You Begin

This is how it happens: How a dog-eared evening With a long, sad face And wrinkled clothes Reminds us that temporary things Must be temporary. How boulders are turned into stones; How comedy and tragedy become history; How we become strangers all over again. It feels like tiredness; It stretches on and on like insomnia; It is as relentless as absence Yet, oh how it transfigures everything! First: It does so without malice. Second: It does so without conspiracy. Third: It does so without blaming anyone. So rake the leaves back onto the trees If it helps you; Buck up and stiffen the soft horizon; Push back the killing frost And hold the hunter moon at abeyance: The trees and the plants and the farmers Will not mind one bit. But I swear, this is how it happens, This is how it starts And where would I be in you otherwise?

I went to her for a hug and the rosary. Patriarchs carved in wax provided the light as we moved our hands across necklaces of seeds and asked our mother to pray for us. Outside--the moon bulged with light. It would be enough. We reached the end of our strings, touched our minds, our hearts, and our wings and watched the patriarchs dim with one faint exhalation. Cassidy Smith

Being There

The air is filled with the morbidity Of wet orange leaves. There is no way to fake the investment. There is no voice mail to leave. There is no email to send. There is no package to Fedex. For this is how it is: You have to be there When the geese fly in In “V” formation, Over a winking sun, In the early morning You know that nothing is ever lost. Like gauze wrapping open sores, These wounds are just passports Into the foreign land of others Who understand the language And who know the terrain. For this is how it is: You have to be there When the geese fly out In “V” formation, Over a killing frost, In the early morning.

A Short Story

I am short. I have always been short. It’s never been something I have given a great deal of thought however I am reminded time and time again how taller people seem to have the upper hand in most things. Certainly at concerts and movies I am reminded. I think of how easy it must be for taller people stand and not have to do the “bob-and-weave” like some prizefighter to see a performance. In certain athletic events for sure, height lends an advantage – basketball of course comes to mind. Having played basketball all my young adult life it was an interesting study in psychology to have to play against people who were taller than I was. Psychology suggests being short can lead to “Napolean” complexes where one attempts to overcome one’s physical deficiencies with huge egoistic displays of will and power. Even in the language we are dissed: we “come up short” and possess certain “shortcomings” all terms that conjure up pejorative images. The language itself suggests to us what we all seem to already know: that being short possesses inherent difficulties. So this is why I find the gospel story of Zaccheus so intriguing. Luke provides us with such a great detail about Zaccheus’ height you have to wonder why? What was the point of such an arcane detail? Why did Luke alert us to the fact that he was short? Here’s the reading from Luke: Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today." So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, "He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner." Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, "Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much." Then Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost." So Zaccheus was a short, rich man. Clearly, his lack of height did not prevent him from becoming a “success”. Of course, no one needs to be reminded that he was a tax collector and they were not the most popular of people – sort of like today’s politicians or CEOs I would imagine. He was interested in this itinerant preacher who socialized with his kind, though frankly, between you and me, I think this postmodern thought of these wealthy Jews that were hated by their own people sort of misrepresents their social status. We almost feel sorry for these tax collectors but wealth back then was the same as wealth today, and most wealthy people I know don’t seem to mind their lives. I’m sure these tax collectors had parties with other lawyers and tax collectors and even invited some of the Roman Senators for the occasional lamb roast. So let’s not feel too sorry for stubby old Zaccheus. He was doing just fine, probably had a timeshare in Palestine, overlooking the Mediterranean. All this, and he was short. Maybe he was one of those with an overcompensating ego. Still Freud was a couple of millennia away so all anyone probably thought of Zaccheus was that he knew how to get the things he wanted. Then Jesus comes along and Zaccheus wanted one more thing. He wanted to see this preacher. He wanted to hear what he had to say but the crowds were crazy. He couldn’t see. So he finds a Sycamore tree. Now the Sycamore is a large tree with small flowers. Legend had it that Persian King Xerxes found this tree so beautiful he actually assigned it a personal bodyguard. Now I don’t know that Luke had this story in mind, but the Sycamore is a large beautiful tree. It’s wood provided shelter for the pilgrims who first came to America. It is almost the antithesis of how we picture Zaccheus. He climbs the tree presumably scrapping with the crowd, throwing the occasional elbow here and there. And there, aloft in the soft breeze of the Sycamore, Jesus sees him. Zaccheus’ ability to overcome obstacles has caused him to seek the goodness that is represented in Jesus’ message. Though the path is crowded with others, nothing, it seems, will get in Zaccheus’ way. In essence his ascent into the tree almost foreshadows Jesus’ “climbing” his tree later on as he dies on the cross. It is this ability to shed his old life and leave his earthly concerns below that makes Jesus look up at Zaccheus and pronounce salvation to his house. Zaccheus almost seems to promise a new life when Jesus implores him to come down, willing to pay him back four times what he may have defrauded others. I love the description of the grumbling people when Jesus announces he is going to stay with Zaccheus. It seems that we humans have not changed one iota since those days. We seem to be a species that is so incapable of allowing another to have one moment of joy without us wanting to step all over it. Zaccheus probably had visitors at his house, but certainly no holy men such as Jesus. No spiritual celebrities ever stopped there – not the Pharisees or Sadducees certainly. It would be, I assume, akin to the Dali Lama or the Pope coming to my house. Better clean the bathrooms for sure! In the end though, it is Zaccheus’ shortness that causes him to find the way. Because of his limitation, he seeks to overcome his inability in that overdeveloped, Napoleanic ego of his, It is our disabilities that help us discover what our limits are: are we too “short” in loving others? Are we too “short” in forgiving others? Are we too “short” in finding the good in people? If we allow these “disabilities”, our lack of stature, to force us into a tree to see the truth, then we become so much more than just what we are not. The measure of who we are as spiritual beings is not made in what we cannot achieve, but in what we have overcome and choose to overcome. So I can really relate to Zaccheus. He probably could never have dunked a basketball either. He was always chosen last in the Hebrew School basketball pickup games; I’m sure it took a toll on his self-esteem. But remember that it was what was most lacking in him – his height – that drove him to leave behind earthbound concerns and offer Jesus a place at his table. M C Biegner 10/19/2005

Ruined (A Poetic Fable)

Poetry has ruined me. More specifically, it has eviscerated the most cynical parts of me and left me split wide open like a wound requiring the most ethereal butterfly bandage one can imagine. It leaves me dangling in the winds of inspiration like a pair of old shoes tossed over telephone wires. It reuses the old junk I have long ago discarded into the emotional landfill that makes up who I am. I traffic in the most lethal kind of poetry too – the kind that bubbles up from truth; the kind that makes me useless for the numerous sacrifices made hourly upon the altars of pop culture. It is a syllogism of the unearthly: truth is beauty and truth is poetry therefore truth and poetry are one. It is an unearthed rarified beauty discovered rather than made, the way wires pull radio waves out of thin air. I sell poetry for food and the occasional cigarette – just the romantic ones – because it seems right to me that I live off romance in a macho, Hemmingway-standing-over-a-big-game-kill-in-Africa sort of way. The romantic sensibility has long become the vestigial organ of the twenty first century. I, for one, would love to change the basis for all commerce the way Richard Nixon in August, 1971 removed the gold backing of money. I would make poetry the basis by which all things are valued. Sometimes I hand roll a couple of fresh fragrant haikus and inhale their warm delicate structure and natural flavor. I hope that a few syllables of haiku will lodge themselves into the wet mucous walls of my lungs to foster great big tumors of metaphor or alliterative coughing that would result in me hacking up a few juicy couplets which I could use somewhere else in my writing. In the mornings I would mix up a batch of sonnets and cover them with sweet refrains of tumbling verse, served with a few sprigs of villanelle poems on the side for breakfast. We would consume them together, drinking coffee then later play the “Howl” version of Boggle where the object is to find anagrams from the letters that start lines or phrases from Ginsberg’s great classic poem. On weekends I head out to do chores around the house so I go down to the hardware store and exchange a haunting blank verse epic for a couple of gallons of paint and the clerk is simply overwhelmed and starts to weep. “This is way too generous for just these two gallons of paint,” he says and provides me change in the form of a few ad hoc limericks. Though this may strike you as odd in today’s world, and since poetry has ruined me, in this new world even hardware store clerks are nourished by poetry. The farmers who grow my food, the doctors who heal me, the teachers who instruct my children – in a ruined world poetry is like oil where people must line up and fill up their big SUVs with rhyme and alliteration and lyrics and meter. Where people line up now to give up hard earned money for random numbers, the quick pick would be changed to randomly select quotes from Shakespeare, Dickinson, Whitman or Ferlinghetti or Hughes or Chaucer. Poetry can ruin a world in ways that other things can only imagine. A few years back, Death came to take my best friend who was sick and dying from AIDS. I wrote poems to the many hospitals he frequented to pay for all the MRIs and CAT scans; for the blood transfusions and hours in the ICU; for the nurses and doctors and physical therapists who all tried to heal him. I wrote poems to the pharmacies to pay for all the drugs he needed. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote and I wrote until my hand cramped; until I filled dozens of journals trying desperately to save his life. On that last night, when Death came to take my friend, I quickly wrote this and handed it to him: New Day Like the heroic quiet light Of a sun that sets, You looked me straight in the eyes – Someday when our eyes lock again When the brown from your eyes Makes a haughty earth Upon which I will take all my stands; And when the blue from my eyes Gives you gentle and earnest repose; In this brand new place We will talk of many things About How to make everything fresh again. We will carry on important conversations Of what we always thought heaven Would be like That will fill large wheelbarrows. And everything we speak of Will fit inside the wheelbarrows With room to spare: What I love most about you And what you love most about me And what remains lamely behind, Draped over the heavy furniture Of all the living that we did. Poetry has ruined me and it seems to have ruined Death as well. The last I heard of him, he left my friend ashamed and crying and is now working in a garden center somewhere outside of Seattle. She walks in beauty like the night. There are no fewer than one thousand things in this ruined life of mine to which I could apply this single line of Byron’s. I carry it with me with all the jealous verve of a newlywed. I cling to it tightly as I do my credit card or driver’s license. I fiddle with it in my wallet as I head into a local bar for a nightcap. This one line has got to be good for a small glass of sherry for sure. M C Biegner 10/6/2005

Katrina Plays the Race Card

Katrina Plays The Race Card The race card has come up again. Katrina has landed like a ton of bricks and heaped third-world type devastation upon New Orleans and Mississippi. The faces we are seeing on TV without water and food, without homes or clothes, seem to be mostly black, so now the race card has come out. “Why did it take so long for help to arrive?” everyone wants to know, and was this simply a coincidence that the people most affected were black and elderly and poor? A discussion of this is not a bad thing, of course. I believe any occasion is a good one in which to discuss race relations because we so want to put this behind us we can almost taste it. People are angry because things should have been different. First, if a mandatory evacuation was in effect prior to the storm, why didn’t the state of Louisiana and Mississippi and the city of New Orleans provide the means with which to forcibly remove people who stayed in harm’s way? Why weren’t there busses supplied earlier on to help those who wanted to leave but simply couldn’t afford it? Why weren’t other places established to temporarily house those who had no place else to go before the storm? Then, why did it take so long for the guard to get in there and prevent some of the violence? More disturbing than the scenes of the storm’s wreckage were the stories of the violence and the increase of lawlessness when civil society truly broke down. Why wasn’t the National Guard in sooner? The explanation was given that it was still dangerous and they didn’t want any guardsmen to end up as part of the problem, but it seemed like we didn’t see the guard in there for days after the event. If it was safe enough for people to commit violence against each other, then why was it not safe enough for the guardsmen to come in and re-establish order? It’s clear that many things did not go right. But was race really the issue? Many people compared this to 9/11 but that was a different sort of tragedy. The size of this storm and the physics of the levees breaking causing the kind of flooding and wreckage it did was many times greater in area alone than the wreckage of the fall of the Twin Towers. The storm was very large and while the Towers collapse was a very big logistics headache, it doesn’t even compare in the scope of what happened in the gulf. People underestimated Katrina when it was a Category 5 storm, and they underestimated her damage potential as well. Here’s the thing with race: I don’t believe for a second that someone consciously said, “Well, it’s only New Orleans and Mississippi and there are just black people and poor there, so no rush getting in there to secure the area.” That is ludicrous. Still, the people affected were poor and black. Race was an issue in this case in the same way that race is most often an issue nowadays. Race was responsible in the way that the emergency planning for this event did not adequately consider these people who did not have the means to leave New Orleans or the Mississippi coast. Mississippi and Louisiana rank in the top 10 states for poverty. There is a case that can be made that poverty and race are related. If the poor are the ones bearing the brunt of any storm damage and loss of life then clearly there is some sort of link between poverty/race and survival. The same way that a black male has a life expectancy of 69 years compared to 75 years for a white male in this country (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/05facts/lifeexpectancy.htm) can be linked to things like access to better health care and better incomes, so too, being poor now provides a clear disadvantage when being considered in civil disaster plans. The apparent lack of response after the hurricane was just that: an apparent lack of response. In dealing with so many agencies bureaucratic mix-ups are inevitable, though should not be tolerated. The logistics of this rescue effort in such a large area are paralyzing. I don’t believe people watching understand this, and I certainly do not believe you can believe this if you are sitting on top of a roof for days wondering where in the hell the government is. I’m willing to give this administration and the state governors the benefit of the doubt in this regard. I guess I don’t want to believe that people would be this cynical. Clearly things could have been done better and clearly lots of people made lots of mistakes that cost lives. This should be investigated and other states should pay heed to these failings for possible problems in their own disaster planning. But did someone willfully fail because of race? I don’t think so. Such a notion belittles the heroic efforts of all people black and white, rich and poor, struggling right now to save people they don’t even know. The humanity of this event has not been lost on anyone. Afghanistan and Sri Lanka – two of the poorest nations on the face of the earth – are offering money for the victims. Fidel Castro has offered doctors. No one wants to see those people suffer. As time passes, I believe that there will be such a global outpouring of genuine, apolitical support not seen since after 9/11. Sometimes the worst of things can bring out the best of us too – the looting and violence notwithstanding. I believe that the lack of preparation for what should have been done with the poorest and blackest and oldest of citizens in these states was the effect of an institutional racismand classism that plagues all of us. This lack of awareness of or thought about these people in all things: poverty, jobs, civil rights and now it seems in emergency preparedness – are all the effects of the insidious racism which we refuse to believe exists in this country. This is twenty first century racism - the worst kind. This is the kind of racism that sits in the back of our minds and lets us pretend that in the event of a disaster each of us has an even chance of being saved. Katrina has shown us all that it doesn’t work this way. To paraphrase George Orwell, some of us are just more equal than others, it seems. This is the type of racism that is hard to nail down; for which it’s hard to hold someone accountable. We must force our eyes open to the marginalized and poor and black and elderly. They should never be made invisible - within the context of Hurricane Katrina or without. We owe it to the promise of what America is all about. We owe to ourselves since any one of us could be in that same situation. But mostly, we owe it to those who died at Katrina’s harsh lesson yielding hands.

Things Passed Down

faith yellow cotton dresses with impossibly tiny stitches golden bands with engravings inside the tendency to pick up river rocks laughter tears at the happy as well as the sad dark hair merry eyes the curve of a jaw dimples in the cheeks a face tipped to the wind flat feet child-bearing hips a string of pearls battenberg lace a roll top desk faded photos and a smile worth its weight in inherited platinum

Reflection (after attending a mass in mexico)

Today, more than ever before, it seems like a travesty to me: Light skinned man Robed in fine white linens with gold trim, Raising the glittering chalice, Lifting his youthful face towards the heavens, saying Take this, all of you… In the pew in front of me a dark skinned woman Wrapped in a threadbare shawl Holds a baby close to her. Another one beside her, A girl with a ragged dress but careful braids and a fistful of her mom’s skirt. Tired eyes, Rough skin, The woman whispers extra prayers as she gazes at the priest. Back home I’d start discussions over dinner about feminism and theology and women’s ordination, and we’d talk ourselves in circles until someone would pull the privilege card: Why waste your energy on this? Women in other parts of the world are worrying about much more urgent matters. And they’d be right. And it’d seem trivial. Until today When the priest’s proud voice echoes This is my body. In front of me she sits, Weakened bones, child at her breast. Her body knows sacrifice. Outside there are others waiting, Frail hands outstretched, hoping To find Christ’s love In just one While each hour Around the world Institutionally advantaged men Play the role of martyr Before congregations of poor mothers.

Evolution

If you kill a spider it will rain for seven years or at least that’s the way I think it works. This rain could come in very handy in many parts of the world and perhaps Oxfam should look into it. Of course, you would need another bug to stop the deluge from taking over. And then the insect-rights people might get concerned, sacrificing all those bugs when really they were here first. Who are we to impose our species onto the rest of the world, and why do we really think we are the sign of intelligent life? Seems almost the opposite if you look at it closely. How can a species get rid of its own piece of sky when clearly it needs it to breath? Sounds to me like we are definitely making room for someone smarter.

Maybe it really is the cockroaches. After all, they have figured out how to live in all those Manhattan high rises rent free, snacking on brioche crumbs and organic veggie shreds. You can’t get much smarter than that. Darwin probably overlooked this when he was figuring out survival of the fittest. Might have spent too much time with the birds on tropical islands.

A few days ago I watched a heavy set woman walking down the sidewalk with her young daughter. The bright-eyed girl looked to be about eight years old. Just before we passed each other, the young girl skipped excitedly towards a pigeon, exclaiming about the bird. Her mother caught her in her tracks, “That’s not a bird, honey, that’s a pigeon.” And so in goes. In the survival of the fittest, the pigeon is no longer considered a member of the bird family. Probably not elegant enough, or clean enough. Certainly not like a red cardinal or a swift hummingbird. The little girl is learning that some things are just not quite as good as others. Many people might agree with this when they are not speaking in public. Some of us are pigeons and some of us are hummingbirds. The trick is to find a niche that allows you to survive.

But quite honestly, I suspect the hummingbird would actually go down first, the way it needs to flap its wings like it is completely mad, and find those nice little red plastic feeders with the sugar water in them. Pigeons could hang on a lot longer than that. They’d be tussling with the cockroaches long after the last flowers were gone, after the feeders had all been left empty. Their proud chests would stay plump for years after the last trash bag had been put out on the curb. And there would probably be enough air left behind to keep them going for awhile even with that big hole we made in the atmosphere. They don’t need sun block and they don’t mind their own crowd. They would finally be left alone to sit together in the park or perch above all the fancy gargoyles and cornices we tried so hard to protect. And the cockroaches, they can get by with the crumbs, ruling the underworld away from the birds. Or make that the pigeons.

Where is Darwin when we really need him, when we need to figure out how to get more fit? When we need to know how to save ourselves from ourselves? I suppose spending all that time defending himself in court did not make him prone to sympathy for his fellow kind, trying to convince us that we were just animals. How could we, the ones with intelligence, be just another evolved mammal creature? After all, we invented The Gap! Certainly some greater power deliberately chose to place us here, the icing on the cake. The big Day Seven bonus. We get to rule because HE said so. If you popped into this world as a spider, well, we just might squish you. And if it rains, well, we’ve got umbrellas, that’s how smart we are. Too bad about the Garden of Eden, though. I think it only rains there when you want it to. Now look what we’ve got, hurricanes and droughts everywhere you turn, although I have to say, they seem to be more regular events in the places where God is particularly big news, where He has been carefully interpreted and decided upon. In places where Darwin was shown to the door.

Maybe the Garden of Eden is just a made up story, put there to show us what a good life could be like. If we weren’t all so smart, changing the world to try to make it more comfortable. Maybe it was just fine the way it was, with the spiders and cockroaches, the birds and the pigeons. Maybe extra intelligence is not so much the gift as the challenge. Can we figure out how to stop flapping our wings like we are completely mad? Goodness knows, those little plastic feeders will not be there forever. We’ll be looking for the scraps soon enough, trying to find cover. Hoping not to get squished.

Written August 6, 2005

WIUG

Four Funerals and a Wedding

This past spring and summer has been an inverse of the movie “Four Weddings and a Funeral” – it’s been more like “Four Funerals and a Wedding”. It always seems to me that funerals tend to happen in clusters. The old adage that bad news always comes in “threes” seems to have some sort of basis in fact. But I know that the truth is that given a planetary population of over six billion people, a goodly number of them will be leaving this plane to find life elsewhere on any given day. I often tell people who find themselves attending many funerals in a given time span that their problem is not that everyone is dying, but in fact that they simply know too many people. There are some things about funerals that I have noticed. First, no one really likes funerals, not even those who do it as their livelihood. Funeral directors see themselves as offering a consolation service and find satisfaction in that. People fall on one of two sides of funerals either rising to the occasion for person bereft or avoiding them altogether. There never seems to be a middle ground. Second, I’ve noticed that some people – many people in fact – think of another’s death as the last great social hurrah for a loved one; one last chance to “strut their stuff” – or at least the “stuff” of the departed who is no longer with us to tell us what their wishes are. Finally, the trappings of death are as numerous as the stars - the style of coffin, the type of wake, open or closed, flowers or donations to various causes, getting the obituary information out, organizing the sympathy cards, who sits in the limousine with Aunt Betty? Who will cater the after wake meal? The logistics of a funeral are every bit as overwhelming as those surrounding a wedding. The oddest thing of all though is that these details are all carried out while the subject has ostensibly moved along to other things. Personally, I am discovering that as I get older that I find great resonance in the line from the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral spoken by the character Gareth who was a gay bon vivant sort of fellow when he said that he much preferred funerals to weddings because he always preferred social events the likes of which he at least had an outside chance of taking part in. It is an club to which we all will be admitted for certain. At a funeral I attended recently for the relative of a dear friend, I had the feeling that funerals provide a sense of closure which seemed to comfort me. Then I began to wonder if I was becoming like Maude in the movie Harold and Maude: would I soon start to wander in on the funerals of strangers just so I could be part of an event that celebrates a person’s life. I’d be standing there as a professional funeral celebrant with my bright red umbrella amid the sea of black umbrellas amidst the falling rain in the grayness of a cemetery. I’d move easily among the mourners and offer very generic types of kindnesses, and mean them even though I didn’t know the subject in the coffin. “And how did you know poor so-and-so?” they would ask me with kind eyes, looking ato me for one more connection to their dearly departed, to which I would respond, “Well, I didn’t in fact know your brother-husband-son-daughter-wife-sister, but I saw the funeral procession and I am never one to pass up a chance to say goodbye to anyone. And besides as the poet John Donne wrote, ‘Each man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in all mankind.’ Don’t you feel that is true?” And thus the dialogue would begin. I don’t know if one can make a living as a professional mourner but there are some advantages if one could. For one thing, selecting clothing as I go off to work each morning would be simple. Black on black with a white shirt with black dress shoes, maybe a black rain coat or overcoat for the winter months. For another thing, as a sincere mourner, I would be providing a service for those people who may not have many mourners. It would not be as some sort of scam but as an extension of the fact that I do believe that each man’s death diminishes me, so why shouldn’t I act on that impulse? And if I truly feel this way, why shouldn’t I celebrate the deaths of countless strangers as I go through this life? Still, even if no one would pay for such a service, I might consider it as a sort of avocation, a hobby if you will, with the design of bringing importance to each life that leaves this world. It’s odd, but no one seems to think twice about strangers sharing in one’s joy when a new baby is brought home from the hospital. People – strangers even – would feel compelled to touch my wife’s belly when she was carrying each of our children. We received the best wishes from people we hardly knew when they were born. Why does this idea of wishing others consolation when a loved one leaves seem so odd to us? “Tell me about Henry,” I would say to the grieving widow, and the storytelling could begin in earnest. “Why I remember when Henry was…” and on and on. Maybe as a bartender or psychoanalyst offers the comfort of a stranger’s objective ear, I would offer the fresh meat of an audience who never knew Henry and was ripe for all those stories that seemed so worn among familiar ears. Then Henry would be every bit as much alive at his funeral as he was when he really was alive. I in turn would come away richer for knowing Henry, at least in the abstract and in the most distilled form. Oh, I know that the conditions surrounding one’s death affects the type of funeral one has. The toughest funerals I have ever attended have been for children for example. Drunk driving deaths, murders, SIDS deaths: how does one make sense of death in light of these sorts of circumstances? But you know there never seems to be a shortage of grief in this world, and as a professional funeral attendant I would grieve. Shared grief is shared pain and shared pain makes the load seem lighter if even for a moment. Some people might find it offensive that a stranger would want to share in their grief. Here in America and especially in New England where good fences make good neighbors, one does the most personal things in private and death is the most personal thing for many. Still most funerals are open to the public. I mean the reason one has a funeral is so that it can be open to outsiders. There is a concept among some Native Americans of this idea of “sitting with” the grieving person when a person dies. It is sort of similar to the Judaic tradition of sitting shiva without the formality. It is not the same as the typical Anlgo-American’s idea of baking or making a casserole for a friend when they lose someone. This is wrapped up in the great American work ethic of being busy to make the grief go by almost unnoticed. With some Native Americans the idea is that one is simply present at this time of grief. Our presence shows no great purpose or intent. It’s an idea that conveys the dizzying belief that we are not alone no matter how much we think we are. It is almost zen-like in its approach to grief and I have witnessed it first hand. Just being present to another in life or in death is the greatest gift we can offer another short of offering our own lives. It is a gift to be a witness to another; it is affirming that they mattered, that they counted. This is a sign that we are social creatures and that we need each other to live and die properly. So I am considering business cards with a title that reads, “PROFESSIONAL FUNERAL ATTENDANT” which I would hand out to people at funerals, with a web site and everything. That might seem a bit too corporate and profit driven though. Perhaps advertising should happen by word of mouth, or better yet, word of heart since people always relate to things that come from the heart in earnest. None of us gets out of this world alive, it’s true but we can at least make the process a bit more humane for funerals are nothing if not a platform for the most important type of storytelling that we do. No one likes to deal with the grief and the loss. But the stories told at funerals remind us that all of our lives are comprised of one story after another. Why shouldn’t every person have witnesses to these stories in death, just as in life? Besides, who is to say that these stories don’t continue to grow after we have moved on? Let’s make a gentleman’s agreement right now, shall we? I will come to your funeral and tell the crowded room about what a great blessing you were to this world, if you will come to mine and say the same about me. Is it a deal?

In The Yard

The red umbrella shielding her,

she strums her guitar.

Her companion.

The pages slipping away.

But she catches it,

she captures it with a pen,

brings it to the strings.

She will sing it

when she’s ready.

Not before.

And certainly not after.

A Saturday Alone

A Saturday Alone

A lone bird swoops down to the water before lifting up to join another. They move together into the leaves, escaping the bright afternoon heat. A small bee settles onto the with clover blossom in the freshly mowed grass. The flit of tiny insects dashes everywhere, making quick sparkles across the river.

Two dragonflies climb the embankment, one over the other, always together. It is not hot here under the tree where I sit, on the cold marble bench left in somebody’s honor. The breeze carries the scent of the dirt and the green and the heat, but I do not feel it, only sense the heavy air that is just beyond. Beyond the small winding tree with ancient bark marching upward in thin narrow columns, gracing the curves of the branching trunk. On the ground just below, a bush hides its brown leaves, passing them off as berries if you do not look too closely.

The river gives up its current, shining circles changing location when you look away. The clouds pretend to be still as they show off their form against the stark blue sky.

Nobody calls nature a workaholic, but nobody tries to keep up with it either. We are lucky enough when we look up to see it at all, when we know there is dirt in our bones. When we decide to move together, one over the other, finding solace in the shade.

Mountain Sex

She lays back with deliberate sway Like the most willful sort of dusk Exhales humid breath the way night expels day - And moves with the hips of a dark athletic musk – She taps a carnal beat on wrinkled bark, In dark skies of expectation and fertile dust. This lady knows every climber's destination – She knows the dribbling wantoness Of every cicada's bleating encantation A sonic texture of the mindless climb - She beckons to the showy nudenesss of wildflowers and husky pine; She even knows the hollow tongue caress Of the Monarch butterfly on the go Fresh off his trip from Mexico. This lady reclines with the same sureness of sex That teenagers think of what sex is about - With the compulsion of a highway wreck - Arcing form and jagged boastful breasts She beckons forcefully with tectonic clout - With slender waist and leafy hair that rests On face and neck, dressed only in evening cloud - She calls outward toward a species insurrection, “Climb on, climb on!" this barbaric cry incites this late day resur-erection. M B. 2005

Peanut Shells

I shake them to the ground,

These little somethings like fractured bones,

Only to eventually toss these remnants

Of some unuttered thought,

Like peanut shells,

Onto the floor,

Many, scattered and noisy –

And after all the sweeping I have done!

M C Biegner 4/2005

The Origin of Nerissa Nields

** In honor of Nerissa's Birthday, this is my contribution to the "Seed Writing" prompt... Happy Birthday Nerissa! ** Once, long before there were humans, after The Most Unknowable of Truths created the earth and the heavens, after she created all of the animals and all of the plants, She created humans. Now, The Unity of All Things loved flowers as Her most prized creation, so She wished to imbue each human with some quality of a flower or plant. She worked long and hard, until She came upon the soul of one Nerissa Nields. The Eternal Forgiveness was tired and asked Crow, the messenger between the spirit world and the physical world, for assistance. “Look into the soul of this one for me,” She instructed Crow, “and tell me what flower’s qualities I should give to it.” Crow looked deeply into Nerissa Nields and thought long and hard. “A sunflower!” Crow said finally. “A sunflower?” The Greatest Mystery asked. “But why?” “A sunflower is hardy and can grow anywhere,” Crow responded. “Plus a sunflower will always point her face to the sun. This one will always seek you, and she will always look for you, just as the sunflower seeks its life in the sun.” “Hmmm…” The Great Breath Of The Universe pondered aloud, “a tropism of love.” “Yes,” Crow rejoined, “a tropism of love for sure!” “But isn’t a sunflower long and gangly? Isn’t it awkward? Does it always stand tallest of all the flowers in the garden, always seeming out of place?” The Lover of All Lovers asked Crow. “Yes,” said Crow, “but the sunflower grows tall until she is so rife with seeds that she finally bows before the sun in humility so she can disperse her numerous seeds all over the ground. She does this so that new sunflowers may grow. But not only that, these seeds will feed birds and squirrels and all other manners of small creatures as well.” The Never Ending Question smiled. She knew Crow was wise – She had made her after all – “Very well then. The human that houses this soul will be a teacher of life and hence a giver of the Living Law,” The Voice of All Living Things pronounced. With that, She breathed the spirit of the sunflower into this creature. And that is how Nerissa Nields came to be. M C Biegner 4/21/2005

Reconciling the Internet

Why hasn’t the Catholic Church leveraged the power of the internet? Before you scoff, let me paint a picture. Imagine a new revised Vatican web site. Given the shortage of priests, the internet would be a blessing to some of those overworked priests and allow some of the more mundane ministerial tasks to be automated. First, you would be required to log in to the web site. This would use SSL security and allow the Vatican to start creating mailing lists or better yet, pop up site targets for Catholic pop ups. These could remind Catholics of holy days of obligation and provide advertising revenue for things like Atkins friendly hosts for eucharist. (How about this as a slogan: “When you want the host without the most carbs…” “for those who want to take care of body AND soul”. Logging in could be personalized with the use of cookies: “Good morning . It’s been ~Three Months~ since your last confession”. Penance. Confession. Here is where the web would be perfect. It would remove the fear of confessing your sins and make it open to everyone twenty four by seven. It would start with a link asking you to click on the type of priest you want to “hear” your confession. You would need to read and click the I ACCEPT the legal verbiage that is common with web sites these days. “All confessors subscribe to the divinity of Jesus Christ and the Virginity of his mother Mary. Furthermore, users of this site believe that the Roman Catholic Faith believe that this is the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic faith…blah, blah, blah”. You get the idea. Click the box if you agree. “CLICK HERE FOR PRE VATICAN II STYLE PRIEST” “CLICK HERE FOR POST VATICAN II STYLE PRIEST” “CLICK HERE FOR A PRIEST WHO SUBSCRIBES TO THE PRECEPTS OF 1970’s LIBERATION THEOLOGY AND THE IDEAS OF THEOLOGIANS LIKE HANS KUN.” which when you click this link would result in a PAGE NOT FOUND message to be sure. Web designers could develop logic that would apply based on the type of priest you choose. This more or less equates to the way penance and other teachings of the church are applied, taught and accepted now. The internet is the perfect vehicle for the sacrament of reconciliation since it provides that anonymity that is required to allow people to confess their most hidden failings- all in secret and with the best security available. This is to say nothing of the benefit of trust issues which many people seem to have spilling their guts out to someone via an instant message chat session, but draw a complete blank when dealing face to face with a real human. CLICK HERE FOR MORTAL SIN CLICK HERE FOR VENIAL SIN CLICK HERE IF YOU ARE NOT SURE CLICK HERE IF YOU DON’T BELIEVE IN SIN This last link would send you off to some of the more gut wrenching writings of St. Paul and some of the more stringent Vatican encyclicals. Soon, that thought you had today about the cute guy or girl in accounting that you flirted with will turn into abject remorse about the very fact that you even have genitalia. Before long you are typing away at a host of sins, some that you never really knew were sins! If you click on the link about not being sure whether it was a mortal or venial sin, you will be prompted with these sorts of questions: WAS THE EXPOSURE OF SKIN INVOLVED? DID THE JEWS REALLY KILL CHRIST? or even trick questions like WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU PURCHASED A CONDOM? Answer that one even by mistake, and the logic of the web program records the sin. (Ironically, questions about pedophilia have been removed from the web site.) All around the page there would be colorful icons of the each of the apostles. When you click on the link, a media player or real audio or quicktime audio clip would start (depending on your platform) explaining each one of the Ten Commandments. Meanwhile a banner would crawl across the bottom of the site real slow: “SEX IS ONLY FOR PROCREATION.” Upon clicking the SUBMIT button, the entire confession is checked for vulgarity, political correctness and a final warning page. Finally your penance would pop up: PLEASE SAY 10 HAIL MARYS, 2 OUR FATHERS AND 5 GLORY BE’S. PLEASE PRINT THIS PAGE OUT FOR YOUR RECORDS the page would read. Of course this would all be in multiple languages. The internet would be perfect for this. Upgrade those servers at the Vatican. I can see the people lining up already. Next: Holy Communion via the internet. No lines, no waiting. Can’t wait for the future to get here! M C Biegner

In Quiet Buzzing

In quiet buzzing Of the day I find a voice in compelling loneliness where there is great companionship. This is what i have always known about me; That I am drawn from nascent color; of pinks and greens, reds and blues - Living (I have learned) is an act of contrition that needs love and feeds on pain It is a mortal embrace with joy. M C Biegner

Exploration

Sometimes I am the New World Begging for exploration; Rich with spices Drunk with gold; Hoping to be colonized, Settled and civilized. I have a culture all my own, With my own language And my own customs. I don’t need your flag planted in my soil – Nor do I need to be claimed for another; I want no foreign gods Or Faiths taught to my children In other languages; I do not need pox riddled blankets Or my own wealth exported As the pretext of some sort of allegiance. I do not need to provide you with cheap labor, To make your TV sets or Nikes. I do not need to sell you cheap beef To satisfy your McValues - I am indigenous unto myself You must have the courage To find me and name me. Inside of me is the unknown and the unknowable: These great strengths and my greatest fears. M C Biegner 5/2005

Remembrance

Re-membering; Adding back Those parts of us we lose Growing up. Re-membering; Adding the limbs of trees We climbed as kids; Adding back Who you are, Who I am.

The Jazz of Daffodils

Daffodils know the rhythm They bounce like be-bop, They give it all up For the slow, syncopated, jive notes Of brassy horns – With faces full cheeked, like Gillespie Or pointing downward at the ground, like Miles And you think how they blow, Man! How they blow! Daffodils cannot tell you what spring is about, You have to feel it, when you listen to them. You have to feel them slide and glide; You have to know the fronds Are like outstretched palms asking You to slap them five – “Can you dig it?” they whisper to you, With a sawdust voice; The xylem of each stem Transports the smoothest water like smoky Kentucky bourbon. Daffodils hold and bend and stretch Each note, like memory or pain. Daffodils cannot tell you what spring is about, You have to feel it, when you listen to them. Then, after all this talk about rebirth is done, Go grab a hyacinth And hold her tight, real tight – And close your eyes and just sway To the Daffodil’s music Because, man, the only song he’s playing Is that change is just another kind of Death. M C Biegner 5/6/2005

in memory of Judy Richman

And, but, or, nor, for, so, yet. Coordinating conjunctions. When two independent clauses are joined by a coordinating conjunction, you need to put a comma before the coordinating conjunction. She made us recite them sing-song until they were ingrained in our minds. And but or nor for so yet. Andbutornorforsoyet? Andbutornorforsoyet. This was our last chance to learn grammar, she would tell us. And she was the woman for the job. It was our senior year of high school, and none of us really understood all of the comma rules. I was familiar with the vocabulary of it all, words like coordinating and subordinating and parenthetical from 7^th grade English class in Catholic school, but I surely didn’t remember what it all meant. And my classmates looked completely overwhelmed when Ms. Richman matter-of-factly answered their comma questions by employing grammar language. Of course, she expected they would be overwhelmed, but she never passed up the opportunity to cackle at the lost expressions on people’s faces. Ms. Richman’s cackle was a signature trait, and never cold or mean as the word might imply. There isn’t another word I would use to describe it. It was playful and friendly and warm, but cackle it was.

I was sitting in a computer lab, reciting the coordinating conjunctions to myself, not really thinking about why I know them in that order, and trying to decide whether or not a comma was needed. (Ms. Richman used to recite that Oscar Wilde quote to us all the time: “I have spent most of the day putting in a comma and the rest of the day taking it out.” She loved Oscar Wilde. We read The Importance of Being Earnest in her class that year, and she insisted on reading the role of Lady Bracknell. She had played the role in a community theater production a few years earlier, and that summer she let my friend and I watch the video tape of the production.) I allowed myself to be distracted by paper writing and rule for comma usage for a few minutes while I checked my email. There was an email from a friend from high school with a subject line that read: really sad news. I opened the email immediately, not really allowing myself to imagine what the sad news could be, and soon learned that Judy Richman was seriously ill and was not expected to make it through the night. I quickly signed off the computer, stuffed my books into my bag and left the computer lab.

Outside it was appropriately dark and misty, and I sat and sobbed. I tried to remember all of the books and plays and poetry we read that year. All of the lessons and questions and contradictions. The Awakening, King Lear, Six Degrees of Separation, Waiting for Godot…Heart of Darkness and the Madwoman of Chaillot. “Warning: When I am an Old Woman, I Shall Wear Purple.” And she did. I thought about her grammar lessons, how she was in the newspaper for being committed to teaching grammar, how she even gave grammar lessons to the younger teachers in the department who hadn’t learned all the rules.

And but or nor for so yet. Words that connect two independent clauses. Andbutornorforsoyet. I thought about all of the expectation and promise held in those tiny words. That night the comma between Ms. Richman’s life and death. I closed my eyes and recited coordinating conjunctions like prayers.

Licking the Beach

The ocean has a million eyes, each one shining at me as I sit here on this cool beach day in April during spring break. The beach is infested with children, a veritable sea of diminutive humanity as vast and enormous as the desert of ocean that lies flat before me. The flatness of the water is highlighted by the sparkles of light: here, I think, is where the stars go during the day; here is where they sleep, as if dropped into a great palm spread out wide and petulant. All around me are a billion worlds too. One mother tries to launch a unicorn kite but does not move from her spot on the beach chair. From her vantage point, she barks instructions to the girls but there is little wind today and the kite remains as earthbound as the children’s spirits when they cannot get it in the air. No matter. There are other forms of distraction. The kite family sits and eats lunch – Mother handing each of them the latest in designer prepackaged lunchables and sippy juice boxes replete with napkins. Then it’s off to the wet sand, where all the real magic happens. I am reminded that I was born and raised on an island. Our dinners were usually luke warm meatball hero sandwiches wrapped in foil. We usually ate as much sand with the meatball as sandwich. I recall how the hollow monotonous call of the curlicue wave, almost waving for us to come into the water, would lull me to sleep on the beach. It reminded me of our own mythologies we created: how certain flat shells were the fingernails of mermaids, and how dead and defunct horseshoe crabs washed up on to the shore would inspire fear since its prodigious stinger could tear away flesh if one touched it. The kite sisters now go down to the frigid water where they play a game we used to call “lava” - I’m certain they don’t cal it that. The objective of the game was to get as close to the swelling water as possible then run away as fast as you could never letting the water touch you. In my time, we imagined the water to be lava and we had to avoid it or else risk being burned alive. The kite sisters shriek each time the water nearly touches them. It is a pitch that is so shrill that it is nearly only audible by dogs, if any were around, though I suspect there might be some dolphins in the water who are wondering what all the fuss is about. On the horizon I watch the ghostly movement of a tanker as it hangs onto the thin line that separates water from sky. It glides by without calling attention to itself. It measures time in the way it slowly crosses my line of sight. I cannot take my eyes off of it but no one else seems to even notice it. One of the kite sisters – what appears to be a three year old – with olive skin and a face covered with her lunch has the charm of one of those street urchins you see in third world countries. Her name is Isabella. I know this because her Mother – the same woman who moments ago tried to orchestrate the kite raising from her beach chair – repeats the name like some sort of maternal mantra. “Isabella, not so close!” “Isabella, not so far!” “Isabella, put that down!” “Isabella, pick that up!” Isabella was wild; this much could be seen in her wild hair and dark, rabid, penetrating eyes. All three year olds are wild. She wanders the beach like a drunk, carrying pale and shovel in tow, alternating between pulling her lime green bathing suit off and then vainly trying to put it back on. “Oh, Izzy!” the sitting Mother says. She barks out more instructions her voice being stuffed right back into her mouth by the roar of the ocean. Suddenly, I hear the sitting Mother’s voice ring out right through husky ocean voice like a razor. “Izzy! NO!” It’s too late. Izzy has licked the beach. The look on her face is one of utmost calm. I can’t even imagine what she thought the sand would taste like – clearly she does not like it – because she mindfully walks over to sitting Mother whose nose by now is all wrinkled up in disgust. Sounds emanate from her as though she was going to cough up a hairball. Isabella, meanwhile, just waits, with her tongue covered in sand, for sitting Mother to find a clean towel with which to wipe off the sand. I startle at how long I notice her tongue is and how she just waits, looking around at the other kids playing and just sighs. Soon the saliva just runs down her tongue and she is drooling like a panting dog. What made her think this was a good idea? I learn later that this is actually a behavior of hyperactive or autistic kids who have mineral deficiencies. I read later that about 25% to 30% of kids have this condition known as pica. But I don’t imagine Isabella to be one of these. She is wild I tell you. I begin to think of this action in a larger scope. Maybe she thinks the sand looks like cookie dough or maybe she thinks the sand is sugar. Maybe it’s her way of exploring. What beach have I licked lately? What spontaneous act of nonsense have I engaged in recently that didn’t involve that part of my brain that said “no” to everything? That part of Isabella’s brain clearly is not developed. Was there ever a time when I would let the curious things of the world rule me this way? Surely, I know better now. I know that licking sand will taste like… like what? I don’t know that I have ever licked a beach or if I had, it was so long ago as to be a repressed memory by now. I know this sounds crazy but we all do things that we know we hate out of some sense of duty or responsibility. How can licking a beach to see how it tastes be any more crazy? Watching Isabella lick that beach and then simply deal with the consequences with no crying, no fuss – just a look of mini-enlightenment, at least in the area of how beaches taste. So here I am well into my middle life with my own children and yes, I have traveled the world a bit and have gone to college. I’ve worked at numerous places learned many things. But here before me this three year old, this Isabella, this tabla rosa knows what a beach tastes like while I do not. I do not believe it is fear that keeps me from licking the beach – well, maybe not the fear of what it might taste like – but rather the fear of how I would look. Soon the thought dawns on me that the real reason this distresses me is that I would never in a million years ever have the idea to lick the beach. Suddenly I feel sad. I know what it is like to have all the doors of perception closed tight, locked and the key tossed away for good measure. Isabella’s doors are wide open. I wonder about Isabella. I wonder if as she grows she will keep some of those portals to the imagination open. Maybe she will be a great painter some day, painting landscapes of beaches. Maybe the colors she uses in her palette are a direct though unseen reflection of her licking the beach today. What will happen in her life that will start to close these doors in her life? What has happened in my life that has caused these pathways to creativity to close down to me? How many other ideas whiz past my head at dizzying speeds daily, hourly, even by the minute, that I am so willfully blind to? It’s a special thing when I learn from those who seem to know less than I. I learn for one thing, how little I really do know. Today is a special classroom, a special schooling for which there are no diplomas or life credits to be earned. Maybe next time I find myself at the shore, I will try to lick the beach though really, I know this is Isabella’s thing now and not mine. Thoughts don’t always come with copyrights. Maybe they should. Who knows where they come from and who know where they go? Maybe I will top off my beach with some M&M’s though to be sure. Creativity is a great thing, but chocolate- well, that is quite another. M C Biegner 4/23/2004

What We Bury Today: The Death Of John Paul II and What It Means To Me

Okay, I’ve let enough time lapse. When I first heard the news of the passing of Pope John Paul II, I had mixed feelings. I mean I really believe it’s not a good thing to speak ill of the dead, no matter what their political leanings are or what you thought of that person. I just think that invokes bad karma or something. I feel it lessens me. So how do I sum up what I am feeling in an intelligible manner in a way so that I can disabuse the world of this papalmania (the only word I can think of) for a man who was the leader of every Roman Catholic in the world? I am a Roman Catholic, so this is a tricky thing. See, although I firmly believe in the element of ecstasy in spirituality, generally, watching large groups of people taking the death of a man few of them have met and who was in essence a Catholic celebrity, just...(how shall I put this?) scares me ... a little. We need to understand that the Papacy occupies a most interesting political/moral leadership position in the world. The Vatican mystique is part political, part spiritual and part historical. The world no longer looks to it for any sort of political guidance as it once did. But it is not like the good old days when the pope actually determined who sat on the thrones of countries, had a standing army that could kick some serious booty and was a true force in the secular political world of its day. The church had a strange role as a power broker in being both secular AND spiritual. As for being an ethical beacon, the Vatican certainly has its place. Generally, Vatican opinions on all sorts of topics are duly noted by other foreign leaders who then weigh the political expediency of their own political realities and make their decisions accordinly. In short, other countries treat the Vatican much like American Catholics seem to: they listen to the teachings, and ultimately, decide what is right for themselves. Oh, some leaders make the pretense of listening, such as a certain president of a certain country that still executes its citizens. This president may (and I emphasize “may”) call the pope for guidance – oh, wait, that was a West Wing episode wasn’t it? Sometimes reality and fantasy are tough to tell apart. But the Vatican is a human organization and as such is subject to human criticism. How do we separate the pope as a man versus the pope as the leader of an institution that has sometimes lost its way? For the record, I am not here to give any credence to conspiracy theorists who suggest that Pope John Paul II was part of some plot to murder Pope John Paul I because his views of things did not fit a particular conservative agenda. I do not even intend to talk about the various historical abominations which place the Vatican Bank in league with the Mafia, or that John Paul II worked in concert with the CIA in the fight against communism or that past popes had conceived illegitimate children, or even those accusations that the Vatican conspired with the Nazis during World War II. (Hell, so did IBM, but you don’t see anyone asking for a boycott of IBM equipment these days. It seems we like our spiritual institutions pure, but our business institutions can just have at it.) All of these things may be true, or none of them may be true. I come to bury, Caesar, dear friends, not praise him!The last time I recall giving this much thought to the Papacy of my Church, was during the heady days of liberation theology in the ‘70’s. I know there aren’t many today who would think those grand days, but I recall them as being so full of potential. This is the climate in which John Paul II ascended to the papacy. The cold war was in full swing, and the dilemma of how priests in Latin America should serve the poor was the hot button being discussed. People of Latin America were suffering mightily at the hands of brutal dictatorships - dictatorships, I hasten to point out, which were often supported by this same Church over which John Paul II ruled. Does anyone remember the rebuke John Paul gave Ernesto Cardinale, then a priest in the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, during his visit? Cardinale, awkwardly kneeling, nearly falling over as he rose to the Pope’s admonishment, wagging a disapproving finger – all on film for the world to see. This was a time, after the Paul VI died, and before the first John Paul died, that I really believed the Church was in for some change, that perhaps women could be included; that maybe the Church would speak out on more human rights issues; that maybe the Church could update it policy about artificial birth control.(It was Paul VI who gave us Humanae Vitae. If you want to see what the fuss is about, click the link. This one simply eludes my comprehension. )http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html ) The Catholic Church, to its credit, is a strong opponent to the death penalty, a cause near and dear to my heart. The Church, in following Jesus’ teachings of corporal works of mercy, adheres to a message of social justice for all people, regardless of stage of life.So the Church has that right at least. It is consistent with its stance on preserving life, even if it muddies the waters on some issues. (Now how one goes from that point to not allowing artificial contraception is a leap even the Great Wallendas would have trouble with.) In the end, John Paul II carried on the tradition of Paul VI. He did, in fact, speak to human rights issues. He warned of the potential dehumanizing effects of globalization, against capital punishment, spoke out against the war in Iraq (how many pro-life sign carrying Catholics were aware of that? How many of these protestors stood in lines holding signs not to invade Iraq?) As the Berlin Wall fell, and then, communism, he found himself with only one adversary left in the west: the materialism of the MTV world. That is, at least before the rise of the fundamentalist Islamic movement, when lo and behold, we a brand new crusades just in time for the new millennium was born. It’s really no surprise that his message of social justice rings most true with people of the third world and why the church is growing there while it is shrinking in the countries of Europe and America. It’s really no surprise that the youth of the world loved John Paul II either, since he more closely resembled an old Polish pastor, with a grounded sense of the people around him than some sort of ideological reactionary. The world is in no short supply of charming, charismatic leaders. People – especially young people – need their gods (if you pardon the analogue) to be accessible, and human. They are already affixing the title “The Great” to his name. (I tried this at home, but it didn’t work as well for me, maybe you can try this where you work – send out a memo insisting that everyone from this date forward, add “the great” after your name Let me know how it works for you!) Looking back on his papacy, the Catholic Church of John Paul II has not changed much. In fact, it has gone from the uncertainty of the 70’s with the possibility of a whole new spiritual order, to the same comforting paradigms we grew up with and were terrorized with as kids. John Paul decided social justice was needed in other parts of the world, but not, it seems, for practitioners of the Roman Catholic faith. That is still a puzzle to me. The lack of allowable dissent, the lack of critical thinking, the lack of expression - these are all of great concern to me. Ideas are not things that come from a vacuum. Ideas require the fertilizer of debate, doubt, counter-intuitive thinking to grow. I understand the Catholic Church is not a democratic organization and I am not suggesting it needs to be. It’s just, how can we proclaim the need for human justice when one half of all the humans on the planet are deemed unworthy by this institution to simply consecrate bread and wine at the daily Mass? Verily, I say, what would Jesus do? Frankly, I think He’d be just a tad pissed. As I watched John Paul’s burial, I got a little teary eyed, I admit. I mean, the pomp, the ritual, the splendor of the event and the waves of humanity are impressive. Who doesn’t like a grand show? I suspect that he was really a man of peace; he sought to bring life to the forefront of all human endeavors. He found himself on both sides of the political spectrum when it came to important issues, (abortion, death penalty, stem cell research, contraception, ordination of women) and you have to respect a man who makes decisions based on his own informed conscience. And isn't that all anyone can ask of each of us - that we act in accordance to what we believe? Does all this make John Paul II a bad guy? Should we not honor this man? I don’t know. Maybe he’s misguided; maybe he’s malevolent. I only pray he has found the freedom in his death that his Church seems to refuse the rest of us here on earth. I pray that his quest for peace and for creating a culture for life includes most importantly, the quality of tolerance. There is so little of that these days, and the world is in such short supply. I just hope that someday my Church can feel less threatened by new ideas. I pray that She can learn that one can adhere to tradition and still allow growth. I hope that She learns that being tolerant does not mean abandoning core doctrine. The challenge for any Christian church today is to bring the living message of a gospel that is thousands of years old forward, while leaving behind the chaff of the old cultural baggage. I only hope that a belief in God’s goodness prevails. Let’s hope that this goodness, which He imbues in each of us, has not been buried with John Paul. M C Biegner4/2005

The Definition of Insanity is Repeating the Same Behavior Over and Over and Expecting Different Results

Steely legs grind sausage asphalt like meat Turn! Turn! Turn the crank over. My breath is a lullaby for the street Churn! Churn! Churn the breath over Speed drips out of me through orbiting feet Turn! Turn! Turn the crank over. Gravity grabs me with kisses so sweet Churn! Churn! Churn the force over. Then gracefully tears out my lungs complete, Burn! Burn! Burn the lungs over. When a mountain’s flexing muscles I greet, Turn! Turn! Turn the land over. With switchbacks and grades I fear in my sleep, Turn! Turn! Turn the crank over. Now into the smaller ring I creep, Turn! Turn! Turn the crank over. My breath is mediation, hard and deep, Churn! Churn! Churn the breath over. Alive through pain from endorphins I weep, Turn! Turn! Turn the pain over. Then, Finally, At the top, Ready to pop, Wanting with all my wanting to stop, Momentum so sloppy I very nearly flop, I start to descend, Uncoil and unbend, Begin to start the commencement of end. Over and over The air smells like clover, Over and over Let this man-machine marriage of pain cross over This crown Down, Down, Post crown, Toward the most grounded of ground From sky bluest blue To the earthiest brown, I hear the humming of the hum, Like a blood rush of the head, a beating drum, A tumbling crumb, No longer gravity’s bum. Muscles that ache, Now get a break, These limbs that gave now take, take, take take, I tear the wind with an effortless break, A piece of cake! Returning, returning legs and heart once a great campfire, now are embers burning. With each microsecond of speed I’m learning That what goes up with the greatest of pain Drops without awareness like rain, So though you think me insane, There, ahead, before me, over the smiling plain, Another mountain! So I do it again. M C Biegner 4/2005

Three Things

I The pink plastic flamingos gather in a pat outside an oversized contemporary house in the rural woods, leaning and a-flame, gathering as if at tea, conversing at the mouth of the driveway. Perhaps they are there to welcome. Stoic, still, blushing with no sense of coolness, landmarks of kitsch or misunderstood highbrow art – take your pick – like a piece of Warhol art, a parody, iconic; or perhaps just really, really bad taste or really, really good taste. Perhaps those who live in this house promote an artist life style, with the faux fowl signs that art is larger than the commonness of everyday; that perhaps a Cristo of the lunatic finge art world lives here and perhaps there are conspiracies of art just like there are conspiracies of everything else. Perhaps right now someone in this house is contemplating a plan to put these birds everywhere through the New York Botanical Gardens, or throughout the Cloisters of the Bronx – pink flamingos – a pat of them everywhere. “Their meaning?” people would ask. “What is their purpose?” I roll by the house slowly, for I do brake for cultural anomalies. I look in my rear view mirror and see the birds at an angle, slanted, almost animated with conversation, suggesting a certain kind of exotica that is unknowable here in this snowy New England climate. (Flamingos have been known to travel with Garden Gnomes. The Gnomes love to race them, being so small and all, they are natural jockeys.) But this a) stain of human taste or b) cool parodic high art – pick one – is all there is, it seems. Goodbye flamingos. Perhaps they are returned from the south in some migratory urging; perhaps they are part of a resurgence of flaming, plastic pink flamingos, up here to mate and bring us a revival of pop, cult art. II We have sat around this table many times and have often recited lines from our favorite movies. One of our favorite moments is when one of us repeats in his worst (or best) Austrian accents a line from an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie: “It’s not a tumor.” You have to say it just right. It is definitely in the telling: “It’s not a tumor.” Drop the voice and close the back of the throat as you say it. Try it when a friend complains of a headache. “It’s not a tumor.” The only thing is though, this time it is a tumor. It is an anaplastic astrocytoma, a brain tumor. It is a brain tumor in a fifteen year old girl. It was discovered after this girl fought for years with a form of lymphoma. They had hoped it was in remission, but it spread. The headaches, the dizziness – she thought it might be nutritionally based, since for a while she was concerned about losing weight and wanted to be really thin as she progressed through high school. She wanted to be thin, and so she thought that was the reason for the dizziness. It was spread throughout her cortex, radiating fingers, defying true measurement like most cancers, cells that grow out of control, without a plan. Who would have thought that growth could kill? It is the flip side of everything, it seems, that always gets you. A fifteen year old with anaplastic astrocytoma. Now it’s more procedures, more waiting, more experimentation – it is a race to kill off this pat of cells, pink, like a pat of flaming pink plastic flamingos leaning, having a simple conversation, and multiplying, the ultimate of tastelessness in a disease. The rapaciousness, the voraciousness and wantonness of the disease is alarming. “It’s not a tumor,” I say, trying not to invoke Arnold’s voice, but I can’t help it. It makes us laugh. It is a tumor and it is not as funny. It sits in her head waiting but there is a wasteland in this waiting. “You need support groups,” “You need to visualize the disease,” “You need to personalize it,” “You need to vocalize what you are feeling,” “Try journaling,” we all tell her. “Need?” she thinks. The concept of need is a million miles away. She is only fifteen. Have I said that already? She has already gone through chemotherapy; she has had lymph nodes removed. She knows the sickness brought on by the poison they pump into her. Every cell of her body has a memory and remembers this. She knows the tiredness like the dimensions of her bed, like every single square inch of her bed that she will now know even better. She knows boundaries. She will gather her strength and muster up enough saliva to spit. She will live. She will live. “It’s not a tumor,” she says to me in the best Arnold voice ever. She is lying of course, but we love her so much that we laugh anyway. III During these early days of spring I drive to work very early in the morning. In part, this is to get a jump on the day, to begin my day with a regimen of exercise, but mostly because I love to open the day in the same manner that I love to close it: alone. This does not make me anti-social or a-social. It is not because I dislike people though the thought does cross my mind, but rather it is because the diffused sunlight as it rises and sets creates for me a sort of confessional. It creates a place where I must account for everything in me to myself and to do so, I must do it alone. Have you ever noticed the flat stillness of the sky in the evening as the sun begins to set? It is small and delicate like the nape of a woman’s neck. It begs for relating to – the purple dripping clouds, like paint that had not dried, like fantasy artwork. It creates all around me a space that is much like a confessional. The rest of the day – the fat middle where everything happens at lightning pace, the part that unfolds billowing like a flag – that is yours. Mine is the start of daylight and its dissolution – grand tutors of temporality. They are mine alone and are my gods and truth be told, sustain me. This winter is a cancer to us all – overgrowth of dearth. Overgrown despair, overgrown bleakness crowding out everything. This has the tendency to make waking life so much more stony, like flaking shale, coming apart in your hands. It seems so much more geologic than it needs to be, I think to myself. M C Biegner 4/1/2005

Spring 2005

Spring bares her breasts in that careless and gradual way, Pulling back her snowy dressy top With the shyest movement; Hiking up her skirt of grass so green as to convey motion, Just a few inches above those luscious knees, Just enough to be awkward, Just enough to make me do a double take in disbelief – Playing this game of hide and seek With sunlight’s strong and gentle fingers, Lime green oozing everywhere Slapping together a patch of earth that is my lust – She is beautiful when she Hides in the cesura of the season - This one day in Spring – In this dis-remembering of a winter that egged us on. Just like the moment between breaths Just like the stillness that happens between heartbeats – Life infused with new hope Of things not revealed. Proving the existence of God Confirming that I really don’t matter at all – Basking in that joyful confirmation that I don’t matter at all! M C Biegner

under exposure

In this one we’re like any teenage snapshot couple, drunk with careless infatuation. I proudly wear my “Century of Women on Top” tee shirt; you wear your shy smile. We’re holding the old Polaroid camera out in front of us, and your cheek, complete with the dimples you always tried to hide, is pressed next to mine. This is the photo I’d scan and email to my friends back home, my mom. This print’s fuzzy brightness doesn’t reveal a few hours earlier when we would have been found in the emergency room after the police were called to the scene of one of your theatrical suicide threats, nor does it have any recollection of that shrill terror that by something miraculous pushed up through my throat and echoed off the side of that old brick building when I thought I had lost you. It doesn’t show the part when I was crying and tried to call out to that man across the street for help, or when you wouldn’t even look at me as you manipulated words into blameful incantations and continued on at that frighteningly determined pace. It doesn’t know about the bruise that will develop on my arm the next morning where you had grabbed me and pushed me away from you when I was desperately trying to chase after you, to save you. I only ever wanted to save you. This Polaroid doesn’t understand that I would even willingly forget my own name for a time in order to try to teach you the hope hidden inside the spelling of yours. And neither the film nor flash know about the hot shower we shared after the whole ordeal was over that night, how your shivering body melted into my arms as heavy beads of water pounded on our skin, and how I forgot about the deadly dominance you had cast over me as I sensed the powerlessness in your pulse.

The Boneyard Romance

Rutherford arrived at the Boneyard, the lone suit and tie in a sea of undershirts and dirty suspenders, wondering why he was there. He still had a sermon to write. He looked at Jackie, who was shaking hands, grinning ear to ear, the way a father did when his first son was born. There was no such grin for an uncle, Rutherford thought, there was only a polite smile, which he decided to wear, striding coolly to the bar and ordering a glass of water. “Water? Man, get your ass outta here,” the bartender said. Rutherford slid a dollar bill across the counter and received a dirty glass full of lukewarm water. The musicians had taken a break, but it seemed that they were about to reconvene. The alto sax player was in the face of his woman, yelling into her like she was an inanimate object. Rutherford watched her face, frozen except for her eyes, which moved back and forth, barely blinking. When he finished his tirade, the sax played rounded up the band. Instead of storming off the stage, as Rutherford expected, the woman strode to the microphone. She snapped her thick fingers slow and even, so that the anticipation between each snap brought the din of the bar down to a murmur by the fourth snap. Instead of a fifth snap, the band began to play. The singer made eye contact with him for a split second, Rutherford thought, and then moved her eyes around the room. After the band had played a few bars, she began to sing. “Yes, I got a Daddy, and no, he don’t treat me right…” “Who is that?” Rutherford felt himself say, after deciding not to say it. “That’s the mystery. Quiet Lily’s a mystery,” the bartender answered. Rutherford slid another dollar across the bar and the bartender continued. “Whiskey,” he said, “Every Saturday night, for like 2 years, see? Then one day she said her name was Lily, occurred to me that’s the only thing I ever heard her say, besides whiskey. Then one day she get up and ask J.J. could she sit in? He was drunk, so he let her. Turn out, she ain’t half bad.” The bartender spoke to him between nodding and pouring shots for Jackie’s friends. Rutherford turned his attention back to Lily. Her song was in its closing bars. “Yes, I got a Daddy, and no, no, no, he don’t treat me right…” Applause and catcalls peppered the air that was dense with tobacco smoke, and Lily descended the stage. She sat down at a table with what Rutherford assumed was her customary glass of whiskey. He stood up from his barstool and crossed the room to her table. “Mind if I sit?” he asked. Lily shrugged. “What’s that song you were singing?” he asked. “Yes and No.” “I don’t believe I’ve heard that before. Who’s it by?” he asked. Lily swallowed and met his eye. “Me,” she said, keeping his gaze. “You really got a Daddy don’t treat you right?” Lily shrugged. “Have you been saved?” he asked, out of habit. Lily looked down at her glass, met his eyes again, then threw back her head and downed her remaining whiskey. She slowly stood up and began walking toward the exit. “Only reason I ask, ma’am,” he began. She shot an icy glance back at him, “Ma’am, miss… Lily… is that I’m the pastor at First Baptist Church in Three Oaks.” She was gaining distance on him after exiting the Boneyard. “We have services Sundays at 10. I’d love for you to sing in our choir,” he said. She stopped, turned around, and set her arms akimbo. “You gonna follow me home?” she asked. “No, just I… hope to see you some Sunday. Maybe even tomorrow, or,” he said, fumbling with the chain on his watch, “later today. Here,” he said, producing another dollar bill, “In case you need to be taking the bus into town.” He waited for her to take her hands off of her hips, but she wouldn’t. She had a pocket in her skirts, he could see, and he slid the dollar bill in, lingering for just a moment on her hip. She put her hand in her pocket, and pushed the bill back at him, hard against his chest. It fluttered to the dirt. “Take that,” she said, quiet and even, “ and buy yourself some more faith.” She turned around. “You can’t buy faith,” he called after her, “But you sure can rent it!” He watched her disappear into the night, then went inside to find Jackie and tell him it was time to go home. *** Lily remembered that first Sunday morning she spent on the bus to Three Oaks as the last day she ever felt uncertain. It was crowded in the back of the bus, and it seemed that all the other passengers were older and better dressed than she was. She’d turned to the man standing next to her and asked, “First Baptist?” “You can follow me,” he said. When they exited the bus, she followed the man, and most of the crowd East for five blocks, then South for three. The sign for First Baptist Church bore carefully painted letters that read, FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH of THREE OAKS WHERE JESUS SAVES, HEALS, AND DELIVERS! Rev. Rutherford James Payson, Pastor Lily entered the church and sat in the back row of wooden chairs, waiting for the service to begin. Other folks were talking, laughing, shaking hands. A few of them approached her, called her, “my sister.” She smiled back as best she could. Rutherford emerged as the choir sang an upbeat, tambourine-driven, yet otherwise a capella version of “Amazing Grace.” He shone in his purple and gold robe, radiating more charm, Lily thought, than a pastor probably should. Just as the hymn ended, Rutherford spoke, booming without shouting, “My brothers and sisters in Jesus,” he began, “I would like to take a moment to welcome any worshippers that are new to our congregation this morning. I invite you to hear the word,” he paused for murmurs of agreement, “I invite you to lift your voice!” a woman shouted and the tambourine joined in, “I invite you to experience the love of the Almighty God and Jesus Christ, Our Savior!” his voice lifted to a fever pitch. “Take your hands, “ he said, “raise them up, and FEEL the power that is given to you from Heaven! Use this power to spread the word! Use this power to praise his name! Use this power to SAVE YOUR SOUL!” The tambourine played rolled into another hymn. Lily was too awestruck to sing along. She just watched Rutherford, singing with his jaw dropped as far as possible, and his eyes closed. After the hymn, Rutherford stepped to the pulpit. “Our reading today is as follows,” he cleared his throat for emphasis, “Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace! When there is hatred,” he paused, “Let me sow love.” There were scattered affirmations from the congregation. “When there is doubt, sow FAITH!” he pounded on the pulpit, “When there is sadness,” he paused, and a woman began to weep loudly, and Rutherford lowered his voice slightly, “let me sow joy. When there is DARKNESS, LET ME SOW LIGHT!” the congregation became uproarious, “LORD!” Rutherford cried. Lily could see the sweat pouring down from his face from the back row, “MAKE ME AN INSTRUMENT OF THY PEACE!” Lily sat silent in her chair through the remainder of the service, and afterward, she stood at the end of the line to greet the Reverend. “Miss Lily,” he said when he saw her, “I was hoping you’d come by.” She nodded. “Wonderful service,” was all she could muster. “I’d like to invite you to Sunday dinner with my family, if you have no other obligation,” he said. She took a breath. “That would be nice.” “I intend to make a church-going woman out of you, yet!” he said. The remaining parishioners chuckled as they exited the church. He came to her side, and leaned in close to her. She could feel his warm breath and his lips graze her ear. “I also intend to marry you,” he whispered. She looked him in the eye and raised her hand up, sliding it down his forearm and squeezing his palm as they walked around the corner to the rectory. *** Lily didn’t hear from J.J. all week, which she thought was just as well. If he wanted to break it off with her, she thought, it would save her the trouble of doing it herself. She only worried, just a little bit, that he’d ban her from sitting in with the band. She knew, though, that Quentin, Alley, March, and Jesse would go to bat for her. Still, she hated the thought of them fighting, just cause of her. It was quiet that Saturday night when she arrived at the Boneyard. Willie didn’t look at her as she ordered her whiskey. There was no sign of J.J. so far. “Where’s J.J. at?” she asked Willie. “Hm?” “J.J…. Where’s he at?” she asked again. “March!” Willie called to the end of the bar, gesturing at Lily. As March crossed toward her, she knew. She wouldn’t have to break it off with J.J. He’d died, just the way she’d imagined he would- close to his saxophone, with his eyes rolled back in his head and a needle in his arm. “J.J.’s gone on,” March said. Lily nodded. “I just knew he’d get himself messed with that,” March continued, “He was a good player.” “He was,” she said. “My little cousin Millard’s gonna sit in on sax tonight. Kinda an audition for him, see?” March said. “Mm, hm,” she said. “Listen, Lily… if you don’t feel like it tonight, we all understand, but… it sure is nice when we have you here,” March said. “I’ll sing. I always sing,” she said, “But just one.” March nodded. When they called her to the stage, Lily dedicated J.J.’s favorite, “Knock-Down-Drag-Out Blues” to his memory, then exited the stage, sat down at her table, and breathed deep for a moment into her glass of whiskey before taking a sip. *** The next day, Lily took the bus to Three Oaks, having promised Rutherford that they’d go for a walk after church and Sunday dinner. “J.J. died,” she said as they rounded the corner from the rectory. “How?” he asked. “The needle,” she said. “Mm hm… I am sorry,” Rutherford said, not being able to use the standard, ‘He’s with Jesus now.’ “I’m not,” she said, “He loved shooting up more than anything. Even the blues. That ain’t right.” “Well, you don’t love anything more than the blues?” “No,” she said. “No? Not your mama? Not nothing? Not Jesus?” he asked, fingering the ring in his pocket. “My mama wasn’t a thing. Jesus ain’t a thing. It’s different.” “If we,” he paused, “If we were married, would you give up performing?” “No,” she said, “Would you?” “I don’t perform,” he said. She looked at him and raised her eyebrow. “I would never,” she said, “Never cause you such pain as that would cause me.” He stopped in his tracks and caught her hand. She turned toward him. “Lily, I won’t ask you to do anything but marry me,” he said. “Yes, you will,” she said, “But I accept anyways.” “I feel too old to get on bended knee,” he said, smiling. “Me too,” she said, “So let’s just walk.”

Wine

After Night has had its way; After all the dismantling; When I am alone with muffled calm; When I am done with handling All of the self inflicted doubt --- I am wine that sits decanting Made giddy with the thought of flight As I face one more replanting Splash me recklessly on the ground So I may fill the cracked dry dirt Drink me full with the hardest lust I am free of wounds but not the hurt – Healed at the altar of our art, Cauterized by this grateful heart. M C Biegner 3/2005

Confessions of a Closet Fiction Writer

Today something dreadful happened. Today, without so much as an inkling, I very nearly wrote fiction! I don’t know how it happened. I really don’t! I wasn’t paying attention. I normally don’t do things like this. It happened one evening after dinner when I settled down to that quiet place – you know – that place inside where it gets real still and you can hear everything inside you that is going on; the place where all my poetry comes from. Then it happened. I can’t imagine how! I was writing when suddenly I noticed what looked like two eyes and a prominent nose pressed up against the clear plastic of my BIC plastic ballpoint. I was surprised. I mean, I was not accustomed to people in my pen where ink was supposed to be. As I wrote an even stranger thing happened. This person or whatever it was that was trapped inside the barrel of my pen, squeezed himself out through the tip of the pen and before I could say, “Great Walt Whitman preserve us”, there before me was a character: a real honest to goodness fictional character. It was a middle-aged man with balding head who wore the look of desperation like a wrinkled and ill-fitted suit. He smelled of cigarettes with just a trace scent of some morning shot – drambuie or kalhua – something that in the shadowy lamplight of my room smelled like last night. This character just sat there on the snowy white page, blinking, first left, then right as if he did not know where he was. There was an awkward silence. I couldn’t say a word I was so stunned! I knew I was miles away from that place where I grew my poetry, but where was I? I started to write some more hoping though not really believing, that this was just an anomaly. I held this deep fear that this portended some sort of gravitational pull toward the absurd and that I was powerless to stop it. Then just as before, my eye was caught by another set of eyes looking at me from the barrel of the pen. I panicked this time. I closed my eyes and tried to remember the opening lines of T.S. Eliot’s “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”: “Let us go then you and / When the evening is spread out against the spreading sky”. I opened one eye, but the eyes in the pen just glared up at me. I quickly snapped my one eye closed and continued: “Like a patient etherized on a table…” Surely if there was anyone who could bring me back to someplace devoid of personality, it would be Eliot, I thought. But it was no use. I opened my eyes and there they were: frantic eyes, bloodshot eyes, eyes that spoke to a different part of my artistic brain. Why I could almost hear the other neurons snapping the way a heater that has not been used for a long time clicks when it is turned on for the very first time of the heating season. I took the pen in both hands and rolled it fiercely back and forth hoping it would shake free whatever demons possessed it. It was no use though The eyes were still there only now they were dizzy and crossed from all the spinning. I wrote again anyway. I would not let this dementia prevent my sweet, gentle poetry from bubbling up. Where had my poetry gone I wondered? Had someone absconded with it? Or maybe I just misplaced it, being as I am so busy lately. Perhaps my poetry just got fed up and left. Maybe, I thought, I was simply engaging in some sort of shared consciousness flashback of experiences I never had? I mean, I never did hallucinogens but people I know have. LSD, I’ve learned, is actually trapped in the human spinal chord for many years after the person stops taking it. Maybe, if this idea of a shared collective consciousness is true, maybe I am experiencing someone else’s flashback. The thought though amusing, didn’t really comfort me much. As I continued writing, another character slid out on to the page. This time it was a woman. She had frizzy, stringy hair and large overblown blotchy red face. She wore much more lipstick than she should have ever been allowed to. Her eyes were angry and while she didn’t say a word, I could tell she was reproaching me. But something about her was familiar. I could not put my finger on it, but there was a quality, something I could not articulate that made me feel this woman and I knew each other. I pondered this when it shot through my head like a lightning bolt. This was my ex-wife. She did not really look like my ex-wife (well, except for the lipstick: that woman found shades of lipstick that would make hookers blush!) but still, I somehow knew it was her. “Odd,” I thought to myself. “I didn’t know that I was still carrying around all this anger for her after all these years.” I made a note to bring this up with my therapist at my next session. Yes, it was my ex-wife all right, couched craftily amid some cosmetic changes of dress and body shape and hair. It was the eyes that gave her away, always the eyes. “My God”, I thought, “I am starting to think like a fiction writer!” So my “ex” has been in there all this time and I had no idea! I didn’t know what to make of that: first the middle-aged man, then this. What was next? I was afraid to think who else might be in there, thinking it was all coming from the pen but all the while, really knowing better. Over the course of the next few hours several more characters were extruded through the tip of my pen and onto the page: there was a young girl with skinned knees wearing a party dress, a black blind blues singer with a strong heroin addiction, a sexy movie star who was tired of being type cast as a sex kitten and longed to be a real theater actor. All of these people squeezed themselves out onto the paper and each one had whole histories with which I became intimately familiar. They were born from something in my past and I tried to match the personality up with something in my past, but I could not do it completely. Before long, I had half a journal written filled with these characters and their traits, their foibles and character flaws, their habits and idiosyncracies: I had captured them all as character studies in writing. Finally, the character who was my ex-wife broke the silence and spoke. “Well?” she said in that sharp tire screeching sort of voice I remember (I think I even winced in a Pavlovian response). “Well what?” I said. “Well, what do we do?” “Do?” I was sure I was crazy now. In the back of my mind I so wanted my poetry back. Never has a poem so much as spoken to me. Not once. “You got us here – now what do we do?” she said. “Well…” I drew the response out hoping to buy some time. “Truth is, see, I don’t write fiction. This is just some sort of mistake.” My ex-wife’s eyes grew even angrier. “See, I can’t write plot lines,” I explained in a vain attempt to explain away my fiction writing shortcomings. “I think up these great characters and then, I don’t know what to do with them.” My ex-wife’s face changed. The contours of her cheeks actually went into a near smile. “You know, dearie,” she began sweetly. “ That construction worker over there that you dreamed up? The one with no shirt on and really short shorts? You could write a part for him and me if you like. He’s kinda cute.” I looked over at the Herculean Adonis of a construction worker I had created, with broad shoulders and tight washboard abs, and long flowing hair. “Yeah,” I said, “ I need to talk to my therapist about him too.” I explained for an hour how I could not write plots; how I was sorry but maybe I could integrate some of these characters into poems – if only my poetry would come back. She didn’t like that at all. None of them did. They didn’t want to be part of no stinking poem. They were going to look for a writer with some cojones, a real writer’s writer they said. Not one of these foo-foo, woo-woo, new age, pot-smoking, aging hippy types. "Where was Hemmingway when you need him?" they said, hard drinking, womanizing misogynistic S.O.B that he was. “Great. Just great. Now I have my own characters questioning my masculinity,” I thought. They left in a huff, all of them, and I was sitting alone. Over the next few weeks I played with story lines. I even took out some books from the library and attended workshops about how to write fiction. I read once that sometimes a writer had to do something mean to a character even a beloved character, so I did. I did something really mean to a character that I loved most of all. I was in bed for a week with depression. This fiction thing? I get way too invested emotionally. It’s hard on my body and my soul. I don’t know how people do it. My poetry eventually returned after being on brief hiatus. She told me she was hobnobbing with some musicians in the Bahamas. ( Incidentally, it really is better in the Bahamas, she told me.) Soon, my poetry and I were making and speaking the language of the unseen universe just as before. But someday, someday I just might look up one of those characters again and start in earnest to write fiction for real. Someday. M C Biegner 3/2005