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March 23, 1995 (a letter) Hay you two, So you know the great wheel turned just ever so slightly and now it is spring, and the work is renewal and growth and tenacity. You know, just like those little shoots that come up through the ground or the cement or out of acorns or pine cones or rocks for God's sake. Hard work, for sure, but the task nevertheless. Ha! throughout this crazy ordeal the daffodils and the tulips and the narcissus and the crocus, and the lily's that we had planted did their do like there weren't nothin' out of the ordinary happening. And our hummingbird--a ruby throated kind of guy, who we call Jocko, who we'd been feeding all winter and to whom I felt an incredible sense of responsibility, since he hadn't gone south since we'd been feeding him--anyway Jocko is another tribute to tenacity and those things that keep track of the way of all things, cause not only is he still around suckin' the syrup out of the feeder, but Mildred--his lady friend came back just the same too. Ha!
And the trees, the magnificent trees in the backyard, standing proudly in their redwood families holding court and remembering the knowledge and wisdom of times gone by, oh yes they remind me of the continuity, and somehow they teach me about patience and grace and strength and adaptability and all of this somehow being different from just plain old stubborn and ornery. Hmm.
And the osprey who we call Ishi is also back in his tree, see, over there, right out the front window. No fuss no muss, as if everything is all right, you know. Oblivious, indifferent, insensible to the ups and downs of the river, if you will. Hmm. Anyway there he is in his osprey spot doing osprey. Big white underbelly, wide wing span keen eye and watching them fish. Ha! His favorite branch sits out over the river and gives him a good look at the unsuspecting fish who are doing their fish errands below oblivious to the possibilities here, or maybe not oblivious, but what the hell, the errands need to be done anyway, you know. You can't always not do the errands just because some osprey is going to swoop down and eat you for dinner at some point. Hmm, so somewhere here the point, or the lesson if you will or the sticky wicket is about the fuss, you know like maybe it is all fuss or no fuss. You know how like I say feeling bad feels bad, or feeling good feels good or chaos is chaotic, and so on, so what's the big fuss, you know--but the trick has to be knowing and remembering that one way or another, for better and for worse, it is all so impermanent or maybe insignificant--hmm the thesaurus says another word for insignificant is unconnected, I suppose that is one way of looking at it. Just along the way you know, it's all just along the way. I'm still quite hung up here on unconnected, I don't think that is the way I would have said it, but the point is that incredibly everything is normal, usual ordinary in a very comforting way on the one hand, and in a way that is galling on the other hand, but nonetheless everything is just happening as if there is no reason on God's green earth why it shouldn't. Amazing. Whoshebe (the cat) could have told me that. Oh well, I just wasn't listening. Best regards.
March 31
AN OPEN LETTER OF THANKS to the many of you who lent support, moral and otherwise, during these at least forty days and forty nights of chaos:
your concern and attentiveness have been kindly received and in tangible ways have made this ungodly situation less onerous. Most particularly, the support extended us as well as the ongoing interest which has endured over the long haul, significantly diminished the sense of isolation and singularity which we experienced; the human connections, replete with the expectation that we still be able to carry on a mundane and benign conversation in the midst of the absolute disorder in our lives, not to mention that we were able to, lent a comforting sense of normalcy; and the abiding confidence that in the midst of all of this we were nonetheless able to reliably and effectively continue to do our work allowed us a sense of mastery in a situation which was otherwise totally out of our control.
In short, thank you, for your kind thoughts and show of affection which enabled us to manage with some grace this incredible and unimaginable ordeal.We are back home now and most things are in their rightful place. There is once again a glimmer of order and more importantly safety, and peace. And not so incidentally we dare to say, with some well earned trepidation, the sun is shining!April 27
So one of the things that we were all robbed of is that sense of our home being among other things impervious.
So one must learn again to feel safe, no easy task.
And it seems we have many reasons for our uneasiness, not the least of which is all those things left undone, but in fact it has the most to do with still being on edge on guard just plain on and at issue with this business of safe and trusting the walls of the castle.
May 4
And we are still sifting through all the things that are not yet put away, and I marvel at how much is still left given all that we lost. Funny the way things get stymied. Like the loads of laundry left to do that I'm reluctant to tackle because I feel ill prepared to make decisions about saving or not, the clothes and in any case I've nowhere to put the things I would choose to save. And so it is with all the stuff still in bags that came out of the desk drawers. What the hell are we going to do with it, and why do we even need it. We don't, but I can't bring myself to throw it out yet. And books. We've barely 100 left and they are pretty insignificant in the face of those we lost, but still there aren't enough book cases to hold them and so they sit as if orphans in piles here and there already dusty.
It's funny, on some level this has been like a great purge and we are left with a compulsion to whittle everything down to its final simplicity. Less is more. But imagine cleaning all your junk drawers, basement and attic all in one day, or one month or one year for that matter. Never mind the garage. Detritus. Hmm. The human packrat. Stuff of a lifetime that has no real meaning but somehow gives us succor. It's hard to figure.
And so we still have no dining room table, but the flower gardens are in and we have regained some sense of leisure time and totally scoffed at this last flood warning they issued just this weekend. In fact I think we just disallowed it in our total disbelief.
May 11
And so we took the final plunge(!) and made an honest effort to rehabilitate our teak dining room table and discovered, as we knew we would, that it was veneer and as is the way with these things one minute it was teak and the next minute it was scrap. So yet again we went to town and bought a 48 inch round dining room table with one leaf and six chairs for roughly eight hundred dollars and free delivery that very afternoon and called it a pretty good deal. That too was a hard one but, four months out we have a dining room table and the goddamned bistro table is outside where it belongs.
And Carl came yesterday and finished the countertops, hooked up the ice maker did the last few odd jobs and by God we're ready for the final inspection.
Funny you know you hear about the intense relationships people develop with physical therapists and even of old nurses, because of the work they do together. But here, now, on the river, it's all about the contractor. After all it is with him, because of him, that we have been able to recreate that thing that we call our home. And we have over time in some still waters run deep and irrevocable way become tied to him. And have now to show for it, for lack of a truer or better word an acutely familiar relationship.
And how important and principal it is.
Carl
He in a way came with the house, an easy, river faring kind of a guy, soft spoken and adamantly opposed to stress of any ilk. A man not easily offended. A man never to be hurried. Works hard and steady but never too long and not instead of play. Like he hadn't really wanted to do the sheetrock but did in the end anyway because it would happen sooner, and he could tell I was losing vision here and needed the boost to my morale. And when I asked why he didn't want to do the sheetrock he said, don't like doing it anymore 'cause it's too hard on my shoulders, and flashing his toothy grin he said he'd rather save his shoulders for surfing fishing and making love. He never came before ten or ten thirty and never left after five and most often was gone by three, but for all of it, you know we still were done before the rest of the neighborhood, not that we were keeping track, mind you.
And he was present and soothing and always participative and not struggling for control. Which then allowed Paul (and I) to contribute whenever and whatever so moved him (us) without transgressing boundaries or domains or disturbing Carl's sense of the economy of this. After all our work saved us money, which meant not so much money out of Carl's pocket, but certainly, less money in.
And so there were tribulations to be sure and a few trials, like his sense of river time, but never strife. And when the second flood threatened in March he phoned to see if we needed his help and even though we told him not to risk it he came flying down the road from Occidental just to walk through t
he place with us and to reassure us yet again that no matter what happened we'd just put it back together once more if need be.
All the king's horses and all the king's men.
And then he flew down the road again just ahead of the water.
The point is he was instrumental, key to our victory and triumph, you know.
One of those things beyond thanks and beyond the fair value exchange of services. One of those there but for the grace of one another, kind of things.
And again I am astounded by the apparent whimsy of those encounters which we come to know as intimate and call myself bloody lucky to have seen the leprechaun.
