Another friendly letter

Deland's study in Boston—note the daffodils

This is the blessed time of year that I get to keep daffodils on my desk. They’re angels is what they are. If there’s anything on earth that makes me think that a deity might by some small stretch of the imagination be possible, it’s the seemingly superfluous beauty of daffodils. I’ve loved them since boyhood because I despised winter even then, and when they appeared, I knew that the worst was over. The same is true now. It’s a crappy gray day, but at least I have daffodils, and to tell you the truth, I had just as soon have a gray day with daffodils than a sunny day without. When they stop blooming, it’s as if my best friend died.

 I had to take Brewsky back to the vet bright and early this morning for his bladder problems. It was a sad occasion, my regret being that I couldn’t tell him why I was causing him such misery, and my fear being that he will have to have surgery after all. I’ve since gotten a call from the vet saying his urinary tract isn’t blocked, but that further tests will be necessary.

I listened to the news as I drove and learned that Sanders won Michigan, so I’m wondering if it’s time to give him some more money. Like most people, I don’t want to donate to a candidate who can’t win, but if thousands of optimists hadn’t given him money when it was widely believed that he had no chance, he wouldn’t be where he is. If Clinton should beat Sanders, I’ll vote Green because I so dislike and distrust Clinton that I can’t see voting for her even if it means that an insane billionaire might become president.

Brewsky’s vet trip was my first time to leave home in days, so it felt strange to be out in the heavy morning traffic, driving all the way to Santa Clara. I don’t remember why we chose an across-town vet all those 25-years  ago, but it seems a bit late to change. We’ve had two dogs euthanized in that clinic, and now our pets consist of two cats. I just wish we had someone to euthanize us someday.

There was roadwork along the route making it necessary for people to slow down to let other people merge. I never see such an event without reflecting upon how helpful most people are, at least when it’s cheap and easy. Fortunately, the cost of doing good is usually low in proportion to how much encouragement it can bring. Imagine how you would feel if no one ever let you merge. But why is it that some jerk always speeds ahead of everyone else to the head of the merge line? I block such people religiously, but not everyone is as hard as I, and it is true that the offender might really be in a desperate hurry.

I spent yesterday in bed. I’ve gotten to where every few weeks, I feel so low that I can’t seem to stay up. It’s hard getting old, and it’s hard being in pain. My latest problem is that I ripped the nail on my right thumb back while doing dishes (yes, I know that sounds strange) two nights ago. This is the thumb that I crushed in a door a few weeks after breaking my back in November, 2013. I was so loaded on Fentanyl when I crushed it that it took me a moment to register that I was standing there with my thumb in a shut door (good stuff, Fentanyl—way stronger than morphine), and it has remained swollen ever since (I narrowly missed having to have it amputated). The swelling keeps the nail pushed up, so I’ve been anticipating tearing it off eventually, and although it’s still there, I’m wearing a glove to protect it. I see a hand surgeon tomorrow.

Last week, I bought my fifth Margaret Deland letter. When I started collecting Deland, I was pleased to find that first editions of her books were so cheap, but now that I have all but two of them, I want to upgrade to copies that are pristine, signed, and have dust jackets, although such books are rare and expensive. I’m also looking into having a book conservator repair any defects in the signed copies I already own—I own many. My inventory of antique books is now 27-pages long, and I’ve filled nine feet of shelf space, partly because I’ve started collecting another author—Lebbeus Mitchell.

I feel a bit old to start seriously collecting antique books, but if I had started when young, there would have been no Internet to make it easy to find them, and I wouldn’t have wanted to spend the money. As it is, Peggy and I live so cheaply that we’ve yet to dip into our retirement savings (in other words, we live entirely on Social Security), so it seems silly to deny myself something that, no matter how much I spend, isn’t going to break the bank.

I also have the thought that my collection could be somewhat of a blessing to scholarship if I leave it to a university, to which end I’m already making plans. Even if my every book isn’t wanted, the letters surely will be. I’ve thus far been able to buy every significant letter that has come up, and the few that I passed on weren’t worthwhile because of their brevity or, as in the case of one, because only a fragment remained. Why anyone would take scissors and cut away all but a few lines of a letter is beyond me, but that’s what they did.

I find it exceedingly strange to have my life so intimately linked with a person who died four years before I was born. Just by holding something that she touched, I feel connected, not just to her, but to her era, her experiences, her point of view, and even to her ancestor who was burned at the stake for taking a stand against organized religion. I feel such intimacy with Deland that it’s as if she’s alive through me. Surely, if I had my schooling to do over, I would major in history because an era is like a life in that it’s best understood when it’s over. While Deland could only observe her existence as it occurred, I can see its themes in their entirety. Through her writings, she tried hard to tell people who she was, and I’m honored to listen.

Cats and rats, mitts and bats

Peggy, Kurt, and Jackie

Is it more interesting to you, my reader,  for me to create subject-oriented posts, or to share what amounts to friendly letters?
 
Peggy is sick with a cough that she gets every year and that is unrelated to having a cold. We spent the summer of 1986 in Fresno, California, where, it is thought, Valley Fever caused a calcification in her lung, and that is where her cough always settles. Her internist says that nothing can be done, but I want her to see a pulmonologist when she goes on Medicare in four months because coughing several times a minute for weeks on end is a hard way to live. It’s also hard on me to listen to constant explosions and rattlings and feel helpless to do anything. In fact, I sometimes want to run from the house, and this makes me feel weak and guilty. I’m trying to get her to go in for antibiotics, but she worries about how much it will cost. Besides, Nurse Peggy is scared of doctors, and is therefore the last person go to one even when she needs to.
Today, March 1 (I’m finishing this on March 2), is my birthday. I’m 67. It’s strange to think that back in 1949, on a rare snowy morning in south Mississippi, my father was sitting in a waiting room while Dr. Bob helped my mother give me birth; and then to remember that my father has been dead 22-years, Dr. Bob for at least forty years, and my mother for 28-years. I try to picture her lying in her coffin in the cement vault that she requested, and wonder how well she’s escaping the physical deterioration that she feared. To me, nothing could be worse than to NOT deteriorate. I found her request about the vault offensive because it meant denying the earth its due, and for what?—to preserve a corpse that’s going to eventually rot anyway.

My father said he didn’t care what happened to his remains, so I had him cremated. I figured I would spread him somewhere, but didn’t know where, so he spent years in the hall linen closet all snug in the cardboard container that the crematory mailed him in. I happened to mention this to Peggy’s parents when they were here for a visit, and her mother became very upset that I cared so little for my father that I didn’t keep his remains in an honored place in an expensive container. She didn’t know or care that, had he been able, my father would have jumped down my throat if I spent money on an urn, or that he would have considered the hall linen closet homey. Peggy and Walt and I finally took him to the coast, thinking to leave him on Cape Perpetua, which is a mountain overlooking the Pacific. We got him up there, but the place just didn’t feel right somehow. We had no backup plan, so we took him walking along the beach (the beach being mostly sharp, uneven, and jagged basalt), hoping to find a place that felt right. The day was windy and overcast, but just as we got to a volcanic chute called “The Devil’s Churn” (a place where the breakers explode back upon one another with enormous noise, spray, and violence after being funneled between walls of basalt), the wind stopped, the sun came out, and the place and moment seemed perfect, so that’s where I left my father, scooping him from the box with my bare hands, bone fragments and all. My mother-in-law would have been way upset by where we left him, so I never told her. Other people haven’t thought much of it either. You don’t expect criticism about where you scatter your father’s ashes, but people looked at me like I must have held him in such contempt that I had become unhinged, so I stopped telling them.

(Father) Brent came to see me last week. I had no agenda, and he had no agenda, so we simply talked for an hour. It took months to arrange this visit—which he suggested—because he stays so busy, and because he had to cancel at the last minute on one occasion, which isn’t unusual for him, and which I don’t mind. I asked him if it’s possible for an introvert to be a priest, and he said probably not. I then offered that I had once imagined that extroverts were more open with their feelings, but it finally dawned on me that they simply talk more, and that introverts are often better able to be emotionally present. I made it clear that I included him in this assessment, and he readily agreed. We all have our limitations, and keeping people at a distance is his, but he’s still a good man. I don’t know him well enough to say I love him, but I do respect him. I also worry about him, because being unable to know what’s really going on for him makes me fear the worst. I very much wish that he and I could be friends, but he lacks the time, and I have no idea if he has the desire. Not only does he have his priestly job, he raises chickens for sale, and kills them himself. This bothers me not a little, but there’s no point in bringing it up. No doubt, his chickens have better lives than factory chickens, but they still end up with their throats cut in ISIS fashion.

Peggy’s father, Earl, is another man who is emotionally distant. Even his daughters don’t feel that they really know him because he turns aside any questions of a personal nature. After Peggy’s mother died, I asked a neighbor of his to look in on him from to time, and the neighbor refused, saying, “Well, you know how he is.” I never worry about Earl, though, like I do about Brent because Earl is a tower of emotional strength and is nearly always in a good mood. He just turned 86 and is very much in possession of his “faculties,” as the saying goes.

Jackie and Kurt are coming for dinner tonight. They’re the only local friends I have left, the others having grown gradually more distant without me doing much to prevent it. My former best friend, Walt, very much wanted me to get a cellphone so  we could text, texting being his primary means of communication. I could look out the window right now and probably see two or three people walking, biking, or skateboarding, past the house while texting. Yesterday, while leaving Costco, I saw three people texting between the cash register and the door. Peggy and two friends have gone away together for a three-day weekend every year for decades, only now Peggy complains that they’re texting every minute they’re not talking to one another, and this discourages her from trying to make conversation because she feels like she would be interrupting. There’s an addictive quality about these goddamn cellphones, and when Walt said that I needed to either get one or our friendship would suffer, it was like hearing a recent convert say that our friendship depended upon me going to church with him. I not only don’t want to text, I despise the very thought of being one of these people who walk—or worse yet, drive—the street with their thumbs on their little “devices.” There’s something unmanly about these things.

It’s easier being friends with cats if only because they don’t have cellphones. I very much miss having local friends in my life, but I take my Internet friendships seriously, and when one of those friends is hurting, I can but wish that geographical distance didn’t make it impossible for me to give them something more than emotional support… My expectations of what other people can and will offer is so low that I look upon finding a friend as like finding a needle in a haystack. Still, I’m friendly to everyone, often strike-up conversations with strangers, and even look for ways to be helpful to others, if only by opening a door or drawing them out if they seem unhappy. I’m not the kind of a recluse that is unapproachable, but simply the kind that has low expectations.

Besides, I love my cats. I have concluded that Ollie is the most beautiful and wonderful cat in the world, and that the Egyptians would have had a cult—complete with priests and temples—just for him. I love his personality, his playfulness, his sweetness, and his extraordinary beauty. I mean, what’s not to love! I’ve mentioned that I no longer feel much attracted to women, and, oddly enough, I guess, this makes me more physically attracted to all manner of other things. It’s not that I want to have sex with cats and daffodils (my favorite flower), but that while I used to appreciate such things in my head, I have come to feel admiration within my body. It’s an extraordinary experience after having lived for all those decades fixated on the beauty of women. Now, in all honesty, women aren’t even near the top of things that I find beautiful, and there’s a feeling of emptiness when I try to recapture the passion that I once felt for them. You might wonder if this doesn’t make me feel less of a man. No, it makes me feel more of a man because I’m no longer a slave to how women regard me. Whether a woman is old or young, beautiful or homely, I don’t care, so I make no greater effort to win the favor of the one than of the other. They’ve lost their goddess stature to me, and this has enabled me to know viscerally—as opposed to intellectually—that they’re on the road to rot as surely as anything else. For those many years, I thought that their beauty gave them power and protection if not immorality, and now all such feelings are gone.

Oh, but I miss having dogs. Still, cats are good too. Peggy won’t even go with me anymore to a pet store or a rescue shelter because she knows I’ll fall in love with some cat, and get all bummed when she won’t let me bring it home. She’s afraid I’ll turn out like her sister who has nine cats, bitches about them all the time, says she’s just waiting for them to die so she can have a better life, and then calls to announce that she has taken in yet another cat. Pam’s cats are different from mine though in that they hate themselves, one another, human beings, and the world at large. I think this is because Pam doesn’t spend time with them, and because her idea of disciplining—whether cats or children—is to yell at them continually in her naturally loud voice.

I just bought my third letter by Margaret Deland. They’re all handwritten, but here is the text of the latest (Newbury St is in Boston):

My dear Mrs Raymond—

        Thank you for your letter. To feel that in your own personal sadness, you were willing to to come here to help lessen somebody elses sadness, is a real comfort to me; indeed any such expression of unselfish courage makes for the bettering and brightening of the world. I write this because I want you to know that I appreciate your coming to the Jonquil Sale. In spite of the weather, it went off pretty well, thanks to the kind people who like jonquils; — but the needs of the poor sick lady for whom I had the sale are so especially pressing this year, that I was sorry I did not have the help of sunshine.

Thank you for coming, and for your letter—

            Sincerely-
                Margaret Deland

Sunday-
    35 Newbury St—


I did better than expected on my birthday, my best gift coming from Kurt and Jackie who gave me a card on which Kurt had written: “Happy birthday to our dearest friend.”

Sometimes, I feel like no one cares—except for my Internet friends—and then I get something like that, along with a visit and a bouquet from Shirley, a check from Earl, and several cards and letters from other friends. I can’t understand people, so all I know to do is to be, as much as possible, kind to them because nothing else brings either them or me anything of good. The negativity that I share with you is not the face that I show to the world—except on my worst days. I have discovered that’s there’s no greater blessing in life than to treat people well without any expectation that they reciprocate. Of course, they usually do, but when they don’t, I can but hope that my attempt at friendliness nevertheless made their lives better. Thus, I try in my humble way to be a vessel of blessings, and you, my readers, help me with this. I fully trust that a great many of you care deeply about me, very much want to know my thoughts and feelings, and will continue to be my friends even when you disapprove of something I said. I’ve known some of you for at least eight years and maybe ten. Others have left me during that time, some due to anger, some to a loss of interest in me in particular or in blogging in general, and others to death, but we who remain continue to bring sunshine into one another’s lives to the best of our often limited ability. I would grieve the loss of many of you no less for having never laid eyes on you, because no one whose face I have seen could be nearer to my heart. That physical yet non-sexual passion that I hold within my body for the things that I love is yours. It’s as if you’re a magnet, and I’m being drawn into you. I tingle and feel warm just knowing that you’re alive, and to reflect upon what a treat it is to have friends in Nigeria, England, Canada, India, Australia, and, of course, America! It is through you that I see the world, and through you that my sympathy for people who live in faraway places exists in a very real way, a way that it wouldn’t otherwise exist at all.

A newsy letter

Brewsky and a plushy Ollie (click to better see how beautiful Ollie is)

Instead of taking on a topic, I thought I would try posting a newsy letter of the type that I might send a friend. I have no idea why anyone would care to read it unless they just happen to like me, but my assumption is that most of my readers do like me...

Peggy took Brewsky to the vet this morning for a urinary infection/blockage and discovered when she got home that she was wearing two pair of panties, this being what happens when one goes to bed two hours late and gets up four hours early. We normally take our pets to the vet together (we also accompany one another on doctor visits), but Peggy planned to stay for the duration, which could have been hours given that they were having to work Brewsky in, and I wasn’t up for that. As it turned out, she ended up going back for Brewsky anyway because he wasn’t ready until 5:30, and she had to go alone that time too because I was baking crackers (I bake crackers, biscuits, cornbreads, and yeast breads, and Peggy does pies and cookies).

I’ve only seen Brewsky in a truly foul mood three times in his entire 5 1/2 years, and today was one of them. He had spent ten hours in a scary place having unpleasant things done to him by strangers, and he hadn’t eaten in 18-hours. Ollie missed him so much that he ran up to his kennel as soon as Peggy set it on the floor, but was stopped short by loud hissing that went on and on and on. It’s funny to see Brewsky in a bad mood because his bad moods are SO bad that he does nothing but stalk around and curse in cat language for a very long time and in a manner reminiscent of my father, the difference being that my father sometimes threw such fits almost hourly and didn’t use cat language. The vet said that Brewsky barely missed bladder surgery followed by a week’s recovery in the hospital. Now he’s on antibiotics and will have to eat $6.00 a pound cat food for the rest of his life.

I’m still augmenting my Margaret Deland collection, and just today negotiated to buy a second letter by her to go with my half dozen signed books, my fifty or more other books, my six period postcards, and my two period photographs. You might well ask how I know the signatures are authentic. (1) There isn’t enough money in her signature to make it worthwhile to fake it (it costs from $15 to $750, but I’ve never paid over $60, and that was for a complete letter); (2) I know her signature well, and I have an unimpeachable source for comparison; (3) I examine paper and ink closely; (4) I know the characteristics of her letters, such as the fact that she typically failed to put the year on them, a practice that a forger would be unlikely to know; (5) I know the events of her life and the names of the people in her life, which is also something that a forger would be unlikely to know; (6) I get written authentication when possible.

I’m at a bit of loss about my collection because, aside from three books, the only place left to go is to buy more letters and/or upgrade the books I already own. Unlike Peggy, I’m so ambivalent about collecting that I have gotten rid of most of what I ever owned or, at the very least, stopped augmenting my various collections (rocks, potted plants, Indian artifacts, and postcards). Deland’s works are really the only collecting that I’ve ever spent much money on, but I can’t tell you how much because I don’t know. I’ve come to admire her ever more as my knowledge grows, and I’m also pleased to report that, through her, I’ve learned a great deal about her era and a little about the other literary notables of her day. Yet, the fact remains that she is dead (1857-1945), and this is ever a great sadness to me partly because it keeps me in closer touch than usual with my own mortality, death already being something about which I’m obsessed.

Until yesterday when I contributed to socialist Bernie Sanders’ campaign, I had never given a penny to any political candidate. I chose Sanders not because I’m a socialist but because he’s the only person whose integrity I trust, and the reason I gave to him yesterday wasn’t Bernie but Hillary. Her insistence that she’s her “own person” despite her and Bill taking $25-million in 16-months from Big Business for making speeches(!) struck me as laughable in the manner of a person who imagines herself to be the only one on earth with a brain. However, the final straw was the hypocritical, sexist, and condescending remarks of Madeleine Albright and Gloria Steinem, remarks that were directed at under-thirty women, a group that favors Bernie over Hillary by a six-to-one margin. While Hillary didn’t make these remarks, she approved of Madeleine’s, and she didn’t refute Gloria’s. (http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/02/09/hillary-clinton-gloria-steinem-madeleine-albright-sad-sound-feminist-desperation.html). For those who don’t want to go to the link, here is the barest text of the remarks:

Madeleine Albright (America’s first female secretary of state) on why young women should vote for Hillary: “there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”

Gloria Steinem (founder of Ms Magazine) on why young women favor Bernie over Hillary: “When you’re young you’re thinking, where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie.”

The aged should be role models for the young, but what young woman will take either of these people seriously after such sexist hypocrisy and condescension, especially given that Albright’s excuse was that Hillary had said the same thing, while Steinem insisted she had been misinterpreted, an explanation so at variance with the clarity with her original statement as to further suggest that she considers young women unwilling to think for themselves.

Ollie is in my lap watching the words I type move across the monitor. He’s a prince among cats and more beautiful to me than any woman—except for Peggy, of course! I rejoice at finally reaching a place where a woman’s looks mean almost nothing to me.

My outward life is too boring to write about, which is why I tend to share thoughts rather than events. One of the advantages of a boring life is the leisure to have thoughts that are worth sharing. Peggy and I are opposites in that she reaches her beliefs at a gut level and then digs a moat around them. She and I still agree about most things, but she gets there by an easier process. I enjoy the process, and I want to be sure that I’m not overlooking something, whereas she hates the process and is so confident in her positions that it doesn’t occur to her that she might be overlooking something. I find her self-confidence disconcerting.

I probably haven’t brought it up for years, so most of you might not know that Peggy is an ardent collector of clothing buttons. She has been president of her local club and of the Oregon state club, and is currently the “Chair of Judges and Classification,” which is the most technically demanding job in the state club. She spends at least eight hours a week arranging her buttons on trays—according to designs that she creates on the computer—that she then slides into display cases. We got a router to make these cases because the better bought ones are expensive, and ours are superior to them anyway. She started her collection in 1988, and I was pleased that she had chosen an inexpensive hobby that wouldn’t take much space. Now, the buttons she buys are often expensive, and pretty much any cabinet in the house that will hold buttons is stuffed with buttons, including five legal-size file cabinets. Then there is the expense of her travel to national conventions, state conventions, and state committee meetings. The cost of the buttons themselves comes out of “her” money, but the travel doesn’t, so when I started collecting Deland, she said I could pay for my purchases out of common funds, and I accepted her offer because I have no travel expenses.

Since she retired two years ago, Peggy has become quite social, there being days that I hardly see her, and times when she’s out of town for up to a week. Yesterday, for example, she was at a button-related meeting for five hours; then she took an uphill walk that I couldn’t go on because of my knees; and then she went to her weekly pinochle group. While she was doing all this, I was catching up on housework and paperwork, baking crackers, and making both buckwheat and lemon pancakes for the freezer. Much of the housework falls to me simply because she’s not here. This is fine, but sometimes I wish I had someplace to go too, although I don’t wish it hard enough to actually do it. We know another couple with whom we get together for dinner occasionally, but aside from that, my “social life” consists of the Internet, exchanging a few words with Peggy’s friend, Ilse, when Ilse picks her up to go somewhere, and chatting with neighbors and other acquaintances who I happen to see.

I got a phone call yesterday from a blog-buddy (Dana) in Florida. It was the first time I’ve actually talked to someone whom I met through blogging, and neither of us sounded like the other expected. She had retired to Florida from Ohio, so I thought she would have an Ohio accent, but she sounded as Southern as it gets, and her voice was much gentler than I expected given that she’s a bit of a firebrand on the Internet. She said she had expected me to sound weak—due to living with physical pain—and was surprised that my voice was strong and masculine. It was quite a thrill to us both, I think, to talk to one another, and we were both comfortable doing it. I’m no fan of the telephone, but when that and the Internet are all you’ve got, it’s all you’ve got, so you have to use it well, and we did.

I baked my first crackers back in the ’70s from a recipe given to me by an Episcopal priest who was looking for someone to bake whole-grain communion wafers. He chose me because he knew I liked to bake, and I readily assented because I found the idea of making crackers much more appealing than yeast breads. Now, I’m down to three different kinds out of the many I’ve tried: Parmesan, mixed grain, and my own version of the recipe the priest gave me. People don’t tend to like my crackers—which are more like hardtack than like the crackers you buy in the store—but I love them, and Peggy is a big fan of the Parmesan ones, at least, which I roll out thin just for her. I’m proud to say that I never use timers for baking because I consider them jarring and offensive. Besides, timers are worthless with crackers because they aren’t all ready at the same time. (In case you’re wondering, I have never once burned anything.)

One of the joys of baking is that I can watch DVDs. I’ve seen every episode of Banacek (a campy George Peppard who-done-it from the ’70s) at least twenty times, but right now, I’m captivated by Perry Mason. As with Banacek, I watch the same episodes again and again. I find this meditative in the same way that listening to the same beloved music repeatedly is meditative. The more I watch, the deeper I sink into the ambiance of the program, and the more the world around me disappears—except for the crackers, of course. 

I’ve memorized a lot of poems over the years, and I occasionally have to freshen up on them, so now that I've quit Ambien cold turkey, I lie awake saying poems. The longest one I know is The Raven, with the next longest being Mr. Flood’s Party. I know more than one poem each by Robert Frost, Edwin Arlington Robinson, and Edna St. Vincent Millay, but my favorite poem might be Wordsworth’s I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud. I have no interest in non-rhyming poetry because it isn’t fun to say.