This dust, this silence
There is this terrible silence now, and I don’t know what to do with it.
Usually I like silence. Long for silence. In today’s world, maybe the biggest problem is a lack of silence. But here is a silence I haven’t heard. Here is a silence logic told me was coming, yet now that it’s here, that it’s come for me, now that it’s crept in over this place, her things, her world — I can’t seem to feel the logic in it, or maybe it’s that logic by definition has no space for feel. And I feel the emptiness now, and the pain of it now.
I’m trying to make this into light. Into a lantern. I’m trying really, but some days it’s a hard thing to do.
Maybe it’s because my brother is gone. Mom and Fillow gone. Even Snowy and Swifty are now gone (more on them later). One could say they’ve all gone home. Old homes, new homes, “forever” homes — whatever logic hands us, or at least hands us to say. Something like this is always there to say. To fill in the blank. But does it help? Sometimes you’d rather just crumple up logic, or what it hands you, like some sheet of paper and throw it away. Sometimes Fuck feels like the only logical thing to say.
So, Fuck.
I’m in her home still, only now in this new silence. I’m without the others except for Munka here — yes, Munka the “flower pot” still remains. And the poor girl hears and feels the silence also. I’m sure of it. She sees more and more things gone. Sees and feels the chaos, and the who as well as the what now missing. And she just looks at me with those big yellow eyes, eyes also green, just these magnificent half-moons, and we both just stay like this for now, looking at each other, our eyes asking, “What now?”
What now, I suppose, is the finish. It’s trying to make sense of what’s left, and packing it up. It’s trying to turn this still into something more, something with meaning. It’s trying so hard to make a pearl. But can I really?
Some days are so full of meaning, and wonder and signs. Other days are empty, and more full of doubt. Full of Fucks. And today, today I wish I could call her, or just know that I could — could hear her voice, no matter where I am, just by punching in those certain digits in a row. This is the silence I mean, and this really is something terrible and something new. Not having a parent anymore. Not having any link to that anchor which brought you in to this sea of life.
Maybe it’s because I picked up her ashes yesterday. Something so strange about that box, and the weight of it. Something so strange about the going to pick it up, and the bag it came in, like a gift bag, and even the bow wrapped around the rosewood (although she would have loved this box, and especially the bow, and probably photographed it and placed it into a collage).
But I did as Mom asked. I picked her ashes up and went straight to the In-N-Out Burger at the foot of the runway of LAX, a place that means something to us, and I got double-doubles and a strawberry shake, as we used to. And I went to the grassy area there among the trees, as we used to. And watched the planes land and take off, as we used to. Heard the roar of the jet engines, heard and felt the energy of movement and flight overhead and also through me, through us, as we used to.
“I always thought dying would be a lot like this,” she told me. “Like taking off in a plane.”
And she said don’t worry, it would be alright if I just left her in the car — but that I should go, I should sit there and watch, and eat, and feel it. And I told her of course I would, and of course I would keep her at my side — what kind of son would I be, to leave a mother in the car? And she was quite excited by this.
And it was nice, really.
It was loud.
Only later, when I got home to Munka, did the silence creep in. And I didn’t know where to put it, or the rosewood box. Then I searched for the right words, but couldn’t find them. Tried to write, but couldn’t. Tried for a few hours then to find a poem she wrote, or maybe it was just some thought on another scrap of paper, but anyway I couldn’t find that also.
Munka watched me. Munka meowed and came to me, and tried to understand. And I tried to tell her. I don’t know if she understood, but what I tried to tell her was that the thought, or that poem here somewhere, whatever it was, was something so small but something about her. About Munka, I mean. Or about her brother or her mother. Or about all of them surely — though really, really it was about Mom. About how she looked at things.
That note or poem on that scrap of paper, it was just this simple, short idea I didn’t even think much of in the moment I saw it, and just set it down somewhere among the others. Then I found myself thinking about it constantly — like on the way there, to pick her ashes up, and then there at the foot of the runway, in the shade of that tree.
Because the idea was that every being is this mix of matter. Of moving energy. Energy we can’t quite explain, even if we think we can. And so when her cat comes to her in the night, looks at her, she doesn’t just see a cat. She sees a mystery there, a kind of unexplainable miracle looking back with those big round eyes.
The more I think about this, the more I think this is the key to explaining my mom. And maybe also the key to keeping her close. To look as she looked. At the world, at energy and light and sound. At things like the bow wrapped around her rosewood box, even. Or certainly any tree.
So I kept looking for the poem, but couldn’t find it. I did find others, though, that essentially carried the same idea, the same song. I’ll share them now, if only to further explain. Or fill in this blank, this silence for now.
~
Who but a Mighty Designer
Could create a tree
But are you telling me
That all it took
Was a tiny little seed
So, how in the world
What grows from this
Tiny little
seed
Is not just a tree
But the Tree
That’s like an entire
Symphony?
If I couldn’t hear
I would be listening to
a tree
I would observe
the rhythm of branches
the invisible wind playing softly
Leaf by leaf
I would look at birds falling
To the shadows during
small intermission
And again — I would listen
To the notes of a tree
Played by the wind
Leaves trembling
Branches swaying
Even though you don’t see who
On that violin is playing
I think that this tree
Is there — so I would wonder
There must be a purpose of
This tree so Mighty
And so full of Grace
Was the tree before me
Or is it here for me
Me and the tree standing
Breathing a wondrous
wonder between us — air
And you said — these are
All - elements and there is no
Connection
You said there is no purpose
It’s just a tree, and You with
Your brain made of tiny little cells
And I say: If it wasn’t for this tree
I wouldn’t be thinking
I wouldn’t believe in a PURPOSE
Behind this Universe
Written in a spirit of Appreciation for the Finer Things in Life. Wishing for All to stop and experience Beauty as a Mystery and Wonder — to comfort, to give Promise of Things Greater than us. Written for All who believe and those Who wish to believe in times of Loss, in times of trouble, anxiety, or wars.
a sip of the Star Spirit
What else but Nature can comfort us?
~
Or how about this one, in one of the last pages of her book — yes that one, her book our book, the one we probably should finish here soon, just a few pages left, but can you tell I’m hesitating? That I may be procrastinating just a bit? That I may want to stay in it, just a bit?
But I will get us these two pages closer, leaving here what she left there:
Just look at it:
Palm trees around LA are so hip /
each one is tall, elegant, full of dignity, / it is plainly against other plain trees - a celebrity /
they are cheerful, they have individual style / could look like a pineapple, a pheasant’s tail, / they look best against the mandarin colored sky /
palm trees are like the way / to accomplishing greatness / tall as dreams and in the meantime / hard to touch. I want a palm tree in my drink, in my bathroom / I want it in my kitchen, I want it sitting with me / on my couch.
I love palm trees…
~
Or this:
What we enter is SPACE
Filled with colors, shapes, textures and scents
We come to this space with our akward bodies and with a range of emotions: from empathy to ecstasy.
We seek ecstasy, but we get pain. And instead of love we find friendship. And then we realize
that Paradise is a touch of hand
a shade of tree, a word, a color, and that IT is all in a making, that nothing is quite defined / that we have to make it
~
Or even this:
This from the book you don’t know about yet. The one I found copies of neither in Socks and Underwear, nor Pants, not in that clothes chest at all but in a box on the top shelf of her closet in the other room. Should it surprise the reader here, at this point, to know that I found another book?
Well it didn’t surprise me. Nothing anymore. The only surprise was the year — 1982. So she found time to write this, this book or very long essay on art theory, titled Art is in You, when I was at her bosom, when I was 1. And the language surprises — clearly she had help with it. English was always Mom’s second language, and especially then it wouldn’t have been so advanced, so polished, and by some handwritten edits I do think I know who helped shape her thoughts into these more refined, more intellectual sentences. The language is for me a smokescreen. The thoughts within, though: absolutely Mom.
Artists’ experiments with color are poor when compared to the juxtaposition of colors existing in nature. It is sufficient to observe the colors of fish and birds in order to discover that they are never “mistakenly” arranged, that compositions created by nature are matchless and that their harmonies are not found anywhere else. Nature is a strange artist creating gorgeous things not through inspiration, but clear reason and accident resulting from the process of life itself. What is this force creating beauty as the result of “adaptation” of beings to their natural environment? And not only this, since this beauty extends even further, because these fish and birds could live without these fanciful colors, refined patterns and the sky could only have several hues; but yet for some reason going beyond a common “goal” this beauty is like an eternal fantasy with unparalleled colors and shapes, always changing like the palette of an indefatigable artist.
~
Maybe now the reader understands why I kept thinking about the cat poem or scrap of thought while sitting there in the shade of that tree, there among the roar of planes and beside the tree’s magnificent, sprawling root structure, most of which surely was beneath us, hidden from view. I kept wondering: what would she be fascinated with more, commenting on more? These planes? Or these roots?
Still I cannot find the poem. Maybe my brother threw it away. Maybe I did, by accident. Maybe Munka knows more than she’s telling me.
The point is, here is Mom. And here is how I must keep her close, keep her next to me. By learning to look as she looked. To see a tree, and see a symphony. To see a cat, and see something other than a cat.
