I took the steep
ribbed rocky road
behind the cemetery.
Earth and stones
terre rouge
sere and sharp
tricky underfoot,
that turn
the color
of dried blood
in rain,
unctuous and sticky
and stain the soles
tenaciously.

The road debouches
on the main road,
far below the junction
to the village
skipping all the
dull switchbacks,
near the house
meublés, always rented,
with one auto in the carport
perpetually in a canvas shroud.

“Saint Jaumes”
a yellow arrow points
the way, as they do
with the names of homesteads
off the beaten track.
Another pilgrim
I am.

Clinging to the ragged
shoulder painted
with a dashèd line
the sparse grass covering
the quarter meter
that keeps tires
from the hidden ditch
for run off.
Not much room
to dash
on foot from
the rushing
always parting guests
speeding not so gentle
zephyrs
faces masked by smokey
glass.

Approaching trucks
excuse to bound
across the dipping
shouldered gap.

I think of lying
broken in a ditch
dying on the road
in deep deep deepest France.
Daedalus splashing
soundless, tiny,
microscopic,
in a corner of the canvas.

Past the carrefour
forked nexus for the twisting
narrow road to Cotignac.
Past the field
lately filled
with desiccated sunflowers
permanently bowed
toward a sun now gone.
A photographic image
caught in vegetal husks.
Zen.
Priceless.
Market gone.

The field is full
of poppies and weeds.
Sunflowers.
The more precise
tournesols,
sun-turners,
not viable this sun-baked year.

In Valesole
and Esparron
the growers have turned
their lavender fields,
the endless plateaux,
to sowing wheat.

Past the miracle field
of poppies.
Poppy red and tinged
with wild cornflower-blue
companions,
a million snapshots
by roadside travelers,
stopped in their
otherwise heedless tracks,
speeding tires
cooling on the gravel
inches from the live highway
where this shock of color
makes everyone romantic.
And the farmer,
humanist,
French,
temporized
while couples hip-deep
in a sea of color
caught each other
caught themselves.

And passing that,
rere-regardant,
the village sits
athwart the hill
rightward glancing,
a rare crystalline day
each stone projects a shadow
microscopic,
the hedges beneath a frame
for my camera eye.
Ulysses I
again,
chercher Pénélope.

Broken circle
on a sign,
arrows chase themselves,
equilaterally bound,
cedez accès,
the rond-point
that swoops cars village-ward
or toward the world,
the humble hedge-rowed
route to the center
of commercial Fox,
and so I pass
Nathalie Coiffure
her windows blocked
with Masonite
and an old beauty
poster, colors
gone all fugitive
in years of blazing sun.

Ahead the old wine co-op,
La Poste
(we share a postal code
with seven other
villages and cling to our
post office,
sinecure for the cousin
of the daughter
of the sister of
some past mayor),
and hubbub:
Chez Jean and
his sister-in-law’s
bodega,
pardonnez-moi,
“alimentation”
last resort
on weekends for forgotten
butter, eggs, or goat cheese
or possibly a passable wine
or a tin of Titus sardines.

I have a beer,
an ice-cold Fischer,
in a bottle with
a fancy spring-load
ceramic stopper,
that and a box of
Davidoff cigarillos,
“O, et un bic…”
genericized butane
slab,
and the tab comes
to 17 euros, 50,
and Jean, numbers-challenged,
tells me 27, 50…
and I quietly correct him,
slurring words—
the only way the locals
understand my French.

I sit and drink my brew
in peace, the others
never speaking
above a murmur
in the cool shade of the
arbor above his terrasse.

I pass the bucket
for butts, a must
here in fiery timberland,
and bid my au revoir
to Jean and his equipe.
Retrace my steps on
the road to the old village
and hang a left
at the old lavoire,
where long dead village
women hauled their
loads of linen and farmers’
overalls for washing out
the red clay and sticker burrs.

Soldier-stiff
a row of cypress
in irregular formation
along the road,
targeted 40,
speed limit signs
for no cars
the only traffic
ados on their motos
and the clapped out
cars of their older brothers
on a spree,
always laughing as they
pass the wild-haired
American.

The hill keeps itself
to my right,
sun-baked
pensive
gravel crunch
only at the apex
of the one-laner.
A field of clods of earth
and black birds
on one side
and endless wheat
with orphan poppies
and bi-color thistle
on the other,
and a ditch
I will span
with my skinny ass
to retrieve an impossible
purple bloom
for my imagined
princess, yet to arrive,
when she arrives,
if she arrives,
as we trudge together
some time in the
near future
in the dazzling white
and the wheat
and the clods of earth.

And then just below
that point, the road
turns past old man
Jouve’s place,
master craftsman in
wood, who made
me a window and door,
the same silly signs
in the window of his
atelier:
“Vitrage et
moustiquaires”
silly in its way
as if Spinoza’s
window carried a sign
that said, “glass ground
here,” or Kafka,
“pest control.”

And past the house,
and his rows of
vegetables I see
him watering
in the lowering sun,
past the shrubs
and low trees, as the
road turns again,
and his dog,
even older,
getting a late start,
begins to bark,
and I say out loud,
“Ah too late chien,
too late; I’m gone.”

I have turned my back on the hill
and the village
and ahead the sudden vignobles,
a field someone stuck here
amid the wheat,
this one notable for its
old stone cabanon,
a sheaf of hay and
a bit of articulated rusty steel,
thrusting out, waiting for
a painter,
all baking, baking
in the late sun
like a wood-fired brick oven
optimal for bread loaves
with a chewy crumb and crust
sharp enough to cut
and the high stinging wood
smoke tang on its blackened
corn-mealed underside.

And still I walk, and the
road turns again, through the compass
and pace my pace to hit
the shadows for respite
before the last turn back
to dead reckon
90 north and trudge back up the
back side of the hill,
but before that must
pass the schizoid holding
of some suburbanite manqué
to one side, shaved close as with
a scythe or a Snapper sit-down
tractor mower, a bit of lawn
ridiculously green beside a field of
wheat, with its wavy rows
of young shoots, already tan
in the relentless summer.

Then the final turn
as the road rises
among a thicket of yellow arrows,
ancient homesteads
retrieved, east, northeast
and rising rising
with small clouds of
butterflies fluttering silently
beside the trail
and the sign
announcing the road ahead
some 500 meters is
non-carrossable,
even as I hear another clapped
out truck crunch its way toward me
around an epingle amid the hairy
weeds and wildflowers, down the road
from the cemetery high above.

And the switchbacks and
epingles begin in earnest
and half-way my shirt is
wet and I breathe in gusts
and I increase the pace.

Bob said, in winter mind you,
“Walk this every day
and you’ll live forever,”
and I’ve been doing it
every other day,
because I figure I have a headstart
and so far no one is gaining.

The old remparts appear
spotted, irregular, age-spot
shapes
of lichen the color
of something toxic,
a tinge that could convince
you there is something
maybe not so right
with squashes and fruit that color.

Old Europe, I think;
these walls maybe seven hundred,
maybe nine,
so many years, still standing,
and the brick condos of Cambridge
will be gone
I’m sure a hundred years after I’m dead,
the mortar already decayed.
They call this wall (as
the houses built this way)
dry-stone.
No mortar.
Withstanding men
and boulders erupting
from the earth
stony Leviathans.
And trees, roots athwart them.

And the road turns
and turns,
and I know I am near the top
in the place where the walls are
breached,
spilling their stony guts,
rubble of terre rouge
(and somewhere far below
on the plain, on the road to
Aups, there are furrowed
rows of such rubble, no
more than pebbles, tens of meters
long, where walls had been to divide
the fields, and where the stones had
been retrieved for building,
rural parsimony,
a heritage of earth and rocks,
priceless).

And I reach the road back to the village
from the right side round, opposite
the rocky trail down
where I had started, abreast
the stone carriage house
hard by the cemetery
where sits in the gloom
an old hearse
meant to be drawn
when needed
by horses now long dead.

Breath heaving
shirt soaked
I start the last steep incline
to the house.

by

[a poem, the first I've written in 25 years; I started as a poet, many many years ago, as a much younger man; this may be the last again, for a while… I hope not]

For all of them alive I love, in memory of all I loved, now dead

Why would one do this here?

We live in an age no longer sanctified,
No sense of holiness.

We flew Swiss Airlines
Appropriately enough.
The Swiss, bankers to the world,
With noble hearts they bore us (for the mere price of half a pound of our own sweet skin and meat):
Silver, gold, platinum perhaps (in first class);
No living tissue in them to wear out,
Respond to suspect human needs;
We flew up front, and drank champagne,
The sacrament of business class.

They fed us the well-fed flesh of beef,
Blood red,
Plates and silver clinking under the din of mighty turbines.

And then we slept, dreamless
Far beyond the surly bonds of ice-cold seas
And the dirty ground.

No need belabor the swift journey to the village.
We drove into the place,
This ancient scene of peace
And calm and tranquil solitude
On rented wheels (every ding and dent and crimp
Of lacquered metal noted for the ledger, the last act
As we roared away from that other world of rude affairs
In the city by the sea far below us).

Here in the land where men, still called peasants,
Still whack
And flay and harrow the land.

There is no business here but one.

The eternal preservation men may keep of the
Adamantine cord one sees only here,
A sky-blue thread, tying us to the infinite.
For you can see it in the sky,
That unblemished unending deep transparency,
Sun the same hot ball of self-consumption,
Surrounded as you are
By the everlasting green of growth
That never stops,
Signifies an everlasting life,
A life for life.

For the infinite eternal everlasting business here
Is to feed the living and
Let the ground accept the dead.

I walk the fields
Where generations trod
The fields of wheat
That for centuries
Have fed the lusty appetites of men of war:
The Romans, Goths, and Gauls,
The Templars who, tipping stone on stone,
Built this hill-top village,
This everlasting place
Outlasting them, outlasting all since,
The bond personified, the anchor for
That tie to the infinite,
That much closer to the sky.

I walk the fields.

The fields of wheat and poppy.
The wheat, for life.
The poppies, for that sleep that does not end.

And only some, the ones who leave
This village for the world at large,
Can feel that bond, the tug of that tie
That draws them back.

The ones who shipwrecked,
Yet were saved,
Return to thank who they will,
The Virgin, if they believe,
Or what Gods they may,
Or none, but the place itself,
The peace that reigns here.

And I leave the plain,
Walking the steep pistes
Of the protective hill,
So steep, breath comes short
And hard, for the effort that
Draws me to the top.

And I hear echoes of the breaths
Of one who came here
For the bond was strong
And drew her here
For those last days
Of peace and calm,
And the breaths were hard
And loud, each one a tugging
At that cord.

And harder, sharper still
Through the long night,
Until just at sunrise,
As the blue infused the sky,
They stopped.

And there was peace.

And peace of course
There is still.

And the village sleeps
And wakes.

—2009June12 4:38 PM, Fox-Amphoux

by

In a virtual conversation about pursuing a spiritual life, and its importance, I had the chance to say the following.

I’ve always felt it to be a lamentable condition that a continually growing number of people have lost contact with their own spirit, or, to say it more conventionally, their spiritual side. But the latter expression always makes it sound like your skills riding a bike.

No, I think the general state of the world, and the so-called developed world in particular, is attributable to this uncoupling from matters not immediately apprehensible in the concrete universe of things, from distant galaxies to gadgets at the Apple Store.

My agnostic self never gags at the self-ministering of others to their spiritual needs. For one, it is surely not my business. More broadly, if I remember the few tattered shreds of studying ancient Greek, when I was a stripling, gnosis in Greek merely means knowledge. To say I’m agnostic means that, “I don’t know.” Perhaps atheists have that gag reflex.

I am certainly an apostate, as, like most people in the civilized world, I was raised to be a believer–in the tenets of Judaism in my case–not a bad proposition in its fundamentals; it’s when we Jews attain to rule-setting and determining behavior that I take the exit (as I did when I was 14). So I am not a believer, and I am certainly one to repudiate organized religion, as I believe it has caused more harm than good since long before when “my people” were still desert nomads worshiping snakes.

I don’t attend church (in the broadest sense), but I try to stay in touch at all times in a way (isn’t that what mindfulness is about?) with my inner being, as it is always apposite to my outer being and its relations with the rest of the physical universe.

I always kind of liked certain Taoist concepts, certain Buddhist ones. I don’t bother myself about the afterlife, which I assume is unknowable in this life, and will take care of itself if there is one. What I like is the sense that we are all in this together, not just we humans, but all things, and especially with that particular metaphysically curious notion, or perhaps it’s simply some corrupted Berkeleyan notion) that whatever happens would have happened differently, if at all, if I were not to exist. This seems especially true of more proximate incidents… When I was in the immediate neighborhood so to speak.

On the other hand, that popular expression, and whatever even its broadest interpretation may be, “the family that prays together… etc.” to me doesn’t mean it will stay together, but that there are certain periods when those family members aren’t talking to one another (which may, of course, be a good and salutary, if not a therapeutic, thing: we often get into as much trouble talking as we do not speaking). In short, what you (or anyone, other than me in fact) believe or do is not my business. I may be interested, and if I were to come to know you and care for you, even to fondness, that interest might transcend mere curiosity and involvement, but it’s not for us (and of us) to judge one another.

As I’ve grown older, and accumulated whatever poor notions I can however feebly define as wisdom, and especially given the lessons I learned about living from my dying wife, who was, as I understood at the time only inadequately, and more so since her death, a most amazing human being: heroic, brave, life-embracing, life-affirming, kind, generous, and forgiving, and even more so in the face of an inevitable confrontation prematurely (is the general consensus–she would have been 58 last summer) with her own mortality.

I don’t ever want to cause anyone any harm, and I try to live accordingly. I fail I’m sure, but with this particular bit of mindfulness at work, I am sure it occurs less often.

There has been no damage, I don’t think, to my essential nature and the personality that I cultivated–good or bad, the me I am is the me I got–and so I am the same person I always was, with the same neuroses, and parallax views, with the same disjointed ways of seeing the same things others look at. It’s the variety of points of view that ensue that are part of what make life interesting I think, and make each of us potentially compelling to others, one on one. As I like to say, I like people, and I’ve grown to love many of them (and there are others from whom, sadly, I’ve become estranged, perhaps irretrievably, but that too is life), and I have many many friends, some of whom take the trouble to point out to me (I guess because they think at that moment I need such bolstering; indeed we all do, probably more often than we admit to ourselves) that all of them adore me. I’ll take that on faith.

But, as I also like to say, it’s mankind I can’t stand. The history of civilization at least (which is a redundancy I suppose/one of the facets of civilization, if you think about it, is its habit, once it identifies itself as such, to record and sustain its own story) is a mixed one, though far too replete with tragedy, sadness, and cruelty. And of course, the state of diminished spirituality. A kind of Second Law of Thermodynamics as applied to the soul.

And with no discernible reason for any of it. Human nature is not an explanation, and it is certainly not an excuse, and never an exculpation.

by

• Whatever the motive of the person who feels compelled to talk about your behavior, if you feel it requires a response: comment or explanation, don’t bother. Whatever you say, you’ll then be told you’re being defensive.
• Many women will see the only gauge of your interest in them in terms of your asking questions of them, about their lives, about how their day went at work, about where they bought the blouse they’re wearing, about the age of their children, whatever… It doesn’t matter what your personal strategy for learning about another person. It doesn’t matter how patient you may know yourself to be about the time the process takes. Ask questions. Force yourself.
• The only people who are truly interested in your friendship are the ones who have the money ready for their share of the check when it arrives. If they do nothing, even as you pick up the check, they have other motives. With some it involves you. With others it has nothing to do with you, and never will.
• Believe nothing you are told by someone other than your spouse what the true feelings of your spouse are. If your spouse is dead, believe nothing you are told by anyone concerning your spouse and you. It doesn’t matter if the other person believes every word they are telling you is true. They will swear to it in court. They’re not telling the truth. It’s best to concentrate on controlling your feelings and keeping them to yourself.
• Don’t wait for the phone to ring. It won’t. If you want to talk to someone, anyone, you call them. If you have to leave a message, leave it. And call again later until you reach them.
• To quote Stephen Sondheim, “…the kind of woman willing to wait’s/not the kind you want to find waiting.” It’s one of those cruel truths you have to accept about your own nature.
• The grief will never end. Concentrate on learning to accept it, and finding a place for it. It’s one of those cruel truths about life.
• No one is a replacement for anyone else, and cannot be. Stop looking for the same woman. Only one of her will ever exist.
• If you enjoy your own company, you’re ahead of the game. If you’re not there yet, start playing your favorite music. Have something playing all the time.
• Friendship is a two way street. No doubt about it. However, assume you are the only driver. Accept it. Get the keys out of your pocket and drive.
• As a man, you can be friends with a woman, with nothing else happening, ever. Three women in ten believe this too. One in ten accepts it.
• Tell people how you feel. Don’t wait for them to ask.
• The list of things you will never get unless you ask is endless. Ask.
• Never ever make a promise you know you can’t or won’t keep.
• If another person does you an injury, even if you know it was unconscious or an accident, tell them.
• If you discover you have done someone an injury, apologize, and mean it. Don’t worry about the words. Use the best ones you can think of. It’s the speaking, not the eloquence, that counts. If you can’t or don’t mean it, don’t bother. And accept that your victim is not a friend of yours.
• Some people simply cannot accept that you are perfectly entitled to have nothing to do with your blood relatives. And that you don’t have to explain yourself. So don’t try. In their eyes, you’ll only look worse.
• You can love someone your entire life. Even if you never see that person again, up to the moment you die.
• Everybody you know is truly busy, or so they believe. Don’t ever take it personally.
• Don’t tell anyone the truth as you see it about their children or grandchildren. Even if it’s spot on. Even if they know it. They don’t want to hear it. Unless it's praise.
• If someone gets your goat, that’s what they were trying to do. Don’t take it personally. Some people have nothing better to do. As for the rest, it’s just part of their personalities.
• Never cook to satisfy anyone but yourself with the results. If other people enjoy it too, consider it a bonus.
• As a man, if you think a woman’s age is critical, you probably don’t feel very good about how old you are. Grow up.
• A woman can be 25 and beautiful. A woman can be 65 and beautiful. The only difference, which is irrelevant, is elasticity.
• Living successfully and happily with a another person is a co-production. Always be prepared to negotiate with an open mind.
• If someone does something that pleases you there are two things you must do as basics. Smile, and thank them.
• Look people in the eye.
• Smile at people.

by

Another in what may be an ongoing series. Confessional enough?

I recently had occasion yet again to inform a reader of these essays that this blog is not to be mistaken for a diary, a confessional, or as an embodiment of factual accuracy. It fell, I am afraid, on heedless ears, as often happens in these situations. That’s a topic, the growing Age of the Égoïste, for another time.

There’s an old saw about being careful what you say to a writer because he will use it. The smart writer, of course, dresses up the facts, alters, twists, omits, amends, and invariably in the name of truth. It’s a higher truth, the allegiance to which most writers pay only lip service, if they say anything expressly about it at all. I take it seriously, hence this protestation.

If I were being not only cautious—not mentioning names or changing them, or only first names, and always, but always, omitting all but the barest essential salient facts for context; not to mention being mindful that someday, with a rare likelihood, I might have to look an attorney in the eye and tell him, “I did everything I could to make sure the subject was not identifiable… what were your fees again?”—but scrupulously conscientious, I would offer a caveat prominently, if not in every post, that would be of the ilk of Mark Twain’s famous foreword to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

Like Twain, I do not seek to bury, or reveal, any moral in these stories and essays. And any reader, whether a regular or a newcomer, knows, and knows quickly, that the deliberate style I embrace here is designed to prevent detection of a “plot.”

However, the twists and turns of the reality of my life leave me increasingly feeling that perhaps I should be more confessional, at least from time to time. And simpler in the expression (confession sort of demands it: Guilty your honor, guilty as charged). And I have made small attempts at this. The accounts of my dinner (purely visual, one cannot be more real in two dimensions than an essentially unadulterated, if artful, photo rendition) and my lunch, in somewhat earlier posts this late fall are two such. The dinner “essay” consisted of a photo with no comment.

There were the inevitable admirers of my brief account of lunch, all monosyllables and simple sentences. My luck. Strunk & White people.

The greater penalty I pay, however, is at the bank of friendship. I cannot pretend that the core of readers of this almost non-existent blog are people who don’t know me. Let’s face it. I write enough words to cover a Federal highway in restoration. I just don’t spread them out. Blog followers are hungry for new bits on a more frequent regimen, so they can read and move on. Most blogs are entertainment: sound bites and provocations, conversation starters at the meta-water bubbler of the ether, inspirer of tweets and comments on the Facebook Wall. My blog entries are thoughtful, for me at least, and meant to engage, if not embrace, the reader, and not just any reader, but the reader who loves writing that is mindfully the work of a writer who is engaged himself in concentrating on style, and with the objective, if there is a conscious one at all, of entering the mind of another individual by inviting him or her into mine.

The subject does not matter. Any writer worth his salt can write on any subject and keep the reader engaged, at the least, and edified and introspective when there is fundamental success. The crowning achievement, for me anyway, is the sense of truth embodied, and the catharsis effected, or the empathy evinced.

The great subjects are love and death. I should add, in no particular order, although as I’ve stated it undoubtedly is the preferred one.

There is not a person of my living acquaintance, for obvious reasons, who does not prefer the thought of having the experience of love, of loving and being loved, before one meets his fate. We do get caught up in other things. Among the bourgeoisie of my social set, the achievers, and the wannabes, and the retired and retiring who now find themselves on the express train to the condition of being bourgeoisie manqués. Some, a very few, have already arrived at this destination, without the benefit of passing through a planned retirement (which nowadays resembles more the process of U.S. armed forces standing down and withdrawing from long tragic ill-conceived military adventures abroad, than the lightning strike of a day, speeches made, catered food and wine sucked down, and murmured encomiums and promised future get-togethers, when what has sometimes been the work of a lifetime suddenly ceases to be a daily and necessary preoccupation—in short a premonition of death).

As I am not disposed to speak personally, though I seem to, of matters that are of far greater moment than the matters I bring up here on this blog in the manner I choose to bring them up, there are any number of subjects that pertain to my private life that I refer to only in the most obtuse way. It is well-nigh impossible, given my particular, and possibly limited, gifts to write about what are admittedly sometimes abstract topics in anything, but concrete terms. That is, I must use concrete language, as much as I can (and regardless of the number of syllables in the word, a spade is still a spade, as well as a trenching tool), to describe concrete actions by concrete individuals acting upon other concrete individuals or objects in what I will call, for lack of better reference, the real and natural world.

Death, as far as I know, and to the limited extent of my research, is the cessation of life (speaking of abstractions), and what there may be concrete about it is something we will not know here in this world. I happen not to believe there is any other world, but what do I know? Love, too, as much as we feel it keenly when we feel it, or are sympathetic or empathetic to it in others feeling it keenly, also is about as concrete as the square root of minus-one. I know what I’m talking about when I speak of love and death. And I of course hope you do, if I’m speaking to you about it. But do we really know what we’re talking about? Where one comes from and why? Or where we go and why when undergoing the other?

It would be nice to wrap each one up and move on. I know a lot of people who would be a great deal happier having these two very large abstractions nailed down for good, among the myriad abstractions we must deal with, and that no doubt account for the ways in which all of us (I’m talking about the number of us on the planet, now approaching seven billion) though recognizably and palpably and in many ways mechanically, biologically and chemically the same, can be so very different, one of us against another, each to each in a chain that is as long as seven billion people would make—head-to-toe, or hand-in-hand, your choice. Indeed, I could make the case, and I will no doubt at another time, because it’s another topic, that increasingly we live in a world with a greater and greater number of people who prefer that we have things wrapped up, have rules, and ceremonies, and protocols, and that we be inflexible about them, that we have certitude. I think it makes them feel less uneasy about the ineluctable facts. Love and death, that is. And we can’t wrap them up, though we keep trying.

The case has been made long since that those efforts to wrap them up, or at least to describe them, or exemplify them, or rail against them, or embrace them, or to wax poetic, are all and the only matters that make up art, whatever form it takes. And I will tell you, quite comfortably, that for my own humble efforts here, on this blog, and elsewhere, in poems, and stories, in photos, and drawings, and whatever else I have put my hand to in the almost 60 years of my 63 that I have had motor control of my hands to put them to such tasks, but especially on this blog, all I am ever talking about is love and death.

I have had experience of the one, am fortunate indeed in being able to say so. As I’m still here, I’m talking about love, not death. And I have watched at close hand, too close for comfort or ease, too close for ready escape, too close for anything but the expectation that one’s only choice is to stay, or cut and run. And I didn’t think about it. I stayed. Love kept me around.

I am not being coy. It’s not easy to speak of the slow, so slow, so agonizingly, sadly, mortifyingly slow death of another you love as deeply as you have ever loved anyone or anything on this tiny planet, third rock from a second-rate star, a sun, yes, but a mediocre one. And for all that, the only one we’ve got, so it’s the best sun I know of. Yet, accepting this concession to an ineluctable truth, it’s still not easy to watch someone you love slowly succumb to the cruel fate of disease, and its master, death.

In as few words as possible, and to speak of things I promised myself once I would not speak of here, in this space, and in this way, my wife died. She died, as I write, nine months and six days ago. When I wake tomorrow morning, some time between 3:30 and 5:30, it will be a full week in addition to those nine months. A complete gestation.

Am I better for it? Worse for it? I don’t know.

I endure it, as I have endured. There is only the choice Camus has delineated, and the alternative has never occurred to me. So like everything else in this life, we accept what we cannot change, and with any luck we do it without causing harm or grief to ourselves or others.

There is the catch. I’m here. She isn’t. It could be the reverse. No matter. The catch is the same. My grief would be hers (or so I hope and expect, as far as I understood what I understood between us; otherwise one of us was lying, and I never knew her to lie about this grave matter, and I know I didn’t lie). But that’s the only difference. An exchange of players. A reversal of roles.

In accepting that I am alive, I accept that I must live. At least I accept that this is what I want to do. I expect to. She expected me to.

The problem arises because one does not travel the world alone. All but some very few of us are social creatures. However we may choose, at least as to basics: gender, age, etc., we expect, we hope, we want and need and hope that there will be another, the other. And we seek them, him or her. And we find him or her. Or not.

If we look, we certainly find candidates. And like the late games leading to the presidential contest that engaged and enthralled us all, that’s where the fun comes.

What I have discovered in seeking candidates, finding some potential prospects, some more serious than others, all worthy one way or another, but not too many suitable, is what the most ordinary person would discover—and I am nothing if not much more than ordinary. Life in short, as I have always experienced, and as you have dear reader, mon semblable, mon frère (où soeur). Lively, energetic, funny, intelligent, variously attractive, compelling, feeling, complex people. Women, in my case, being the ones I’ve met.

And as we get to know one another, as we must, we discover that the facts of the life we encounter are facts we must deal with, react to, respond to, feel something about.

There is no greater provocation than death.

The women I have met have all reacted differently, however subtle the differences, to the news that I am newly (and lately less newly, and soon, even less so, no doubt, though the end of the newness is not distinct, but, like all things, save the winner of Presidential elections and sporting events, is a relative, if not a slippery thing) widowered.

But it is in death, and how it fits in my life that I have discovered a truth I could not have known, having only known the usual deaths, of forebears: parents and elders, and at such an extremity of the life we’re offered measured in years, less a matter of consequence than of forbearance. An influence, but not an impact. A loss, but not a catastrophe.

This latest death, of my love and my life and my wife, was a catastrophe. Make no mistake. I didn’t.

However, we all react to these tragic complications, these deep, ineradicable wrinkles in the quotidian fabric of our lives in different ways. Consummately.

And yet. And yet. For some. For many, if my experience is representative, there are rules, and rules, like the attention due any life that must be paid, rules must be obeyed.

There is a “too soon” and a “recent,” a taxonomy of temporal events. I have always understood these terms (though this is no mere semantic matter) to be relative. No matter.

The nearness of such a death as I had to, and must need, endure make me toxic.

Whatever my allure. However I comport myself. The words I say. The actions I take. Irrelevant.

It doesn’t matter if life beckons. If the call of love is faint or strong, echoes in the wilderness I retreated from when I found a home so long ago with the woman I loved, do love, even unto death, the wilderness to which death has forced me to return, no matter. It doesn’t matter the condition of my heart, neither the capacity for nor the openness to feeling for another.

Who I am, and what I am, what I feel, and what I say are of no consequence. Death has taken the wheel, and I must stay for the ride, buckled in, sedate, calm, and accepting. When death will let me exit at the curb, I am free.

In the meantime, I am in transit, in transition (though from what to what is never clear). It’s a life, but of living death.

I can’t be trusted. I can’t be handled, except with sympathy.

I may entertain. I may pay the cost of meals, of amusements, of gifts, and travel. I may be myself, or someone else—for both of these beings are seen as through a veil and therefore indistinguishable. Yeah, I’m a nice guy, but too bad about my wife.

Some few are undaunted by these mortal facts, and I have a taste of normalcy, of sense, and decency, of sensitivity, but not caution, or vigilance, or fear in their presence. And if I’m lucky, life proceeds once again without impediment, because I wish it to, as do they. But these are happy and rare accidents. I remember these. Like hurricanes in Hartford, Hereford and Hampshire, they hardly happen. They rarely occurred before, and as far as I can tell, my luck has only gotten worse.

The result is the message I leave you with, an important message because it adverts to our understanding of the only universal truth: death. We may will that death shall have no dominion. Triumph in the end perhaps, but no dominion. Not in life. It’s a logical impossibility. But for some, the impossible is ineluctable. It transcends their own will, their wishes and desires, and they submit. Fear is powerful. Timor mortis conturbat me.

And what I must suffer, in addition to all else and what else I suffer, in silence and in private, because who in her right mind would share these with one who starts, as we each must when we meet, as a stranger, is the allotment of dominion so many are willing to give death. Where it deserves no space at all.

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I'll give the right wing this. They're clever in their malice. The left may have earnestness, and something short of sanctimony (take a moderate-left fiscal conservative, add sanctimony: result? Joe Lieberman), but they sure don't have a sense of humor.

Just yesterday I heard this one.

You know about Obama's new proposed tax on aspirin? It's white and it works.

I love this country. It runs on fear, hate, and cheap gas. Three pollutants.

I'd say, I can always run away to France, but I'm reading in reports from a think tank I subscribe to that xenophobia is on a rampage in Europe. France is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, of the countries in Europe (and since when did the name of a continent around long enough for Don Rumsfeld to call it "old" require a change to "Euro-zone," as if it were a program of the government, like EZPass, they decided they had to brand?). And France is about the size of Texas.

So all of Europe would fit into a corner of the southwest of the U.S., until we built a wall around it, or threw them out. So I guess they feel the hot breath of all those immigrants more intimately, and they quiver with rage and anxiety in their French blue overalls. Like Poles and Rumanians and Turkish Muslims all have master-level skills in the trades.

Of course, we Americans do spew our hatred for any minority that exceeds ten per cent of our population. And our significant minorities don't even dress funny. And that's despite the stereotypes about hip-hop and homosexuals.

It would be my guess that the analysts have changed their position on anti-Semitism from a "hold" to a "buy." I would.

It's a good bet that all Semites should be on amber alert. bin Laden and Madoff: the poster boys of the new millennium. Even gentle Elie Wiesel is cursing Bernie.

And if things do go south (so to speak) completely while Obama is president, it will result in a headache no aspirin will cure. And the reaction, I suspect, will make the Black Panthers look like a Boy Scout troop run by adults of a different sexual preference.

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This is the cover of the commercial release, recently out of proof, and ready for production. There are still copies available right now of the Special Limited Edition, with the notorious limited edition “big ass cover,” available signed and numbered (in an edition of 100) and meant for private distribution, and accessible at the URL below

If you want the commercial release, in its first edition, with the cover shown here, admittedly more reflective of the subject matter, the tone, the character of the writing, and far less likely to draw snickers and complaints from friends and strangers alike, you’ll have to wait. There will be an announcement of availability, for on-line purchase and sales in a first run of a limited number of retail outlets.

I am still pondering Amazon sales options, and still actively seeking either an agent or a publisher to handle distribution and marketing.

But why wait, it’s available now in a Private Limited Edition, bound to be a notorious collector’s item?

Or wait. I need the money, but it’s OK. I don’t want you to be unhappy.

If you can’t wait, or pity or unbridled enthusiasm for my irrepressible and unique personality and creativity motivate you to act now, here’s the URL of a secure Web page to take your order for a book I will rush to you personally, as fast as my medium size legs can take me to the post office:

Click anywhere on this sentence for access to a secure Web page to buy “SAME DIFFERENCE” by Howard Dinin

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Yes, I’m at it again (and will be again and again…). I’ll only offer this disclaimer periodically. I gave the guy money. I voted for the guy. But his proof is in the pudding of the Presidency… He’s learning the hard side of Washington politics, and there’s no reason we citizens should let up on him. 200+ years of precedent make it so damn easy to do it the way it almost always has been done.

Look where it got us.

No man is so honest he can’t use a daily reminder to stay that way. So be that guy in Caesar’s chariot whispering in his ear as he rides in triumph into Washington, uh, Rome…

No doubt the usual suspects will find something to give me shit about. I’ll have at the Big O. You have at me… I can take it.

In the meantime, it won’t hurt if you give him your two cents also. Everyone should. If everyone in the country did, why that would be $6,000,000. I think the government goes through that about every 15 seconds, or something equally appalling.

Remember: 500 characters. If I can do it, you can.

http://www.whitehouse.gov go to the link in the upper left corner that says ‘Contact Us’

Today’s O rant:

“You disappoint in significant ways. Allowing Mr. Geithner to prevail on phase 2 of the banking bailout is same old same old. I’m surprised there’s no provision for fruit baskets and discount coupons for body man services for bank executives. You promised real change in government. The bankers who enabled this mess deserve censure, if not divestiture and removal, if not outright prosecution. This isn’t real change, it’s Small Change: the name of the homeless newspaper here in Cambridge.”

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With the same bulldog tenacity that Charlton Heston used famously to pledge that his weapon of choice—the type that fires explosive and destructive ammunition, i.e., bullets—would have to be pried from his dead cold fingers before he would relinquish it voluntarily, law or no law, President Obama nowhere nearly as famously has indicated his attachment for his weapon of choice. The President’s Blackberry, still in his possession as far as I know, is armed no doubt with equally potentially deadly ammunition, the fruits of the President’s justly deserved reputation for rhetorical skill, i.e., words.

His new White House website pledges, on his behalf, that “President Obama is committed to creating the most open and accessible administration in American history.” You will find this pledge on the page, entitled ‘Contact Us.’ And below that, you will find an online form on which to identify yourself, and to leave a 500-character message (360 characters more than are allowed for a “Tweet” on Twitter.com, but 4500 characters fewer than you are allowed in a “Yelp” on Yelp.com), no doubt a compromise, which the Big O is learning to make not on a daily basis, but it seems increasingly on an hourly basis.

Previously, one could not email President Bush, though constituents, which, like it or not, for eight years meant all of us, were encouraged to use the now beleaguered (and significantly destitute) US Postal Service to send him that quaint form of communication called a letter. There was a promise that the White House would respond in kind, in time.

One still cannot email the President, either officially or directly to his zealously guarded Blackberry (unless you are among the holders of that elusive string of characters that identify the Big O in the ether), though, I would suggest, it hardly matters. As I, without fame, attention or regard except from my handful of loyal followers, have had cause to observe mere weeks ago in this same forum, email is dead. No loss.

Nevertheless, it is encouraging to imagine that with some greater rapidity, the White House staff will see whatever it is we may have on our little minds to opine. It remains to be seen how quickly and in what form they will respond.

Somewhat incredibly to me, the Big O has been in office a mere two weeks. It only seems longer I am sure, because of the intensity and publicity of the “Transition Period,” aided by what I suspect is the intellectual and sensory state of shock so many of us citizens are suffering finally, and unbelievingly, as a result of seeing the back of George Walker Bush.

Yet, for the brevity of the Big O’s tenure, some signs have appeared long since that not only will the recovery we now long for, with the same fervent and devout passion we wished for the departure of the Bush man, take a very long time, and will be terribly painful to endure. As well, it would appear, there will be a great deal more of business as usual in Washington, despite a great many promises to the contrary, over the course of what amounted to a two-year campaign for the Presidency.

I have had occasion three times now, in these two weeks, to leave (each time) almost my entire allotment of characters for the President’s delectation, or at least, I hope, for the attention of somebody with a brain in his head who is, if nothing else, tallying the sentiments of the public with enough gumption and initiative to use this new form of communication to address this “most open and accessible administration.” My first two communiqués merely urged the White House to do everything possible to get the Congress off its ass, and to quit partisan politics, and start taking concrete steps already to put a working recovery in place—since, in the meanwhile, as we all continue to suffer one way or another, there is nothing working in the way of recovery. I have heard nothing back. And of course, “nothing” is the best way to describe what seems to be happening in Washington.

Today, having been closely following any of a number of stories issuing from Washington about the status quo, the status quo ante (which still makes the news, as the financial and economic  casualties continue to pile up), and the status quo devoutly to be wished, which it would appear at the moment consists of the same stale winds that have blown out of the District of Columbia since it was a fetid swamp when a bunch of guys decided to say “fife” to the King and start a new country, I decided to address a different topic. The topic is ethics—which many of you know is a subject near and dear to me—and the connection between this ancient idea of the proper way to govern ourselves as civilized human beings and the new administration.

The Big O, it seems to me, has a great deal more work to do than the mere institution on his first day in office of the most stringent ethics rules ever imposed by a new administration.

I’ve decided (and I know this will delight all of you) to start archiving my comments to the Big O and his boys and girls. And from time to time, I will post them here, probably in future without too much, if any, additional comment. If I have to constrain myself to anything less than five thousand words, you might as well reap the benefit. The reward for me is that the world will slowly come to realize that I actually can say something cogent in 500 characters or less.

Here’s today’s message to the Big O. I don’t think it will appear ever on his Blackberry, but as Hemingway wrote at the end of The Sun Also Rises, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”:

“It is dismaying to see Mr. Geithner and Mr. Daschle get not only a ‘free pass’ but unqualified support from you, in an atmosphere of long-promised and vaunted sweeping ethics reform. Why Mr. Richardson was permitted, or encouraged, to do the right thing with the mere threat of unsubstantiated allegations of corruption, while these two admitted miscreants continue to hold or seek office is beyond me. Bad old wine in a new bottle is still vinegar. I hope action is in the works to replace them.”

I encourage all conscientious citizens to hie themselves, frequently, to http://www.whitehouse.gov, and click on “Contact Us” in the upper right, and give them 500 characters worth of a piece of your mind…

Bush may make the Big O look like Jesus Christ, but he still has to prove himself. He’s done nothing yet to let himself off the hook.

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There is a window in the bed-alcove on the second floor (“premier étage” or first floor, according to the French scheme of things). It’s also not really a bed-alcove, but the hallway between the doorway from the stairs arising from the street floor to the doorway that allows access to the stairs to the third floor (that’s right, here it’s the “second”). Not a barren space at all, but currently quite minimal. It contains a small table with drawer, it’s some kind of hardwood, stained very dark, and on it sits a very elegant silver-colored lamp, with an oval shade of linen. The lamp is controlled by the light switch on the wall, just to the right of the doorway as you walk onto the tiled floor. On the table is also a piece of sculpture from my talented and dear friend Pascal Masi, who has a love for and penchant for excellent art inspired by the fauna of the Arctic and Antarctic (his name is sufficient, Google him, you won’t be disappointed). It is a bear, lying on its back, in a kind of active repose—the very spirit of the village and the house.

The floor is covered in “tomettes,” the characteristic terra cotta hexagonal tiles that are the hallmark of the Provençal tilemaker’s art. Tomettes are available in a variety of sizes. These measure about three inches to a side, and so the entire tile would fit in an approximately five-and-a-half inch square. They are a deep russet. And each is, of course, a geometric metaphor for France itself, known, at least to the French, as “Le Hexagone,” because of the shape of the country itself.

On this floor, in this hallway, there is a built-in wooden closet, with double doors, lockable. Though the key remains always in the lock; what we call a skeleton key. The half-door not secured by the lock has a sliding bar that anchors it to the door frame of the closet. The closet is in a corner, facing the door that leads to the stairway to the third floor. The closet is as deep as the dimensions allow. Most of the design on this floor is determined by the depth of the stairs leading up from below, and further up from this floor to the next. Shallow steps, which would allow for more floor space, and deeper closets, would be treacherous to climb, and anxiety-making. If there is any design principle at work for the past, oh, I’d say, six centuries, it’s to avoid any unnecessary anxiety as one negotiates the configuration of one’s home.

This does not mean generally, from one house to another, there are not some strange obstacles to access—one room to another, or one floor to another. Winding stairways with extremely steep risers, for example. Some would say the ubiquitous tile is treacherous in and of itself, given that it is the favorite flooring. But generations of French have grown up, and lived long lives, very long ones here in the country, without undue damage to their basic skeletal endowment. Some things become sui generis.

One thing that is sui generis is making the most of what little space one may have. Land is irreplaceable and the supply is as we find it. Hence, I would suggest, for example, the French habit of putting their vehicles wherever they will fit, without unduly inconveniencing their fellows, or obstructing the passage of other vehicles. Same principle.

In all events, back in my second floor hallway, there is a closet, and it is quite shallow. This does not mean it is not usable. Rather, it is quite empty, save for the vacuum cleaner and its parts. Linda and I, much as we had built a “French” clothing wardrobe here over the years, so that we could at least be assured of some minimal fussing over what to pack, given that we knew there were clothes for us in France, nevertheless had not exhausted the other, ample, space afforded us by what was built into the house. For example, there is another, much larger, closet, more like an armoire incorporated into the structure of the bedroom, organically, if you will in the master bedroom.

Anyway, we discovered that, though there was a bar installed in the hallway closet, the enclosure itself was too shallow to accommodate modern hangers. We discovered this when we bought a household-worth of wooden hangers (being acolytes of Joan Crawford). However, the modern hanger, which accommodates the clothing that fits the frame of modern humans, will hang without trouble, even in this narrow space, if carefully suspended at an angle. And so the hangers hang, as the lyrics from “The Mikado” put it, “in serried ranks assembled.” So far, not one of a succession of guests has complained.

Quand même as it’s said in French (“nevertheless” or perhaps, “whatever”), I started in the hallway, and I am back in the hallway.

Today, I was installing weatherstripping. It will clearly be inadequate, as it was designed for new windows. My windows are not new. They are not medieval (I don’t believe many windows from the era had framed glass casements), but they are not modern. And they do not fit properly. And neither does the weatherstripping.

In all events, as I hung out the window, as I attempted to get the weatherstripping to stick, with its “elastomeric” adhesive, “re-locatable” and “good for all surfaces” I noticed just below the line of sight of the window, where I have always known there to be not only grape vines criss-crossing the facade (a major attraction to the house when I first saw it for sale in late fall, festooned with fiery orange grape leaves and the tiny grapes that grow among them), but a rose bush, of some venerable history, intertwined among the vines. These are also, as you might imagine, a feature of the house, in terms of “curb appeal” though there are no curbs, of course. I have printed and published photos of the lovely blood red rose specimens that appear every year without fail, and without care or even minimal monitoring.

On the rose bush, snaking among the vines, and even as we are in the midst just barely of mid-winter, are buds, promising an early spring. As I predicted in an earlier post on this blog. I have checked the almond tree near the cemetery, which is the un-official harbinger of spring—the almond tree that has been blossoming earlier and earlier as the years spin eternally—and indeed there the signs of buds, proto-buds, if you will. But nothing to compare to the few rare embryonic blooms that hang so carelessly from the front of my house.

However, in a mere four days, I leave. And when I do, I will shut up the house. I will unplug everything non-essential, as there are, inevitably, horrendous electrical storms in the spring—which is fast coming upon us here in the Haut Var. I will check all the water taps twice, if not three times, to make sure there is no chance of a random drip. I will tighten the valve on the gas tank for the stove to within a millimeter of its tenuous grip. I will shut down the circuit breaker for the hot water heater, which will otherwise make hot water continually, even as the empty house pings and creaks, and cracks and whispers in the absence of any humans to take advantage of the luxury.

I will pack up all the perishable food that is still of any use and ceremoniously present it to Rudolf and Nicole across the way just before I drive off, and who will make what use of it they will, being the sensible parsimonious citizens we all must be in these parlous times. And I will try to make sure that I dispose of every last gram of disposable or recyclable waste—so that I needn’t make an urgent call to Rudolf from Nice, from my hotel the night before my departure, to ask if he would not mind, please, entering the house, and grabbing the bag of poubelle (garbage) I have left, absent-mindedly, leaning against the wall in the kitchen under the framed posters of varieties of French olives and tomatoes.

I will run up and down the stairs, checking once, twice, three times, to make sure I have left the house in what is for me impeccably neat condition, as if the former mistress of the maison were expected at some future date, and would frown silently at the less than spotless condition—even though I know, as she knew, that, given the length of our predictable absence, there would be dust in every corner, and swirls of detritus huddling across every square inch of floor, and cobwebs festooned between the latched windows, weatherproofed or not, and the shutters shut tight beyond them. There will be dead scorpions in shoes, and dead bugs of arcane taxonomy in every bowl and cooking pan in the pantry cabinets.

Then I will pack the car, and drive off, not sure of the date of my next visit, though this is the universal question, from each neighbor and friend. “When will you be back?” And as always, I cannot, for all the poids lourds of the freight of this question (“heavy load”), answer with any precision. All that hangs on my heart is the weight, not only of the query, and the expectancy, and the unspoken emotion behind it, but thoughts, spontaneous and simultaneous, as if weeks and months of time were compressed into an instant, and I could see in that instant every moment of every event to occur in the time of my absence—sights and sounds, never mind people, that I will miss until I do return. It is never soon enough.

But what I know I will miss, with a certainty that almost pushes me out that second story window, what I will miss is seeing these dear buds blossom and mature and grow into full flower under the eternal cyclic life-giving sun of the dearest place on earth.

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