moses answers by giving them back to God by calling them "your own people." Same motif in the Gospels, but the situation is reversed if we equate the prodigal son's father with God: this time, the elder son calls his brother "your son" when he's talking with their dad but the dad turns around and calls him "your brother."
By the way, the woman who did the first reading at our Mass did a marvelous job. When she got to God's line where he's quoting the Israelites worshipping the calf--"This is your God, O Israel,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt!"
--she gave it such a mocking tone, like one kid on the playground repeating another kid's words in singsong, that she got a giggle out of the congregation.

Continuing Adventures Of This Week

Lured by the promise of an ArtsyFartsyJesusFreak Woodstock, I went camping this weekend to an event known as "GratisFest." It featured bands like Jake Speed and the Freddies and The Pomegranates and The Psalters; primary-color-themed art projects; and a half-pipe for young skater dudes and chicks. I haven't been on a camping trip since I was, oh, one. But I had a supremely easy time of it--all I had to do was buy a sleeping bag and a cooler and borrow D.'s flashlight. My friends G. and T. let me sleep in their tent and eat their food; I didn't even have to drive, I just bummed rides to and from rural Indiana.
The first evening I helped serve ale in the makeshift pub (Price: "a penance a pint"). I stepped outside when the dusk was all gone and only night was left. There were STARS. There was even a MILKY WAY. Jake Speed and the Freddies paid tribute to the sight with a lovely rendition of the Woody Guthrie/Wilco classic "California Stars." I had brought along an H.A. Rey starbook borrowed from the library (growing up I had a copy of his Know Your Stars); I used it to make exceptionally futile attempts at identifying constellations. Over the course of the weekend, I managed to find Scorpio--that was all I gained in constellation knowledge.
The first night, Friday to Saturday, I did not sleep well, so my Saturday passed as follows:
Got up
Sat in a chair
Ate tasty food (eggs and cheese in a bagel)
Napped in the tent
Sat in a chair some more
Ate tasty food (pasta salad with tomatoes and green olives)
Napped some more
...You get the idea. I also went for a couple of walks in the fantastically picturesque woods, trying to identify elm and black walnut trees.
Saturday night The Pomegranates staged a triumph. They made me miss Pants terribly though, because she was the one that introduced the band to me, plus there was a redheaded girl dancing in front of the stage and for a fleeting moment I thought Pants had come to town to surprise us all. Alas, it was not so. But The Poms were simply incredible, particularly considering the audience was probably 75% musicians, so it would have been rather an intimidating show to play, I'd think. I expect great things from this band.
Walking back to the campsite (which by the way consisted of most of my friends and neighbors) after the concert I happened to look up as I wandered through the corn fields and saw some shooting stars. I thought--not for the first time--that I've been given a great life.

When The Stars Fall From The Sky And The Moon Has Turned Red

I've been waiting to post until I have time to write a full account, but it doesn't seem like I have the luxury of time, so I'll just have to do this in snippets.
Last week I watched the moon cease to exist. The lunar eclipse was very odd, here in Ohio. Unsettling. My friend K and I wandered through Norwood, camping out on one neighbor's porch after another, trying to keep it in sight as it sunk in the sky. When I left the house at 4:50 am, there was already a tiny bite out of the top, like out of a glowing chocolate chip cookie; the bite grew larger and larger as we watched but not very quickly (the earth it moves fast, but not all that fast) so mostly we paid it little attention, we just chatted amongst ourselves. But when there was only a tiny sliver of light left at the bottom, we kept our eyes trained on the moon, even as we had to keep finding higher ground since it was sinking fast into the trees. Then it was red, like a coal after a fire--streaked with red like that. We watched and waited for the sliver of light to return at the top but the earth it is very very large. The sky meanwhile grew lighter, the moon sank lower, and it grew more non-descript. Think of seeing the moon out in daytime, and then imagine the light cast on it by the sun is gone, and you'll get a sense of how not-bright it was. There came a point where we weren't sure we were looking at the moon at all, and so we went home without seeing it return. We wondered if it would ever come back.