a workinprogress: September 2007

“and death I think is no parenthesis…” e.e.cummings

Leaning up against the wall, blanket curled around my toes for warmth, cold rain falling steadily against the trees. Today, the drops remind me of every fallen friend. Taped to my fridge, I have a letter written to Denver, a bartender at the Four Faced Liar in the east village: a letter written from a friend after his death at 27. Do we wait too long to write these letters? Death; it plucks at us, one by one.
I remember a dream I once had around the age of 8, a frightening one. I dreamt my father sliced horizontally, as if from an over-sized onion cutter. He was portioned in even slabs of what appeared to be neat, lengthened rectangles of clay. Lying in a bathtub of his own millpond blood, he looked up at me with a smile just as steady. He reassured me that he was dying, said not to cry. I was 8. How could I not? The image of his fragmented body is stuck in me like a Polaroid Scotch-taped to my brain. I’ve never told my father about it.
I think everything is all together, is going and moving along like life should. Then, like a twig in a dry tree, we can snap. Everything shifts – all of a sudden life is different. All it takes is for death’s pluck to pluck near to us and suddenly we’re aware of it. We realize death is not so far off. Like the assassination snap of a fragile gerbera daisy head, it happens fast and unexpected.
No conclusion goes here, as Kerouac said: “there is only continuum of living across preordained spaces, followed by the continuum of the Mystery of Death. That death is a Mystery makes death acceptable, therefore; because Mystery never ends but continues.” In On the Road, Kerouac has one of his characters stand on a street corner or in a subway and close his eyes. “He stares at the darkness in his eyes, then opens them wide, looks, and says “Why?” All this is a complicated thing,” Kerouac reflects.

"The effect is to the make the world show its mystery, its skirts, as it were an odd, embarrassing moment. The hex of the mystery shows its presence… The essences in his brainpan are not there for nothing, the swirls in his wondering soul and about his head are not there for nothing. He is not demanding power, only love, which is pure knowledge of the unknown."

I’m still not settled on Kerouac’s belief that all life is death. It is in his musings on life and its purpose that I find value. I’ve found clarity in why I live the life I’ve chosen through Kerouac’s journals. Kerouac insists that all life is holy, and “we must be reverent of one another, always.” There are many reasons this strikes a chord with me, but the main one has to do with my entire life of confusion regarding religion and spirituality. One other quote that has helped me extrapolate my own personal thoughts on the issue is one he entitled Lacrimae rerum:

"This lacrimae rerum; my happiness, depends on the recognition of the other world while I am in this one, or I cannot stand this one. I must be in contact with as much of this world (through means of variety of sensuality, i.e., experience of loves of all kinds) and I must be in contact with the Holy Final Whirlwinds that collect the ragged forms into one Whole Form.
…
This is why life is holy: because it is not a lonely accident. Therefore, again, we must love and be reverent of one another, till the day when we are all angels looking back."

Paraphrasing from an article on Lacrimae rerum, the phrase refers to a quote from the Aenied, “sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt.” Aeneus says this as he looks upon a mural depicting combat from the Trojan War. Through translation, the quote says, “These are tears for events and mortal things touch the soul.” Mortal things touch the soul, or in other words we are touched by the most human things. Ordinary things. Things that may vanish at any moment. Perhaps the things we take for granted...

Kerouac certainly sought to mythologize his life and in his journals touched upon things I had never thought of in such ways. To feel life is holy, to go so far as to love and be reverent toward life and people as an everyday practice, is the way I aspire to live. This Latin quote sums up why Frank O’Hara’s ‘daily life’ writing style made so much sense to me back in Brooklyn; engagement in the details, nuances, and even mundane is living beatifically. Kerouac had once said that Beat meant a connection to the disenfranchised, hipsters, the underground; the ‘tired’ or ‘down and out’, as Kerouac’s friend Herbert Huncke suggested. The lesser known Kerouacian definition comes from a revelation Kerouac had while sitting in a silent church: “I was the only one there, it was five p.m., dogs were barking outside, children yelling, the fall leaves, the candles were flickering alone just for me.” Kerouac then felt that beat meant “beatific.” This is what it means to me. Though my writing about snails, coffee cups, foxes and buttons may not change our swirling world of despair, there is much purpose in living a writing life. It was this generation of writers that got me writing; now, at a new turning point in my life, it is Kerouac who will keep me writing.

I do not mean to drag this reflection on too long, but it is a continuous musing, so I suppose it really shouldn’t have a tight ending. While searching Naropa campus for a classmate, I came across another thought (I’d like to say epiphany, but I think all thoughts are epiphanies on a scale; it is what we do with a thought that gives it its gradation.) I realized who it is I write for: I write for the dead.
This not to say I write for people who have died, but for people who are no longer living. Those who are no longer thinking about life, no longer processing their reflections about life, perhaps even those not writing, I believe to some extent, are not living. Another quote from Kerouac: “It is just as difficult for that kind of man to punch a clock and do the same stupid thing all day as it is for an unimaginative man to go hungry – for that too is ‘going hungry’.” A person living, making a living and still breathing is not necessarily alive, just as a person being fed food is necessarily not hungry. Though I am using these adjectives as hyperbolic metaphors, it is necessary in explaining who it is I am writing for. (Do you get it yet by repetition? Repetition used to highlight the necessity of writing!)

I am writing to wake up the dead. I want the dead people on earth to one day see my writing or way of living as fodder. The writer is the 'arrangeur', but first, the 'manger', french for 'arrange' and 'to eat', respectively. We arrange matters after we feed off of the world. Kerouac dreams in French, wakes up to remember this fact and scribbles it down. Without his impulse to wake and transcribe this, we wouldn’t have this ‘thought’.

I work with four girls at the European Flower Shop just down the street from my house: Kristina, Kristen, Jessie and KT. Under any other circumstances, I would loathe Kristen and Kristina for having similar but different names, but I like them too much to hate them. (?) The two of them, owner and manager, are in Las Vegas for a week doing "research" and all managerial tasks were passed on to the ultra-organized, super experienced, savvy businesswoman - me. All sarcasm aside, I will work my ass off for any boss that shows me respect and appreciation and fortunately for everyone in this situation, this is the case.

We had a large wedding to do this weekend and Jessie and KT weren't exactly stoked to stay late and get the job done. This meant that I was alone in assembling a gorgeous light orange and burgundy wine wedding for "Jessica from Lyons".

After closing the doors to regular business around 6 pm Saturday, I went to work on the wedding arrangements. Not too many friends would find hanging out in a flower shop on a Saturday night til all hours appealing or fun, but George accompanied me in my Pandora marathon wrapping hand cramp stem mess making Cap't Morgan out of arrangement vases Glory.

Here is a pictorial account for your enjoyment.

I'd also like to give a shout-out to Jackie for putting up with my sporadic phone calls of nonsense and hysteria throughout the night. Thank God she was dreaming about me, or she might not have answered.