Well, the old guy’s gone now. Safe travels, brother.
It was back in January when we packed the landlord off to the hospital in awful shape. On that particular day, I felt a mighty current flowing somewhere close, like an invisible Niagara Falls I could almost touch, stick my arm out and get pulled in… Although I was truly sorry to see our friend in such misery and pain, I knew there was something going on that put the lie to the solidity in our lives, and that was an extraordinary jolt. Not anything bad or scary, you understand, just, well, exciting. This led to a beautiful sunset, a significant meeting, and 90 minutes on the 12-string. If life were fair, I could tell you other things that happened on toward evening. It was quite a day in every respect.
All was quiet for a while. Then about ten days ago they shifted him over to a nursing home, very much against his will. A few days later he was sitting in a wheelchair and complaining of the pain. They gave him lunch and morphine. When the nurse went back to his room to fetch the tray, she found that he had gone. A old dear friend who knew him well told me later, “He really wanted out of that body. I figure he just saw his chance and took it, just rode out on that morphine…”
There was a gathering of his friends last weekend in a nearby home — the night before, I saw my landlord in a dream. After a couple hours of wine & shrimp and socializing, a medicine man arrived to hold a ceremony. After a long prayer in Lakota for release of the soul, we all spoke out in turn to share our thoughts and say goodbye. There were even a few words relayed from the recently departed, undeniably genuine in their context. Very moving, all of that. It was a quiet, rainy day, and a huge cloud bank settled slowly over the mountains as we finished, blotting them from view.
And now it’s back to “normal” life, but what the hell is that?
The government’s insane and genocidal. Equity evaporates while people dream of bigger TV sets. The county south of here declared a “mud emergency” from melting snow. I put the milk and bread on Mastercard this afternoon because a client hasn’t paid me yet. It’s going to snow again tonight, and we’re flat out of wood unless I fire up the chainsaw and murder us some boards.
Uncertainty over living here — the landlord died, remember — has given way to reassurance, but in the swaying of the cradle, we’ve thought of other things: space for a faraway baby grand, and a studio for me; starting an annuity, and paring down the crap. (The less you have, the simpler anything will be.) I even remembered the wilderness writer’s hut I yearned for when my wife was in Dubuque and who knew if she’d be coming back.
All this has a grand attraction to it, actually, like some great secret…
Related posts:
- We Always Think We're Coming Back
- Drama on the Compound
- No, No, Not Yet!
- Arrows on the Floor
- Mucho Nieve
Well, I totally believe you. My room at that Best Western was “okay,” just charmlessly...
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Sure hope you were able to get some firewood from somewhere. I’ll bet it was damn cold last night.
Sounds like your landlord’s opening/transition may pave the way for one of your own. If thought creates, seems like you’re entertaining it. I wondered what the status of your compound would be after he left. I was hoping to hear that someone was with him at the end. Nurses have their “duty” and don’t go much beyond. So he was alone. But in fact I suppose we are always alone – even if we have a partner and the illusion of “togetherness” – we are still unto ourselves. The separateness within the oneness. Hmm. A little mirror reflection perhaps of the original separation from the Big Oneness to live on this plane of polarity/duality – to experience the Journey back to One. How creative of we Spirit Beings. Thanks for sharing a bit of your own Journey, the better to see ourselves by. Blessings.
As nice as this is, it’s awfully small, like most places in Taos. I need more room to work in that’s not part of the shared domestic space. How this comes about is anybody’s guess.