1944 (October of '45)

I arrived in Tennessee in October of 1945. Virgil’s parents, as he had said, lived in the country, just outside of a small farming town. I found a garage apartment on the road leading toward their home. My landlady was a widow, like Kathrin. We talked some but she didn’t ask a lot of questions and I didn’t volunteer much information. Mainly, just small talk. Who she really was, I never knew. Her eyes held a sorrow I simply had not the strength to bear and she not the desire to share. So we lived in the shallows, always within sight of the shore, cordial like strangers. We said our good mornings and our good nights and talked of the weather and gardens. But that was about it.

The town was small, conservative, and if not quaint, clean. Main street was as it appeared in pictures a hundred years ago, with old brick facades and canvas awnings. People were friendly without poking into your business. That I had served in the war seemed to go a long way with both being accepted and left alone. Many in town had lost boys, just as the Kanes had lost Virgil. To talk about it was to relive it and there wasn’t much economy for that, although you knew it was all anyone thought about, sitting on sidewalk benches, eyes full of empty road. So I lived mainly among, or perhaps between, two generations. Of storefront glass holding faded wool skirts but not too many pants, pleated or otherwise.

Virgil’s father was a retired university professor who dabbled at farming. Each morning, after chores, he would come to town, talk with the men and drink coffee, black. His skin, tanned as the others, was not the same, had not the mileage of those who had lived all their lives on the land. I watched him drink and talk, but mostly I watched him listen. And if I looked just to the side, holding his profile in my peripheral, I could smell Virgil. A certain muskiness of lumbered floor, of pungent chewing tobacco, sometimes a whiff of muddied denim, of the farm, of chores, of men who earned their sweat honestly. Their eyes as clear as mine were not.

And I thought of the women, back home, perhaps cleaning the kitchen of breakfast, washing dishes while taking inventory of lunch or even dinner. I thought of the table, and those empty chairs, one’s worn of boyish energy, perhaps a groove in the wooden floor, of the lacquered back dull from dirty hands not washed of the day, of mothers and their sons, of that sacred place of conversation and food, of family, of a togetherness known in laughter and light hearts. And I knew then why these men came to town, to look upon chairs full and not empty, to see faces haggard in labor and worry but not grief. They drank their coffee to forget. I drank mine to remember.

New Program: ArtTree

1944 (morning glories and fireflies)

When the army found out I was pregnant, they flew me home. My parents were horrified. I was an emotional mess, so what happened next--(Mary breaks down and is unable to continue)

What happened next was Mary’s father insisted the child be put up for adoption. Her mother, who seemed opposed to the idea, stood by and said nothing. Mary had not the strength to resist. She saw her child for less time than she had seen Virgil. Shortly after, when her father was at work and her mother running errands, Mary disappeared. Her parents searched for years with no luck. As the baby was gone from Mary, so too was Mary gone from her parents. Her parents, without letter or call, would die bitter, entrenched in their own unspoken views. Mary neither knew nor cared. To the end she maintained innocence of the irony.

She had moved to Tennessee. Same area as Virgil’s parents.

(Mary resumes) I needed to see them, to know they existed. I needed to breathe the air he had breathed and to walk the pastures he had known. The green hills were everything he said them to be and I became an expert at sunrise and sunset. Even went to the art store and bought some oil paint. Each morning, I would mix the colors I saw. Would just stroke them across the canvas. Nothing drawn or painted, just streaks of color, the color as it changed by the minute. You’d be amazed how many variations of green there are in a morning.

I suppose those that saw me, morning after morning, just painting vertical lines of various shades of green, must have thought I was crazy. I really don’t know since no one ever approached me. Grief doesn’t much like a party. So I went for months without uttering a single word. Just watching sunrises and sunsets, morning glories and fireflies. Pain is this way. If one is talking, no matter how much they complain, there are no worries, the shore is still within sight. But I was someplace else, beyond the shore, beyond sight of anyone else, and in this way, beyond words, beyond the salve of language. I needed him around me. I needed our baby in my arms. I had neither.

And the thought, and keep in mind, at this time I was in my twenties, but the thought was I had had my chance. But thoughts come and go. Feelings, however, the kind that live in your gut, are a different matter, and the feeling I had was that what I once had, I would never have again. So tell me, how does one live this way? How does one get up every morning and pull breath from the air? (no response) You dive into it. You paint it in streaks of green in the morning and streaks of blue in the dusk. There is no other way.

1944 (enough)

He had wide margins. I could breathe, swim, jump, run and know, through it all, he was there, same easy smile, same blanket arms. Virgil was Sunday morning breakfast. He was a full bellied afternoon nap. My fingers as children running through the waves of his hair. Waterfalling those beautiful brown eyes. He was the ground under this war and I knew no matter how much we moved, he would not. A harbor into I sailed. Fresh as ocean breeze. But all I can remember now is the smell of his blood on my hands and the taste upon my lips as I kissed his eyes shut. Of how time is not what we think it is.

I’ve lived a night and a day that seem as years and I’ve lived years that seem as nothing. The weight of a thing is measured not in seconds or minutes or hours. Just put your head under water and tell me of the air that enters your lungs after only a minute, maybe two. He was that breath. He was a light to eyes that had never known light. He was a reason prior not known, and as quickly, never again found.

But nothing is as words posit them to be, something always missing or lacking in the writing. He was everything in my life that was not indifference. Never has a man brought so many smiles and so many tears and for neither would I trade the world for I have lived with him as few live and I have lived without him as even fewer could. He entered my life, briefly and changed it forever. And he never knew.

So I dream of heaven, not for my sake, but his. That in his waiting, he had a place to know of where he took me. And I dream of heaven for how could he not come to know of what he gave me? How could he not be waiting to take me for that walk through the pasture, his hands behind his back, head bowed, listening to my years, the memory of him I kept sacred, of how I loved and never forgot that in this life there is but one path that crosses another and to meet at that crossroads, even for just the night and day we had, is enough.

791. and out the door

Continuation of Trev's last journal entry:

When she leaves and the smell of her is still upon the air, still in the room of kitchen warm, what flows into my vacuum is as a dam opened. And waters rise. To know of flooding, of how it comes and cannot be stopped, to know of nature in this way is to know of passion and desire unleashed by her absence. I ask not for this. Seek not this force of want and need just as one seeks not the hunger between meals or the thirst between drink. She has become necessary. Vital. I bloom in the sunshine of her smile. And although wilt is too strong a word, I am not the same when she is gone.

So she leaves, as she must. And the hours slow, the cottage silent but for ticking clocks. In this way I know of two times. The time of her and the time not of her. They are not the same and this is where I know math will not explain the universe, cannot manage the ticking of a heart or comprehend the seeking of a soul for union. Too, I know the essence of oneness by its breaking, for that is how it feels when she leaves, a breaking of wholeness into pieces and the feeling is of incompleteness and where before with two legs I could run, now with one, nothing is the same, every step a hop, a struggle and where before there was grace and elegance and dance, now there is only longing and sitting and waiting.

790. through the door

Trev's journal . . .


She walks through the door and what happens next is hard to explain. It starts with a look, of eyes that see only the moment, that see from someplace known not of sight or touch or any sense. The eyes look as if the soul is looking, as one looks for what was lost and is now found; and what is seen is raw, naked, without artifice, without facade or agenda, pure as hammered sweat upon the rail. The seeing is felt as one feels water when swimming or diving, as from the bottom looking up and all around beams of light refract minnows among beige and blue. The looking is of life alive, of a train coming to station in the night, inevitable, of a wait ended, ending, of a journey about to begin, of time and watches jettisoned or stopped or broken or just not applicable. Everything fades and vision is as sunlight, which is to say everywhere and nowhere all at once. Most of all, past and future exit. The looking is pure present. And what flows forth, time and time again, day after day, only grows, deepens--and this belies explanation, as looking seems afresh, new, like every day was the first day of school, every kiss the first date, every hug as a hug a thousand days out.

The above was crossed out. No date given as to revision.

She walks through the door and what happens next is hard to explain. It starts with a look, of eyes that see only the moment, that see from someplace known not of light and shadow or form and shape. They look as if the soul is looking and what is sought is not something other nor something of human hand or mind. She is the math we are yet to know.

Upon the distance closed, within musket range one might say, the things of this world slip from bound and moor and past and future fade with all earthly delusions. Gravity, too, treads not on this sacred ground, this place of harp and wing, of skies beyond the pale blue of terrestrial life.

There is breathing, to and from, warm, heated between lips tender in desire not of body or mind but in union of what once was, before sight, before thought. And light blurs as with speed, as through a portal of life in reverse, of childhood, of birth, womb, and then, weightlessness. There is nothing heavy of this place. And there is nothing separate. The moment is eternal. The feeling is of home, of a place known just beyond our consciousness.

1944 (of little feet and little hands)

Virgil was neither the first nor the last. But what I have known of others has only furthered my belief in divinity; and, if I am honest, and right now I am too old to be otherwise, of imperfection in the divine. With Virgil, I had eyes I never had before nor since. Others have told me I am crazy, some think insane. But they know not what I know, they have no template to hold what I have said and their eyes remain hollow and blank to my story.

To speak of a visit to heaven and to know that what is said is neither heard nor comprehended carries its own sense of loneliness. To know that what you know will forever only be yours, can only ever be yours is a form of torture. So when I walk the storefronts a little slower than I could and I visit the museum a little more than I should and every Tuesday I drink my coffee with two cups, well, I’ve learned to stop trying to explain.

It has been more than forty years now. My memory is not what it was, or perhaps I should say, my memory of recent events, of the last decade or so, seems fuzzy and often I have to remind myself of what I did last week or even of yesterday. The memory of that winter, of the snow and the mud, of the men and their wool, where everything was green and brown, red and white, however, remains as sharp as a dream upon waking. We had but a couple days. And yet, how can I not say he has lived within me these forty some odd years, has shaped my life and all that I know by those few hours he held me, looked upon me and whispered just a handful of words. And I think, how is this possible?

When I go into town, every Tuesday, my heart aches of past and present not by memory of what was as much as the echoing hollowness within me brought by little feet and little hands at play with smiles and laughter. I have no little feet in my life. Neither did he. And I think, how could that be? How could a loving God not grant to us what surely he must wish upon all creation, of life born in the light of love. Yet I sit and I know, he did not. My knees no longer ache from kneeling as a heart no longer bleeds from having bled out. A part of me died with Virgil that cold December day in France. The rest of me, well, it has died a slower death, one without end, one summoned to the block with little feet and little hands, every Tuesday, as I sit with my cup and his.

many ways

There are many ways to love. Showing sincere interest in another is one. To pour yourself into their cup and fill it with listen, care, concern. To look as if in all the world there is nothing else to see. Seems so simple, doesn’t cost a dime, yet one would think that to give of this is to give of gold such the hoarding. Or perhaps there is confusion in the way we confuse the beauty of a sunset with just another sunset, always to come as if we were immortal and our god-given right was to the eternal movement of the universe. And like a young child, each day, to, for or from our neglect or acknowledgement, that beauty is there--whether we are or not.

I think I can . . .

Can I know that I know nothing; and be comfortable with that? Can I enjoy the mystery of existence as children do the sun? Can I place my opinions and thoughts into a jar like butterflies and be content to smell of honeysuckle without reason and why? Can I leave my shoes at home and again walk as once I did among green grass and clover? Can I see a cloud and actually see it as it is within my imagination unfettered of the letters arriving of want and account? Can I again return to a joy once lost and acknowledge that I know that taste as one knows the aroma of home? I think I can.

789. near and far

Sigh. Miss you too. Want and need you. I am not the same without your arms around me and your lips upon mine as starlight on the ocean glittered. I need of your smell, of hair and shampoo, of neck and nape, soft of the day, of you within me by breath. I need the fit of you against me as if in all the world there is no other to my half, no salvation but through you. You live in me, near and far. But I need you near, as a diver diving needs air, again, soon. Let me know when we can talk. When I can hear of your day and know you are okay. 

788. not as now

In the woods lived a lady, known, it seemed, to Papa and I alone. We didn’t see her much in the summer when berries were plentiful, but in the winter, the path between her hut and Valla remained warm of our feet, the stones rubbed of snow, polished by our labors, through the wood, up the hill.

She lived alone. The food we brought, her only sustenance against the low sun and short days. She was about the same age as Papa and he had said they had known each other many years ago, for from the look in her eyes, she knew of no one any longer. Papa spoke of another time when what was tangled flowed over her shoulders like wine, and what was now yellowed in neglect, were as white as stars. She was then, he said, not as now.

When we walked that walk between the snow laden firs, and our hands strained with pot and pan, our backs with sacks of rice and grain, nut and berry, we did not speak. The sound of our labor, of breath neighing in the cold, of feet searching for traction, of backs silently aching of weight borne, this and this alone is the memory. Our prayer he said, although I suspected more in the way of penitence, for what was carried seemed more than necessary, more than vine and victual.

He said she had suffered. Her pain immeasurable. His advice sought. And given. Let go he had told her. Release judgment. Unattach from that which does not stop. Sit with the energy. Do not dam it or even try and direct it, but just sit, be.

So she did. Severed every relationship she had. Let everything she ever had go and walked into the woods. He spoke of it once and never more. But for as long as I can remember, every winter, we spoke with our feet. It was the only time I never saw him smile.