my wild rose

My wild rose died. The exact moment of death was never noted, nor were any circumstances sought out. I made no note of it to anyone. Not “Home & Garden”, not the local paper, not even my immediate family.
It was a Tuesday, Trash Day, when the corner of one's eye hyper-ly seeks out distractions from the loathsome burden of 'hit the mark or miss out entirely until next Tuesday'. The Mafia does not dish out second chances. I always thought it incongruous that the Mafia holds a stake in Waste Management. Then again, what better daily legality to hide evidence than in a landfill, which explains why the natural urge: to scavenge there, is not allowed.
Now, you know why the events of Friday knocked me off my feet. It began over organic, free trade, instant coffee. I was dishing some honey out of my “Save the Bee Foundation” honey jar, when there was a knock at my door. I dropped the spoon into the honey. The spoon and I both gasped, as the honey made the sucking sound of a feeding butterfly, as golden as honey itself. Rising above the situation I went to the door. My daughter from New York stood like an Italian Water Fountain beyond the screen door.
Stunned slapped me soundly upside my frontal lobe. I opened the door with all the speed of anticipating heartache. She lunged forward, and threw her arms around my neck. She snuggled her moist eyes just above my left ear and whispered in the rhythm of her sobbing heart. “Don't worry Dad. We'll get through this”.
The trials of being her father flashed before my eyes. The utter joy, the heart stopping regrets, the singing DNA of hope eternal, all stopped in their tracks, and popped the question, “Now what?”
Hugs are much older than language, and far more essential. But she pulls away from me, and looks me in the eye, so I can see the cards she's laying on the table.
“I heard your wild rose died”.
“WHAT!” Every infinite space within my body shouted as the subatomic particles of essence came to a screeching halt, “WHAT?”
She looked away from me. She turned her head to the corner of the garage where I had planted the wild rose shortly after she had moved to New York and became as distant as ambition's siren.
From the back of her head I could tell that her eyes ,as blue as the gratitude of a summer's sky, took in the proof that my wild rose had died. Her body went as limp as a puppet whose strings had been cut.
I grabbed her as quickly as if I was twenty again, and she, again, was that two month old baby falling from the kitchen counter top straight to the tile floor. “But How?” My body, my spirit, my logic, all: denied what was happening. “But how?”
In my arms I felt her become whole again, strong again, my hero again. At that instant, I learned that touch between two people creates a new Life, not any sensation of mine or the other's, but the experience of a better life form, perhaps the highest life form we'll ever know in this world.
She felt it too. I could tell by the way she turned back to me and, yes, even as she stepped away from our embrace; I could tell.
These were worldly matters now.
“Dad, you know, I'm not a movie buff. Especially not films from the old school. But ever since this past Tuesday, Burt Lancaster has been popping up in my meditations on creativity and form. I had no idea who he was until he showed up in “Field of Dreams”. I don't know how many films he made, or how many interviews he gave, but I'd say he's appeared to me for each occasion. He's appeared to me from every stage in his career. Every time, he said the same thing to me, 'Your father's wild rose died, and he needs your help'. He kept me up all night on Wednesday. I had to get a flight”.
My head and lower jaw drop as if the strings of preparation had been cut by my aspirations for healing her.
She rubs the arms at my side as if I'm a magic lamp. “I came for the Service, Dad”.
“What service? There's no service”.
“There will be”, and she sashays past me, through the doorway of my large empty house and lights at my small kitchen table like the reflection of candlelight.
I put on the odd shaped kettle, hammered out by child labor as distant and as formidable as the Great Wall of China. I add some Fair Trade, Pure Spring Water collected in Hemp Canvass containers, shipped via 'free range,organically fed and documentedly so, Pure Ass over the Swiss Alps, to a French seaport, where it's loaded onto kayaks made from all natural products and paddled across the Atlantic by an Intuits who are paid, not in Francs or Dollars, but in Respect for their Tradition, finally arriving at the East Coast Ports of America. It's then put onto a travois and hauled by a Native American Indian who follows the various Trails of Tears to the 'Made in China- bought at Wal-Mart' water cooler on the West Side of Santa Cruz, California, on a solar stove made from recycled gutters.

Perhaps if I had been allowed to focus on my daughter, the next few hours would have been accessible to memory, or sense. But the phone rang as if it were going for some mechanical endurance record. It wore me down, unprecedentedly to two naps. I dreampt that the wooden screen door strummed as if it were decoding the DNA of God.
I remember that someone woke me shortly before the Service. 4 P.M. I recall smiling at the reciprocal of The Witching Hour- 4A.M.- the moment when the human body reaches maximum vulnerability. My guess is, that it was that shock of ironic laughter that brought my consciousness to bare.

There's hardly anyone here. No Priest. No pall bearers. No media. Not one body of voice for compassion, or support. No grave diggers. Just me, and my daughter.
Then, there was a feint flash of stage lightening. Then, seven seconds of rain, fell as lightly as if it had traveled a thousand light years, just so it wouldn't be noticed.
After a moment of silence, a Ragweed, cleared its photosynthetic throat, which is not anything like subduing a cough. The Ragweed clears its throat by massaging the air beneath its leaves, which then turns away from itself and enters beneath your skin, forming words. “I am the ninth generation who has lived beside this wild rose. I swear by all the genetic code in my being, which is tied together throughout the perception of Time's Past and Future, that this wild rose has been 'a boon and a blessing' to us. When there was drought, she gathered the dew. When there was searing heat, she gave us shade. When we stood alone without the possibility of a mate- she drew in the butterflies and the bees. Until the last of my kind are sieged out of this place, my children's umpteenth grandchildren shall know of her Good Works as surely as own their roots and leaves”.
The impossible can not be shared. Yet, only the impossible is shared between a man and his daughter. Nine Humming Birds appeared, and hovered before my dead wild rose. I'd never seen a family of Humming Birds, but -There -they -were. Their wings beat Stillness into a divine melody, “Among the man-made homogenized color schemes and despite their destruction of the scent of life, which is broader than their tiny little light spectrum, this Wild Rose was always been our Blinding Desire of Hope, and The Sweet Fragrance of Life”.
Then, these nine Humming Birds, turned in flight, as only they can move, faced my daughter and I, curtsied, and scattered too quickly for traces.

Silence.

Silence as taut as string between two empty cups longing for the touch of connection. Such cups can not be held, or guided, or conceived. They just clamp about
your heart longing to touch, your heart of hearts.
My wild rose died...
To arise from the dead, in me, three days, and three thousand miles later.

do you hear voices?

- I have sat before desks and been asked, “Do you hear voices?” I once replied, “No, but once while I was camping, about to fall asleep listening to the crickets sing the night into day, I realized the crickets were repeating a radio broadcast of Game Two of the 1946 World Series; Musial hit one out”.
I didn't realize it was a question to be taken seriously until one day, I did meet a young man who had heard voices, no cricket fantasies for him. He took a butcher knife and did as the voices instructed; attacked his wife. She escaped, unharmed.
Recently, the question has been set before me again.
“Voices” however, goes without definition. Does it mean that I hear external voices without a physical being in the external world? Or does it mean that I hear external voices within my own head? Or does it mean that my own internal voice sometimes takes the guise of The Muse? Or does it mean the damaging energy of screams, anger, hatred, and wailing (in my own internal voice) that jolt into my calm mind are voices? If the latter be the case, then are we not all living in the Age of Voices?
I've been asking myself, “When did I first hear voices in my head? Maybe they occur before memory, like impulses of hunger. Maybe they are merely the tangibility of thoughts. Like the time, before the rule of schooling, I passed some bright yellow flowers and said to myself, “When I head back home I'm going to pick some of those for my mother.” I picked all the most beautiful yellow flowers that my little hands could hold. When I gave them to her, I received screams of anger & hatred, and was duly whipped with a 'rod' of Biblical proportions, a 'rod' that wasn't Biblical in nature whatsoever. My good intentions had no voice, hiding instead behind a wall of tears, and wails -of pain, not only against my bleeding skin, but in my brain: the physical twisting struggle against an iron grip, and electric shocks jolting against my skull for escape. It wasn't until Seventh grade biology that I realized those pretty yellow flowers had been potato blossoms, and just as impossible to preserve in a vase as they were to produce potatoes.

Often when Night settles in, and man-made lights disrupt the darkness, and my eyes beg for rest, I turn off the lights, crawl beneath the blankets of alienation and seek- the deep breath of my calm mind. At that moment, don't well all become young again, defenseless children, who had spent the length of seemingly eternal days (after all it was day when we awoke, and still day when sent to bed) absorbing the wonder and awe of being alive. It was during those days, also known as the days of growth that accidents and misunderstandings occur as brilliantly as good intentions. It's then that my mind rages against the alienation of our Age: physically twisting, jolting like lightening against baby soft membranes. And I hear my internal voice berating my being.

When these voices rule my nights, my mornings are ruled by helplessness. A host of lies become the voices in my head. I'm worthless. Hope, like wealth is something other people are entitled to. And not a natural power on earth can encourage me: not the ocean, the majestic Redwoods, the magic of Spring, the glory of a thunderstorm. I remain jobless. Broke. Hungry, Dirty, A Beggar among friends.
We are living in the Age of Voices, where the masses in America are victims of Larger Than Life greed: stealing from the helpless, forcing homelessness, poverty, and wars we oppose. Some say, the victims are creating a new Age of The Muse. That a great voice from the Wilderness of Being is being prepared for us. An empowering voice: that out of our defenselessness shall come Command and Power, that from war shall come the Golden Age of Brotherhood and Harmony.
I envy the voices they hear at night.
These days, my Muse merely rants. The voices in my head wail for self-respect. My heart drowns in self-pity. And my attempts at well intended humor come across as despair. I struggle to twist away from such Muses. I turn to more ancient means to cast out the voices of the Night. I leave the fires burning (I sleep with the light on, as if there was someone else actively living in my house), and I listen to the Storyteller's repetitive lines (I leave TV re-runs on, or old movies I've seen a hundred times).
Per haps, I am too immature to hear the words of my Muse. My eyes still see ,with a child size view of the world; when I lay my gift of yellow flowers upon the altar, I'm sent reeling, “My Joy, My Joy, why hast thou forsaken me?”

new blessings

I entered the kitchen in the middle of the story. There were no page numbers, so I began picking up on it, like you do when you watch American cinema after the film has already begun.
Daniel B. sees me, and (as is his charitable way) he alters the storyline in such a way as to include me.
Seems last night he was at a party. He was talking to a lovely healer (who lives and works here locally). A previous student, or apprentice, or what have you-- any frame of reference in this physical plane ('in' and not 'on' a physical plane, that would imply that most human beings are actually living three dimensionally, “Au contraire, mon ami!”.) Whatever, she was a born ally along this healer's hero quest. --- Secretly, deep inside the truth of all our truths, we are all on a mythical journey- the hero's quest. Every life, every individual living in each and every house across America, in every abode of every kind of mankind- is a hero somewhere along that journey. For most, we are on the long, wicked stretch of road of denial of power not suitable for any life long company- that comes and goes all in due course.
So, this ally comes rushing up to the lovely healer (a bit tipsy, by the way, at this particular celebration) and says to Daniel B, “I'm so glad to find you both here, right here! Because the server is my boyfriend, and I want you both to meet him.”
Introductions are passed around, the kind where you closely examine the person, like you do when your palm is up, flat out and you are shaking your loose coins around, hunting, seeking out one in particular.
The healer turns to Daniel B. and says, “Oh, Daniel has got a great Love Blessing for the two of you”. And Daniel's thinking, “Oh come on. You know good and well that I do not, madam.”
At this point in the story, I'm thinking, “Gee, neither do I. I wonder what I'd say to get out of a jam like that?”
Now, Daniel has this amazing ability to see almost every calamity as part of a bigger picture, a happy, great biggly happy picture. So he realizes, “Wow, this woman always has the most outrageous confidence in me.”
Now, I can imagine, a great healer turning to me (with all the powers of ancient, mythical wisdom) and saying to me, Greg M. toss a little Love Blessing on these children that will outlast any mortals company, or their individual hero's quest- and she, knowing that I've got nothing, and her saying it as confidently as if I were Merlin the Magician, or Jesus, Buddha, God, or even Rasputin – they've got warehouses of Love Blessings around, because their person: body, knowledge, and spirit is so overstocked.
I'd panic. Imitate a rock, and start to grow moss until someone said something. (I have quite a large moss collection).
Then again, she knows Daniel B walks ahead on the journey; he's past denial and is into looking for valuable 'ally' ore in everyone. An inspiration comes to him from out of the spirit world-- A Native American Prayer for Beauty. He's a storyteller from the days of storytellers- as old as the beginning of things-- call & response. In his mind he re-arranges the ingredients of the Beauty Prayer into a love blessing and mixes it with his way of including you into the story.
This part of the story requires the reader to act. Stand back to back--
(with someone. They don't have to be your lover, anyone in your life is an ally
along your hero's quest ) so close that you can feel the other person's body.
Take a deep breath, feeling how the body behind you feels.

Now repeat Daniel B's Prayer, “There is only love behind me.”
Step forward, turn around and face each other; look into each other's eyes and say, “There is only love in front of me.” Now, raise your arms from your sides as high as you can, feel the breeze pass by your arms and fingers. Say, “There is only love around me.” Lower your arms to your side. Now, play 'patty-cake' and say, “There is only love between us.”


Not a bad Love Blessing from an off-the-cuff charlatan.

Back in the kitchen, I responded with something moss-tacular like, “Wow! That's amazing!” Back in the kitchen, we spoke like people do; casting inquiries like bread crumbs, hoping that a new insight or some humor might prolong the magic.
“What would you have done?” In my mind, I know, I would have frozen as sure as if someone had pointed a gun at me and shouted. “Freeze!”. But I'm not imitating a stone. “ I guess I would have put on my best Bill Murray deadpan face and said, “ Face each other and look into each other's eyes, extend your hand out- like movie ushers do, as if you were about to offer up two “Groundhog” movie tickets, and say, “Here's two front row tickets to Wrestle-Mania.”.
Back in the kitchen, I had to explain that joke, the references, the subplot.... on and on....
Daniel B.'s laughing more about how distant my sense of humor lies than the joke itself. Well, let me tell you: in the baseball field of life, my sense of humor is the infield playing 'in' for a play at the plate. My compliments play a little deeper.
Like I hope I said, I use humor when I'm in a jam.
So this story will have to do.

Oh Brother

My Dad worked in a horse barn where wild cats thrive and dart away like youthful dreams. A little long haired Calico caught his heart as the poor thing was stomped upon day after week by horses as unaware of it as dreams of dreamers.
I was too young to question how he caught a wild cat in that barn and brought it home without a cat box in our ‘53 Chevy that had no floor board over the transmission. I was too young then, and I’m nearly too old, to recall my childhood memories of how gently he treated animals. Back in the late fifties he broke horse to ride, without any bronco billy gruff episodes. He whispered to ponies before the language was notated in pulp fiction or films with Robert Redford was planed out for him before he was born. While every farmer who grew sheep snipped off a lamb’s tail with sheers, dad taught me how to do it with a rubber band. Now, I know, it must have taken him months to tame that cat, and how many more months before he knew that cat was tame enough to bring home to his youngest son.
Whatever cost my Dad paid, he did as secretly as stitches healed the kicks to his head from the horses that he fed and cleaned every day.
Jeff, my little brother, must have been around two the summer Dad brought “Puffy” home. Jeff wore nothing but cloth diapers and a shock of hair as white as new teeth.
We had had cats before. Each had defined ‘bolted’ before this wild child, Jeff. The gentle sound of Jeff’s baby soft bare feet on linoleum would jolt them awake from slumber as if the Sun itself had shouted, “Bolt! Bolt for the sake of your nine lives! Run!”
This cat : the ‘Home of lazy toes’, eyes as green and calm as the true color of gold, would not ruffle. Jeff would swoop Puffy up and toss him over his shoulder or lug the poor thing upside down- back to bare belly.
Everyone within sight would suck in their last breath and rush to Jeff as if he were about to leap down an open well. Thoughts of what we should have done came trailing later: “I’ll grab the water bucket to separate them”, “I’ll get the iodine”, “I’ll run to the neighbors and call an ambulance”.
`But...’
Puffy never struggled. Never put up a fight. And when Jeff slammed her down to floor, or yard, and fell upon hell’s fury, like a lightening bolt, Puffy merely mewed and shook her tail. Jeff would squeeze and punch that kitten like a hand-me-down pillow.
My Dad, coming home from the horse barns, bedraggled himself, took pity upon the kitten and noted, My God, the poor thing was better off being stomped by the horses. One night, he gathered up the little spot of hairy color and placed it in the worn out Chevy and returned it to place of its birth.
Next morning, Jeff awoke calling out for Puffy. He looked everywhere. He called until his breath betrayed him. He could not eat for calling and searching. Not even mom could keep him down for his nap. When Dad come home, he worn out from toil- there was no peace. His ‘look alike’ two year old wobbled on feeble legs, his eyes bloodshot eyes, and his voice hoarsely cried, “Puffy, Puffy”. Mom was beseeching heaven, “God, I’m going to kill him.” Dad rose up from the dinner table forsaking a full plate of garden grown vegetables. He stomped out, leaving the door open, fired up the ‘53 Chevy and was gone.
We were all sitting outside the door watching Jeff search every bush, every wild flower for Puffy when Dad came back. The car door opened and Puffy ran out like a shot of fur. Jeff called again. The cat stopped in its tracks. Jeff dove upon it. Mom picked the both of the up and we all went back in to the table. Jeff and Puffy, in the high chair, one hand on a fork and the other entwined in calico.