Reach Out

I arrived at the Den of the Secret Nine before any of the other members of the Organization. I wasn't surprised because traffic can be formidable in the Renaissance during the season of commercial orgy. I sat at the regular table and before I'd disconnected myself from iPhone life support, the Duck Man entered and sat next to me.

"I will tell you my story," he said. "I will tell you my story and you will sympathize because I can tell by looking at your face that your are sympathetic. You have a sympathetic face. My story is the story of a man's tragedy. It is the story of a blighted life. It is the story of a woman who would not forgive. It is the story..."

"I have to leave at 8:30," I said, "and if it's the story about the monkey and the nuts, I've heard it and it's vulgar."

"Sympathy," he said. "A man who has suffered the tragedy that I have suffered, requires sympathy."

"Let your days be full of joy. Love the child that holds your hand. Let you wife delight in your embrace. For these are the concerns of man," I said, taking liberties with the Epic of Gilgamesh.

"I have no wife and I have lost the woman who means all the world to me," he said.

"Listen," I said.

"Sure," he said taking a sip of his coffee.

"I walk the face of the earth like an ant walks on the surface of water," I began.

"Do ants walk on water," he asked?

I raised a hand as this was no time for side issues.

"As if the slightest misstep might send me straight through the surface and into the depths below. Not the depths of the ocean but the inner-most depths of the mind. It's scary down there."

"What's so scary about it?"

"Well," I said, "just yesterday when I was thinking about the rising tide of heinous skulduggery and political weasel-osity in the adjoining kingdom of the United States and how much the people need compassion and good will, I cleared my throat to sound the call to sanity when a cargo-van of fear, grief and anger came careening around a corner of my mind and plowed through a row of garbage cans. The driver came out flailing and swinging and shouting."

"You don't see that everyday," he said.

"No you don't," I said.

"But so what?"

"Well," the driver was me," I said.

"Ah," he said. "I gotta go."

"Have a nice Mayan apocalypse," I called after him because I had not meant to offend.

Work In Progress

My mother keeps the Big Book of Death. When I say she keeps it, I mean that she maintains it by entering the names of the recently departed and the dates of their death. The 49 days of Bardo begin with the date she enters in the book.

I was first introduced to Death in 1964 when my sister Delores died. I didn't realize then that I would come to have a personal relationship with him but our paths have crossed several times since then. The last time I saw Death was a little over three years ago when I was driving through the intersection of Woodcroft and Fayetteville and my car was struck full-on by a car rushing through a red traffic light.

"GOOD MORNING," he said, in a friendly enough though slightly raspy and very heavy voice, like a lead anchor, dragged across a cement driveway.

"Do you think this is funny?" I demanded and yes I meant it to sting. I have known this Death for many years but he is not a friend.

"IT'S MY JOB," he said, "AND IT'S THE ONLY THING THAT GIVES ME PURPOSE." Then in a slightly different tone, as though he were a next-door neighbor, he asked, "ARE YOU WELL?"

"Well? Am I well? I may have been well until a tenth of a second ago when that DART bus decided that 'twere well I was smacked into."

"YOU MEAN, IF 'TWERE DONE, 'TWERE WELL IT 'TWERE DONE QUICKLY," he said as though he liked to get it right. And then, still seeming to look for the lighter side, he rephrased, "IF 'TWERE SMACKED INTO, 'TWERE WELL IT 'TWERE SMACKED INTO WITH NOBS ON." He didn't laugh but he did grin, although he really doesn't have a choice about grinning.

"Not impressed," I said. "Not impressed with your knowledge of Shakespeare and not impressed with your humor." Remember, I was not shying away from stinging. When you're face to face with death, you have little to lose.

"IT WAS A FORD ECLIPSE," he said, "NOT AN AUTOBUS."

That's what he said. Autobus. I remember thinking how odd it was. I let it go because things were progressing rapidly and suddenly I was standing before a pair of very large, very solid-looking doors--I'm sure they were oaken, not oak, but oaken--with a pair of brass rings large enough for basketballs to fit through.

"What's that?" I said.

"I THINK YOU KNOW," he said.

"Death's doors," I said. "I'm not opening them," and I said it emphatically.

"BUT ONCE YOU ASKED TO ENTER," he protested.

"That was a long time ago. A lot has happened since then."

"IT'S INTERESTING," he said, "HOW HUMAN BEINGS HOLD ONTO THE SILLY IDEA OF OVERCOMING ADVERSITY WHEN THEY KNOW FULL WELL THAT THEY ARE SKIDDING DOWN A SLIPPERY SLOPE TOWARD AN OPEN MANHOLE. YET THEY CONTINUE TO LIVE THEIR LIVES LAUGHING AT THEIR OWN TRAGEDIES. IMMENSELY INTERESTING."

"That amuses you, does it?" I asked.

"I DON'T HAVE EMOTIONS," he said.

At that moment, my car stopped spinning and I began to slip back into consciousness.

"THE FUTURE HAS CHANGED FOR YOU AGAIN," Death said, "BUT WE WILL MEET AGAIN SOON ENOUGH."

"Are you alright?" the Parkwood EMS guy asked and when my eyes focused he was looking into the broken window of my car.

It was a couple of days later that I remembered meeting Death in that second and a half that my car spun around the intersection. My life hasn't been the same by a long shot. Sometimes good and sometimes not. But always a welcome gift of Time and Place on the right side of the grass.

Life comes fast and hard. So does Death. Be ready for anything. Fierce Qigong!

Take a Walk on the South Side

Mornings, I walk. After an early caffeine binge with the enforcers, I pace out the southend of the city one step at a time moving as quickly as my back will allow. I tell people the walk was recommended by my therapist, and there is that, but I really walk to get a feel for what it's going to be like to be the Genome for the day. The walk is quick but it's mindful.

I like the people I see out and about in the early morning. They are people with a purpose and I wonder what it would be like to be a purposeful person. I try to have purpose but no matter how hard I try, it seems that I am living just to be here. Time and Place. That's the stuff I see as important. I'd like to think that what I do is important but, there again, it seems the universe has it's own agenda. I'm just suppose to do something, almost anything, and that seems to be enough. More than that, it seems to be everything.

I don't expect you to agree. I'm not a fool. I know that everyone else in the entire world lives life with the idea that it has meaning and that they have purpose. I'm happy for them. I admire them.

I watch the barista from Trinidad who makes the little faces and hearts and fern leaves in the lattes and I wonder if it would be possible for someone without purpose in their life to do that. Even though I feel that I don't know what I'm doing, it feels somehow, and this is the salient point, that I have been chosen for the role. I am chosen to blunder through life hoping that something meaningful will happen.

This morning, pacing the south side mindfully and feeling the anger--and the pain in the upper back--I stopped on the sidewalk and began doing Swimming Dragon, followed by Parting the Clouds and then finishing with Embracing Heaven and Earth.

I was near a storm drain, and that mundane piece of municipal infrastructure became a metaphor for the neural networks in the shadowy region of my brain that support my depression. My qigong moves became fierce--my way of shouting down the storm drain of the mind, "I'm chosen! So don't mess with me, Amy!"

When I stood up a dozen people were moving around me doing whatever they do at this hour. Upper-dressed young women going to work at Nordstrom's; corporate ID-tag bearers heading to Panera's for coffee and bagels; cargo pant-ed leaf blowers. All looking at me.

"Had to be done," I said.

They all nodded and continued on their way because they all know what it's like to be messed with. And they instinctively knew that I was yelling in the right direction. Down the storm drain.