I’ve been back from Arizona for a week now, still exhausted, sometimes reeling from the backwash.

What’s happened is a terribly difficult thing to accept, because we’re biologically hard-wired to love our mothers. Few can probably even conceive of a situation where the reverse isn’t automatically true, but it happens. With Helen, I realize, the contract has always been broken: she doesn’t love her children… That’s the chilling thing, the part that terrifies a child and stops a grownup in his tracks. It isn’t natural. It’s a denial of who we are. It really isn’t completely human.

With relish and conviction, she tells my brother in Tucson: “Johnny will be investigated, you’ll be investigated, you’ll ALL be investigated!” Us? We who by all rights should never had made it this far? What for?

For looking in on her virtually every day for years? For coming from the grocery store with fruit and frozen Chinese dinners so she’ll have something in the house to eat? For walking her calmly out of the bank with a shit stain spreading on her skirt? For driving 600 miles to pick up the pieces and getting chased out of town?

It’s like looking at a huge crippled insect, pincers waving in the air.

So don’t mutter platitudes at me or judge. I’ve been there and I know different. I AM there, and now I understand my father better: what do you do, when you find out, when you’re an Air Force officer in the ’50s and you feel the fear? What does it take to hold it all together? What kind of life do you retreat to? He took the coward’s way out, with booze and womanizing in his own little world where kids were a distraction. But at least I understand, a little.

The mystery is that I am whole — the question, then, is why?

I watched the last few hours of the Democratic convention, and of course I heard Obama’s amazing speech. It wasn’t the words — most of what he said was very down-to-earth — but his courage and directness. The intensity of spirit that he showed, the empathy, the honesty — my God, the INTELLIGENCE! I’ve been saying for months that this isn’t about Obama but has to do with something bigger, and damned if he didn’t say just that tonight: “This isn’t about me, it’s about you…”

He also managed to obliterate McCain without attacking his character. (In fact, he praised it.) I haven’t ever witnessed such a deadly serious dismemberment delivered with as much authority. This is outstanding politics. The last few weeks had to be a conscious set-up, too: Obama won’t attack, etc. etc. Hah! We are so damned lucky. The country is so damned lucky. This is going to be a glorious emotional rush with MUSCLE behind it.

Get ready to feel good. Not because we’re “winning,” but because of something else.

When last I typed that title, I told how I’d decided to let Helen do whatever she wanted…

The old woman wouldn’t budge and wasn’t so far gone she couldn’t fool a social worker. Never mind “the voices” and losing $2,500 in cash. Never mind paying too much for an awful trailer she didn’t need with 50 grand she needed to keep. Never mind the permanent reduced breathing capacity and a history of “minor” strokes. Never mind that she’d moved from a beautiful home with room for live-in help to a pathetic dark hole where nothing would ever work. Never mind that she was living out her own worst nightmare but had no self-awareness. Never mind, never mind. She could live on stale fig newtons if she wanted, there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t believe how far gone she was, and that her doctors wouldn’t help me.

It seems so bloody obvious. She can hardly walk, she wets the bed, her dentures are worn and make her look like hell. SHE HEARS VOICES. SHE GETS BATSHIT CRAZY MEAN WITH RAZOR BLADES. She thinks she has things fixed up “just the way I want them” when someone else’s pictures are still hanging on the wall, and she can’t take a real bath ’cause the tub is way too small.

If she wouldn’t accept help, though, there was no way for her to have it. I was letting go, and in this found a measure of compassion. Hopeless or not, maybe her wish to keep her “independence” rated more respect. Giving it up had to be a horrendous prospect, even if her material circumstances would be much improved. Maybe she had a right to go to hell in front of everyone and die unhappy. She’d be unhappy (or much worse), no matter what. Maybe there was something deeper going on that I was meant to watch and learn from.

At any rate, I finally went to see her. Her house was locked, and at first she wouldn’t let me in. I could see her sitting on the sofa while I knocked on the glass, and after a minute or two, she relented and let me in through the kitchen door. I got her a glass of water and sat down next to her on the dead man’s sofa.

“WHY DID YOU COME?” she asked, loudly and bitterly (the high point of the visit).

I told her I was deeply sorry for raising my voice against her the day before and trying to make her go into a nursing home. I told her she could stay in her trailer as long as she wanted, but that all five of her children believed she should be somewhere where she’d be looked after. I told her how worried we were and how much we cared. I told her she had taught me a lot about growing old,and I meant it.

“I DON’T WANT TO HEAR THAT MUSHY STUFF!” she shouted, livid with rage.

Amazingly, I was still detached and told her how my brother and sister in Austin had found a couple of very nice nursing homes she might like. I said I wanted her to come to Taos, but I knew she wouldn’t like the cold, and that we all thought it best if she would move to Austin.

“WHY WOULD I GO WHERE THERE’S NO ONE TO VISIT ME?”

Patiently, I pointed out my two siblings and their spouses in Austin, enough that someone would be able to visit almost every day.

“I DON’T WANT THAT!”

She then proceeded to excoriate and damn every one of my siblings. She said we’d never come to visit her in Tucson (not true), that no one cared, especially me, and that I never gave a damn about my father, either. I was witnessing a breathtakingly alien torrent of anger and hatred. There was nothing maternal at all to this entity, whoever or whatever it was, inhabiting the almost 87-year-old body of my mother. The dark wild thing was now off my shoulders and fully manifested in her. I felt released but in great danger and suddenly rose to leave. “I’m going back to Taos tomorrow, Mother,” I said.

“GOOD!” she snapped. I bent down to kiss her on the forehead, then opened the door. As I walked down the steps, she shouted after me, “I DON’T NEED YOU, JOHNNY!”

I drove back to her old home where I was staying, literally shaking from the impact of what had just happened. My solar plexus was throbbing. I called my wife and paced for two hours until I calmed down. In 63 years of relating to Helen, I’d never experienced anything this stark or clearly dangerous, but I also felt a hint of something unmistakably good. After all, my conscience was finally clear…

The elation I’ve felt since is not unlike the newfound appreciation for life that welled up some days after watching my father die some 20 years ago. It washed over me at the time like a healing flood. The energy is similar now, only deeper, and this involves release.

I couldn’t believe how beautiful the stupid rutted dirt road looked when I finally hit the last turn before our house. I couldn’t believe how stunning my wife was or how perfect the air felt. I couldn’t believe how happy I was to be home.

My honey says I’m different. I’m still disoriented and exhausted, but basically good. I may be standing straighter, and I’ll bet I’ve lost a little weight.

Now there’s a title you don’t see every day, and the guys who made it possible aren’t everyday fellows, either.

How it turned out that in my advanced decreptitude I’ve finally found friends who not only share many of my own predilections and cultural underpinnings but also take care of each other is mildly astounding to me. I say “mildly” because I always figured it was possible to live like that, but the actualization seemed to elude me. Probably I was too fucked up myself, not to put too fine a point on it. If that’s the case, then I must have evolved in recent years, or else I just hit the jackpot. Call it grace and good luck.

But these two fine companions, both outstanding musicians, having followed my recent travails as best they could from my raging emails, wanted to give me a chance to vent. I was invited to a night of therapeutic drinking and gentlemanly pursuits — well, mostly drinking — and vent I did. First I sang them a song I’d written yesterday afternoon, one that you’ll be able to hear soon. [See below*] In the course of the evening, we finished a fifth of Cuervo 1800 and I got dog hair all over my clothes. That would be from Popeye, the resident terrier (?). Much hilarity ensued after the venting, and I even got fed. I also heard an earful about another mother, and it shook me to the bone.

(How did we ever survive???)

When I got back to the run-down adobe on the side of the hill and sat down at my MacBook to catch up on my emails before crawling into bed, there was a message from my brother Rob. It was a beautiful message in many ways and ended with the declaration that the next time, we would both go to Tucson. That remains to be seen, of course, since I’ve said I won’t go back unless Helen is dead or in protective custody, but if she’s really out of it (say, crawling around in circles on the floor and drooling), then a guardianship hearing might prove productive. Time will tell.

What hit me hardest in the email, however, were a few sentences summarizing what life had been like at home in Houston during my younger siblings’ high school years, a period I knew little about. At that time I was at UT-Austin learning where to put it and getting my hippie credentials, so I hardly ever went “home” at all. Guana santo, man!

Remember, I was down in Houston living the hellhouse - ruled by an hourly cycle of shouting fights despite counseling and over God knows what while Mom was going for shock treatments and then the brain tumor. Back then I was hoping they’d divorce and I could move in with Dad. (Dad may have had his issues, but at least he seemed reasonable to me, and I now understand how he got so frustrated when I couldn’t grok his attempts to tutor me in Algebra II).

I got into bike riding back then as a means of staying detached from the madness at home. B____ stayed home and cried a lot. M____ practiced her saxophone and we both spent as much time at school as we could. Band, we called it. B____, not so lucky. He stuck around stuffing his face with chips while attempting to drown out the madness with a television set.

I had literally no idea. Dear God in heaven.

* Oh yes, the song. It’s the first one I’ve written in years, and the rest of the lyrics will fall into place shortly. This is all I have so far, but it sounds great accompanied by my resophonic bouzouki in Appalachian death-stomp mode. In a few days, I hope to have a recording posted here, so keep your eyes and ears open. In the meantime, here’s what I have so far. The title of this piece is [ahem], “Mother Don’t Kill Me,” and it’s a sure-fire hit in hell:

Mother I beg you don’t kill me
don’t throw me outside with the trash
it don’t matter how much you’ve gone crazy
I’d be happy to turn you to ash

Well I came ‘cause you said you were dyin’
I came ‘cause my siblings were scared
but the nightmare I found down in Tucson
was worse than I ever had dared

So Mother I beg you don’t kill me
don’t throw me outside with the trash
it don’t matter how much you’ve gone crazy
I’d be happy to turn you to ash

Then I’d take you on back to Kent County
put you down in the ground next to Dad
there’d me no more abusin’ and fightin’
be the best time that I ever had

Transmutation, chilluns!

I think it’s always been there, though rarely mentioned, this cold, black thing that kills all love and joy. Always! Though in my memory the first remembered taste of it came in Abilene, Texas when I was barely 13 years old.

This would be during the early years of rock & roll, 1958, when Buddy Holly was still alive. I single him out because we lived close to Lubbock, his home town, and to everyone in Abilene, Buddy was still a local hero. His music had a huge impact on me, because after Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers, and Fats Domino, listening to Buddy Holly was like listening to a slightly older version of myself. Rock & roll in general was the total antidote to every restrictive guilty pain I’d ever felt when growing up, the sheer joy a healing balm. I grasped the music with both hands and a willing heart, even though from inside my family (and elsewhere) came the darkly-hinted sense that something was “wrong” about letting go and feeling good.

For now this reference is a footnote, one I’ll expand later. In the context of the Helen Chronicles and my immersion into unholy hell in Tucson, it’s important, though: I remember where the ugly started… and it’s been going on for quite a while. Toward the end of my rolling nervous breakdown in Tucson, I happened to email my favorite cousin, almost exactly the same age as I am, with the observation that I thought Helen had probably been mentally ill for her whole life. Her reply was startling:

Absolutely true! I thought you already knew that she had this problem. I remember my parents speaking about an incident or two that happened when your family was visiting Granny. I guess she was never medicated/treated for it?

So everyone else knew except for her own children? If you don’t think this is monumental — and liberating — for a 63-year-old man to absorb, you haven’t been paying attention. Helen does have dementia, but I doubt it’s Alzheimer’s. Even if it is, there’s something else that’s in the mix, and it’s always been there: I remembered the first time my sister T_______ and I visited my folks in Tucson, back in ‘76. It was a Christmas visit, and while opening our presents there was such a horrible outpouring of hate from Helen that my sister and I immediately fled, driving up to the top of Mt. Lemmon outside of Tucson to sit on a rock, smoke dope, and watch the buzzards ride the thermals. Merry Xmas, y’all…

Oh my God

The truth is, I was completely possessed in Tucson. The pressure was unbearable. I couldn’t speak a single sentence without crying. My rage was all-encompassing, too. On the worst day of all, near the end, I cursed out both my brothers and a commenter on this site who’s very much like a brother. That was the day I initiated guardianship proceedings against Helen, so that I could force her into some kind of protective situation for her own good. A nursing home, assisted living, an asylum, who knows? The lawyers agreed that I had an emergency on my hands and had to act. Seven hundred fifty dollars later, phone calls had been made, appointments scheduled. I had a social worker visit Helen for a preliminary interview, and that’s where things began to look unsteady.

According to the social worker, Helen “presented well.” So much for social science, eh? I wonder what Helen was actually asked. Not about the voices, certainly, or the fact that she’d already forgotten that she’d asked me to come to Tucson to have her cremated and sell the properties! (She was dying, remember.) But this was a definite yellow flag as far as an emergency court hearing to obtain guardianship was concerned. Usually such proceedings aren’t undertaken unless there isn’t any doubt, and once again, the authorities were throwing up a roadblock. If I proceeded with the legal action, there would be a fight, and I would end up testifying in court against my mother. Naturally, I balked.

The next thing was that I finally included a younger brother in the deliberations, and he had reservations, too. I could see this wasn’t going to work, even though the alternative was the previously unthinkable one of just leaving Helen be. Leave her there in a rotten, sharp-edged, dirty, dingy trailer with no railing on the outside kitchen steps, no way to wash her soiled linens, no place to store her things. Leave her there in stinking, humid, white-hot Arizona with only one sibling and the cleaning lady to visit her. Leave her like she said she wanted to be left, losing checkbooks, missing $2500 cash, buying trailers she didn’t need with money set aside for taking care of her. Leave her with the voices talking about her in the night, needing dentures, glasses, and good food in the cupboard. Just leave her, like the laws of Arizona say she had a right to be, left alone to live like a crazy, sick, old lady who had no friends and no one to look after her. Just leave her there and go away… If that’s the way she wanted it, crazy or not, then…

Refusing all assistance

But all at once I felt a little loosening, a glimmer of hope for me. That morning I also had a long-distance talk with a Jungian analyst I’ve known for several years. She talked about the “dark, wild thing” that I had taken on myself by coming to Tucson and was clearly worried for my own safety. We both saw then that if I continued with the legal action, the dark, wild thing would still be on my shoulders. I knew I had to drop everything and leave.

Immediately thereafter, I called the lawyers and killed the process. (They agreed!) I told my siblings I was going home. I gathered up the checkbooks and credit cards I’d taken from Helen’s trailer and prepared to take them back to her. Already I felt like I was released from prison, even though I had the major hurdle of confronting Helen to apologize and comfort her.

Alas, my good intentions did not come to pass. What happened next requires another chapter, in fact, the most unbelievable of all. (Part V, coming up…)

I’ve just discovered this new video, which I am told is “going viral.” I hope so, because it’s affected me quite strongly this morning. I hope you like it and pass it on:

In a very real sense, absolutely!

Today is my “actual” birthday (from AstroDienst), with the sun lining up precisely with where it was when I was born in 1945 (!) at 9:25 p.m. tonight, rather than tomorrow, my calendar birthday. This has to do with the imprecision of the numbers, things slipping, the impossibility of our wretched artificial calendar ever truly reflecting the orbits of the stars and planets or the alignment of the galaxies. Not that precision really matters in this instance though. For my birthday, it’s more of a general field of energy with the needle pegging in the night:

Today is your astrological birthday, even though it may be different from your calendar birthday. As would seem appropriate with this transit, today is a day of new beginnings, and the influences you feel today will affect the entire year to come. However, this does not mean that the whole year will be disappointing if today doesn’t work out exactly as planned. You are receiving a new impulse from the energy center within you, as symbolized by the Sun. Therefore any new venture that you start at this time will ride the crest of this new energy and will very likely come to an acceptable conclusion. Whatever you do or begin today will bear the stamp of your individuality more than anything else. This is the day to assert yourself anew.

Detonated over beautiful Nagasaki on the day I was born

So I may do anything today, and that covers a LOT of ground. Actually, I’ve already thought of a couple of “new ventures” to launch. No, they don’t involve climbing Mt. Wheeler (13,151 feet). That was my intended birthday ritual, but what happened was that a couple of friends wanted to have a dinner party for me tomorrow, and I realized it was stupid to turn down such a friendly and generous offer. The mountain isn’t going anywhere, and I can try that next week if I don’t have to go to Tucson to find a nursing home for my mother or pick up her ashes from the funeral home. Life is strange, is it not?

One thing I’ve thought of involves writing more openly and matter-of-factly about intangibles. This could be tricky, because of all the ridicule it provokes and because I already have a deplorable tendency to manipulate and preach. Wow: just from writing that, I can already feel the self-censorship wanting to kick in — the thing that always holds me back — but what’s more important than personal truth? That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do in my life, to be as clean, clear, and true as possible, without conflicts, to go through life like a dophin without leaving a wake… And believe me, I’m all too well acquainted with the opposite.

Probably my favorite milagro

It strikes me that this is all about heart. Listening to and following my heart. Not about politics, economics, the environment, making a living, finding a home, what my old friends think of me, or what that lump is on the back of my neck. There have been times during the past couple of years when I’ve felt inexpressible joy and unity with all creation. Occasionally to the point of tears, like I was consumed by cosmic love and acceptance. NO SHIT! Hell, that happened once last week.

So Happy Birthday to you all, and we shall see what we shall see.

My 86-year-old mother is in the hospital with pneumonia in Tucson and not making sense. It’s impressive, what that does to you. I might as well call this post “John Watch.”

My brother is worried that I’m not there and hopes I’m coming soon. That’s not how we do it, though. Just the sight of me might generate enough “crazy energy” in her to momentarily fool them into letting her go, and then where would we be? Haha. But seriously: no, not yet. And the doctor will sedate her if she tries to leave again.

My wife: ”Your mother can’t possibly ‘escape’ from a modern hospital. She’d never make it to the front door.”

Me: “Even if she could get out, it would never work. She’d have to take a taxi, and she’d never pay for one!”

She’s already convinced she’s dying. For all I know, she is. And it may sound harsh to strangers’ ears, but it’s like I can’t do anything for her until she does. Even if she comes out of this, she’d have to surrender and cooperate for me to get her into a nursing home, and that’s not going to happen. She isn’t rational any more. She hasn’t been for a long time. I don’t see how she’s managed to live on her own for the last 10 years, anyway.

I felt some pretty strong emotions today. Not sorrow, but more a reaction to the archetype, the elemental thing that’s going on with Death nearby. This is monumental with a parent, even one you’re not that close to.

My relationship with my mother is deep and dangerous. I could say she gave me birth and love, but then she tried to kill me (and never gave up). And yet, the more I glue the missing pieces back, there’s less need to blame her for leaving them out. I can talk to her openly and with compassion, from a distance, anyway, and sense the spirit of a person, not my “mother,” and that person is all right. The last time I talked to her was like that. I just ignored the crazy parts and the arrows bounced right off. Then she seemed to shift gears, maybe out of boredom, and we connected for a little while, as equals.

That might have been the last time. it’s out of my hands, for sure.

Here, try this:

[audio:John-John.mp3]

Well, that was a night, all right. That’s “John-John” by the original Zoo Pilots at our one and only paid gig — funded by a Kent County, MD Arts Council grant, if you can believe that — at Washington College in, uh… [ponder] 1984? ‘85?? It says right here at my audio page that this is from “the early Eighties,” but don’t take that for granted. It was two sets of originals by me. I even had a crazy lady recite her poetry in between! There were about a dozen of my friends in the audience and a few curious students. Not a big crowd, but we were in a big room in the basement with tables and a bar. At least I think it was a bar. Maybe it was a snack bar. But I had a good time, and I still have the recording.

Hang on.

As for John-John, he did it again on Sunday night, and I woke up at 4:00 a.m. this morning from a dream in which I beat him bloody. I mean that literally, and he deserved it. Then I had to get away so he and his hoodlum buddies wouldn’t kill us in revenge! Nightmare city, boys and girls, except this one is a gift, offering up about as clear a vision of the shadow as anyone is going to get. I’d been wearing him like a suit and couldn’t see, you see. That’s what dreams are for, especially when things are down to the bone when you drift off to sleep.

You may call this bi-polar. You can call me Ray. What blows my mind is that all those years ago, I instinctively pulled this out of my own psycho-drama and nailed it without having any inkling of what it meant. The song itself is a transmutation of something like a breakdown into a rock song, with just one verse and chorus, repeated over and over. I remember that the lyrics and the chords just fell out of my head, especially on the chorus. Over 20 years ago, and there it was, right in front of me. Who knew this stuff would take so goddamn long?

There’s something here I have to own up to. I even tried to, in the dream (as in the song). I went up to him while he still looked like hell, all sullen and battered, and said, “We gotta get straight with each other.” Trying to defuse the situation, you understand, effecting mutual acceptance and respect.

When I reluctantly got up at 4:00 a.m. to write down the dream while the pictures and emotions were still fresh — if I do this, I keep my eyes half-closed and don’t turn on anything bright — that’s when things got really weird. There was the light and the dark at the same time, and I was neither, nor anything else I’ve ever been. It didn’t feel exactly human, or maybe that’s the thing that needs expession in a whole new way. It also scared the shit out of me, but I think that’s all right. I mean, it just wasn’t anything familiar, and I felt a panic to return. Even feeling awful can be cozy.

(See, this is what I do instead of watching talking heads on Sunday morning or working in a hardware store.)

Tonight was different, though. I have no idea why, because all day long I was ready to snap. Instead, I washed the car before the sun set and stood outside swatting mosquitoes (which we don’t have here in New Mexico) in the dusk, admiring the gleam of clean white fenders. When I came in, I got out my instrument and played rockabilly bouzouki standing up beside the kiva fireplace to amplify the sound. And ohh, what a noise. Beats that mp3 up there all the hell, it does. Just you wait a little bit.

Tomorrow it’s off to Sandy Feet (Santa Fe) to take the stitches out of my gum. No, really. The dental implant thing. Have a greatl day, don’t worry about the election, and I’ll be right back.

Things like this never happen when I have my camera with me.

Yesterday my wife and I took our exercise walk up the mesa. On the way back we saw two baby horned toads! These were two separate incidents, amazingly. And when I say “baby,” I mean tiny, about the size of my thumbnail. I took this relative abundance to be a good sign. After all, how many folks have ever seen a baby horned toad?

A couple of years ago I saw two babies riding on their mother’s back, one of the most astonishing things I’ve ever witnessed. She froze in the middle of the dusty trail, giving me a good long look as I stood right over them. This was extraordinary enough, to see the three of them, but then one of the little ones crawled off and walked a few inches away, onto a patch of sand that was much lighter in color than his (?) mother’s back. And then he changed color to match! I mean, in no more than a second or two. I didn’t even know they did that, but this one sure as hell did.

So today I walked up there by myself, and of course I took my camera. Hah. Nary a horned toad to be seen, naturally.

Run away, run away

But I did run across a piñacate beetle, otherwise known colloquially as a “stinkbug.” I’ve run into these before, and they deserve the nickname. It was the only animal I saw on this walk, but I had a good time anyway. I think I would rather just “be” out in the wilderness than do almost anything else in this world, even if all I see is a stinkbug. It has to do with the universal quality of consciousness arising from no thought.

I worry less and less these days. I know that’s odd, considering my history of apocalyptic rants. And by the way, did you know the Germans are preparing for a huge crowd in Berlin for Obama’s speech?